SNL Sketches Where Everyone Broke

Ten times live television was briefly just people laughing at a man in a small shirt.

Entries
10
Category
TV
Updated
  1. A cluttered dorm room desk with a webcam, a beanbag chair and energy drink cans.

    10. Jarret's Room

    Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz

    Fallon and Sanz host a dorm-room webcast and spend most of it laughing at each other, which is roughly how real dorm-room webcasts went. Fallon broke so often across his run that it became a recognized part of his act. Here it was basically the whole sketch.

  2. A tangle of freeway interchanges at sunset with a soap-opera-style marble staircase in the foreground.

    09. The Californians

    Fred Armisen · 2012

    A soap opera in which every emotional crisis gets interrupted by freeway directions, delivered in accents so thick the cast could barely look at each other. Bill Hader in particular kept cracking. Somehow the most dramatic thing on it is the 405.

  3. A radio studio desk with two microphones and a plate of round holiday treats wrapped in festive paper.

    08. Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls

    Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon · 1998

    On a hushed public-radio food show, Alec Baldwin's baker Pete Schweddy presents his holiday treats, and the hosts' soothing voices start to wobble. Rolling Stone ranked it the 20th-best SNL sketch. Ben & Jerry's made the flavor in 2011, and parent groups wrote letters.

  4. Two matching bathrobes hanging on hooks beside a steaming hot tub in a dim apartment.

    07. The Lovers

    Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch

    Two professors in matching robes overshare about their love life to a traveling businessman, played by Jimmy Fallon, who keeps running into them. By the third installment the whole cast was gone, Ferrell and host Drew Barrymore included. Dratch based it on a real professor.

  5. A cable news studio desk with two empty audience chairs in the front row and a studio camera pointed at them.

    06. NewsNation: Beavis and Butt-Head

    Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day · 2024

    Heidi Gardner, the cast member famous for never breaking, plays a NewsNation host whose studio audience includes two men who look exactly like Beavis and Butt-Head. She does not make it. The episode became SNL's most-watched ever on Peacock. Gosling's second entry here.

  6. A neon-lit nightclub doorway with a velvet rope, a stack of cue cards dropped on the sidewalk.

    05. Stefon

    Bill Hader and John Mulaney · 2008

    John Mulaney kept swapping in new club listings between dress rehearsal and air, so Bill Hader met them for the first time on the cue cards, live. Andy Samberg stood by the camera to make it worse. Hader's hands over his mouth became the character. Five seasons of sabotage.

  7. A flying saucer hovering over a dark field, a lawn chair and an overflowing ashtray beneath its beam.

    04. Close Encounter

    Kate McKinnon · 2015

    Three people describe the same alien abduction. Two had a gentle, glowing experience. Kate McKinnon's chain-smoking Mrs. Rafferty did not, and she explains why in detail. Host Ryan Gosling lost it almost immediately. The aliens came back for years and never improved.

  8. A wooden coffee table snapped in half in a suburban living room, a pair of thick glasses on the rug.

    03. Matt Foley: Van Down by the River

    Bob Odenkirk · 1993

    Chris Farley's motivational speaker hitches his pants, lectures two teenagers and falls through a coffee table, while host Christina Applegate and David Spade fail to keep straight faces. Farley named him after a college rugby teammate who became a priest. The table had no say.

  9. A theme park breakfast table with pancakes, coffee cups and a slide trombone lying across the plates.

    02. Debbie Downer: Disney World

    Rachel Dratch and Paula Pell · 2004

    Rachel Dratch flubbed a line early, the sad trombone kept coming, and the whole table went: Lindsay Lohan, Fallon, Poehler, Armisen and Sanz, over a theme park breakfast. Dratch built the character from an awkward vacation chat in Costa Rica. Wah-wah.

  10. A single cowbell and drumstick on a recording studio stool, a mixing booth window glowing behind it.

    01. More Cowbell

    Will Ferrell · 2000

    Will Ferrell wrote it, then switched to a smaller shirt for air after the dress rehearsal went flat. Jimmy Fallon hid behind his drumsticks and Christopher Walken laughed through the booth glass. The real Bruce Dickinson was a mid-level Columbia Records manager.

Honorable mentions

  • An old-fashioned elevator with open doors, a carved jack-o'-lantern on the floor and two skeleton costumes on hangers.

    Haunted Elevator

    Mikey Day, Bobby Moynihan and Streeter Seidell · 2016

    Tom Hanks plays David S. Pumpkins, a haunted-house attraction nobody can explain, in a suit that cost $12.99 at Party City. Beck Bennett and Kate McKinnon have to react to it with a straight face. Hanks got an Emmy nomination partly for this. Party City got nothing.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A clipboard of rules pinned to a studio wall beside a lit on-air sign and a stopwatch.

    The Rule Against Breaking

    Lorne Michaels

    Lorne Michaels strongly discourages cast members from breaking character on his show, which is exactly why every sketch on this list is funny. Forty-plus years of a rule that mostly exists to make breaking it better. The most productive policy in television.

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