It’s, apparently, pretty tough to find good people to run a social media account. On “SNL,” toy maker Mattel can’t seem to find anybody who knows how to write interesting Instagram captions on behalf of its best seller, Barbie.
“Saturday Night Live” posed the scenario in a sketch that saw Mattel’s vice president for social media, Kenan Thompson, and executive Cecily Strong interviewing three potential candidates, played by Heidi Gardner, Pete Davidson and host Donald Glover.
You can watch the video above.
Thompson and Strong quiz the three candidates by showing them pictures of Barbie for the Instagram feed and ask what captions they would write. The first showed Barbie drinking a smoothie and holding a clutch purse, but the first two candidates, Gardner and Davidson, kept referring to it as a chocolate bar. That got Thompson pretty incensed.
It was nothing compared to Glover’s lengthy caption suggestion, though.
“I can’t shake the image of that girl getting hit by that car four years ago outside of my dream house,” Glover said. “Anyway, I was holding a chocolate bar, like this one.”
“Listen to me, boy,” Thompson told him. “Barbie never witnessed such a thing. That sort of thing does not happen outside of Barbie’s house.”
Glover had another super-depressing caption idea. He suggested Barbie was leaving a message to cancel going to a party, because she was “in a funk.”
“I’m back to thinking about that girl from four years ago,” Glover said. “I think she was trying to tell me something.”
Thompson demanded to know why Glover insisted on bringing up an event he was already told hadn’t happened.
“I think addressing the trauma is important — it’s a discussion that needs to be had,” Glover replied.
For the final image, which showed Barbie looking out at a Malibu sunset, Glover rolled out his darkest caption yet. He described Barbie overhearing someone in the supermarket talking about her as she walked by, and revealed to the doll that she was, in fact, a toy. Glover’s Barbie was so stunned by the realization that, in his caption, she was about to commit suicide.
That prompted Thompson and Strong to throw all the candidates out of the building.