“SNL” tackled sexual harassment in the workplace with week, with Beck Bennett as the representative of a corporation who’s been tasked with announcing that a pair of employees have been fired for misconduct.
The two on the outs: plays the CFO of the company (played by host James Franco) and an old front desk guard who makes comically exaggerated remarks about the appearance of women walking through the office lobby (played by Kenan Thompson).
The pink-slipped pair come out in front of the other employees during lunch and apologize before they make their exits.
“To Janet, in particular, I know that I have playfully referred to you as my little honeybee, and it made you feel uncomfortable,” Franco said. “And I know now it was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“It was gross, and you’re gross,” Janet replied.
Then Thompson made his own apology to Janet, albeit with charm and a grin: “Janet, I know sometimes you would walk by me, and I be saying something like, ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Mmmmm,’ and then I shake my head, do a little dance, and ask you not to hurt nobody with that thang. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”
As the sketch proceeded, the things Thompson apologized for got increasingly ridiculous and often involved a joking threat of kidnapping the women who were the target of the comments, all the while the women expressed support for him, wishing he wasn’t being fired for all that.
Then came the twist, as Bennett chimed in to say that Thompson wasn’t being fired for sexual harassment, but for stealing money from petty cash, keeping cocaine in his locker and filling up the lobby computer’s hard drive with porn — oh, and actually he’s wanted for kidnapping in Pennsylvania.
Check out the sketch in the video above.