Is This the Most Meta Ending to an ‘SNL’ Sketch Ever?

Saturday Night Live has delivered a few meta twists to the ends of sketches over the years, such as when Norm Macdonald played a violent, jealous Tommy Lee opposite Pamela Anderson, only to get beaten up by the real violent, jealous Tommy Lee.

Then there was the Trump-era game show “What Even Matters Anymore,” which ends with Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong breaking character to make sure that host Jessica Chastain is doing okay. 

But SNL’s most bizarrely random meta twist came at the end of a sketch hardly anybody even remembers.

A 2006 Dane Cook-hosted episode found Cook and Will Forte playing Poland Spring water bottle delivery men, who have, for some reason, drunk their entire supply. When they get a visit from a suspicious Poland Spring executive, played by Kristen Wiig, the two dudes try to hide the incriminating empty jugs before she can come in. Cook’s character stalls by claiming that he’s busy “boning some lady.”

If that sounds extremely stupid, it is. But it’s all worth it for the payoff, when Wiig opens the closet door revealing a veritable avalanche of empty water bottles. And they continue to spill out for an absurdly long time. Forte and Wiig were somehow able to keep a straight face, but Cook was clearly having Ryan Gosling-levels of difficulty. 

Even after Wiig’s character fires the two water-addicted delivery men and leaves, the scene continues, with Forte concluding that “even though we lost our jobs, there is one positive thing to come out of this — I have this friend who works for Saturday Night Live, and he loves it when I call him with different ideas that happen to me in my everyday life. I have a feeling he’s going to flip over this one. Probably submit it word for word, exactly as it just happened to us.”

Cook then questions whether or not you can say the F-word on SNL “They’ll probably go with ‘bone,’” Forte responds as the confused audience offers only a smattering of chuckles.

Wait it’s still not over: Forte then explains that if things don’t pan out at SNL, he also has a friend “over at Studio 60.”

“I know someone over at 30 Rock,” Cook responds. Before we have time to fully question why two random Poland Spring delivery men are so well connected in the entertainment industry, Cook suggests that they should start saying something interesting if their conversation is going to be on TV, to which Forte replies, “Don’t worry, they’re only going to use the funny part, and that ended a long time ago.” He then looks directly into the camera.

Oddly enough, this sketch came up during the mailbag segment of a recent episode of The Seth Meyers and Lonely Island Podcast. But the listener who wrote into the show only half-remembered the “fever dream” of a sketch, and mistakenly thought that it starred Andy Samberg and Bill Hader. 

While Samberg didn’t remember the sketch at first (though he was still on the show at the time), he and Meyers, as well as Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, all agreed that the final twist sounded extremely funny. “Any sketch could end with that,” Schaffer pointed out.

Samberg also noted that it was extra amusing to them because if you work at SNL, your life immediately becomes every person you’ve ever met telling you what a great idea for a sketch is” — although they usually only provide a setup with “no actual comedic idea.”

It may have worked once, but there’s no reason for any future episodes to end with characters personally phoning Lorne Michaels to transcribe their wacky misadventures.

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