Imagine if Hallmark Channel focused not on Christmastime storylines but on Halloween TV movies equal parts sappy and slash-y.
That’s the premise of a Saturday Night Live sketch that made its debut in this week’s episode, a trailer for the faux Halloween romance A Stab at Love. (It’s “a movie for the whole family, shot entirely on a Samsung Galaxy in Estonia.”)
The sketch features SNL cast member Chloe Fineman and host Nate Bargatze as Gashley Greigert and Bren Cloebog — “two almost attractive actors with almost human-sounding names,” as Hallmark’s narrator says.
In A Stab at Love, Fineman’s Gashley plays Kelsey, a New York City writer who returns home to Autumn Hollow, only to run into Mark, played by Bargatze’s Bren. “The last thing Kelsey Gordon expected was to be reunited with her high-school crush turned hometown killer,” the narrator says.
Mark makes no bones about wanting to kill Kelsey — and her whole family, too. But despite (or maybe because of) his murderous intentions, Kelsey is swept off her feet.
“We’ve cornered the market on Christmas — why not Halloween?” Hallmark’s narrator says. “Because the only thing female viewers like more than romance is murder.”
It wouldn’t be a romantic TV movie without a love triangle, though, and sure enough, Kelsey’s fiancé, played by Mikey Day, shows up to crash the party — leading Mark to storm out of a café in a huff. “I don’t even know if I want to kill you anymore!” he tells Kelsey.
SNL has taken aim at Hallmark Channel fare before. In 2019, for instance, the NBC series aired a sketch in which Scarlett Johansson played an eligible bachelorette wooed by Hallmark holiday hunks in a dating show for the cable channel.
Saturday Night Live, Saturdays, 11:30/10:30c, NBC
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