5 Rejected Comedy Sketch Ideas We Wish Would Have Happened
Has anyone noticed that the “Cut for Time” sketches that Saturday Night Live throws on YouTube are often funnier than the ones that made it on the air? It makes us yearn for other rejected comedy sketches that for one reason or another never made it to showtime. Here are five we’d love to see:
Key & Peele: Sebastianasia
The prolific Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele apparently produced way more comedy ideas than they actually filmed -- more than 200 bits for their first season were narrowed to fifty-four.
One sketch we wish we could have seen was Sebastianasia. A guy (Keegan) is sitting in a hospital with his dying wife when a man wearing a cheap lobster suit (Jordan) appears. In his best Little Mermaid Jamaican accent, the lobster urges the man to “go ‘head, kiss the girl.”
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Befuddled, the guy asks, “I’m sorry, who are you?” And the lobster’s only response is, “Come on, mon, kiss the girl.” This goes on for a bit before Keegan finally relents and kisses his wife, who promptly dies.
“And to me,” says writer Jay Martel, “this guy coming in and connecting the last moment with his wife with this stupid request from a lobster just would make me howl with laughter.”
Saturday Night Live: Placenta Helper
Well before the days of YouTube -- in fact, it was Saturday Night Live’s very first season -- Al Franken and Tom Davis pitched a script that proved too much for censors to swallow.
Gilda and Laraine would have played two young women meeting up at a high school reunion -- and they’re both pregnant. As a first time mom, Gilda admits she’s a little nervous.
“Well, this is my third, and let me tell you, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” Laraine assures. “By the way, are you planning to eat the placenta?”
“You’re kidding! You mean the afterbirth?”
“That’s right,” says Laraine. “Many mammals eat their own placenta. It’s nutritious, it’s 100% natural, and now that you’re going to have a family, you’re going to have to watch your food budget more than ever. And there’s no cheaper meat than placenta.”
Gilda wonders if there will be enough afterbirth to feed an entire family. Not if your husband has a hearty appetite like Laraine’s. That’s why she uses Placenta Helper.
Holding up a box, Laraine explains all the ways placenta can become a robust meal, from Placenta Romanoff to Placenta Oriental.
Cut to Gilda and her hungry husband John Belushi, who’s enjoying every bite. “Let’s have Placenta Helper every night!”
“Oh, honey!”
SNL runner-up: JB Smoove told Howard Stern about a number of his rejected pitches, including a criminal so evil that he wears patches over both eyes. He pitched another that host Tom Brady loved about the first NFL quarterback to ever pat his teammates on the butt. “Can you imagine a guy in the '50s slapping another man on the ass?”
Mr. Show: Famous P***ies
In their book Hollywood Said No!, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross included scripts for sketches that didn’t make it into Mr. Show.
Our favorite is Famous P***ies, cowritten by Odenkirk and cast member Brian Posehn. The sketch would have taken the form of a scratchy newsreel, showcasing cowards throughout history. An announcer sets the stage, revealing that Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was actually stolen from a quivering Herbert Hoover:
“The only thing we have is fear. Fear itself is the only thing we have. And you can take that to the bank!”
Other presidents fared no better. The supposedly brave John F. Kennedy’s initial response to the Cuban missile crisis?
(heavy Kennedy accent) Aahhh… oh s***… aaaahhhh… I’m scared. My brother’s scared. My entire family’s scared. My wife. My girlfriend, we’re all scared. And you should be, too. Arr, uh, I’m going to ask each and every American to stay home until I can get as far away as I can. Then you can, uhh, run, too. Don’t panic. Wait until I am safe, and then it’s every man for himself. (He s***s himself.) Oh no. I sharted.
We would have loved to have seen other famous p***ies brought to life, including David Cross as a distraught Lou Gehrig.
Crank Yankers: I’m Gonna Kill You
This is one we would have liked to have seen in a “rubbernecking at a terrible accident” kind of way -- it actually sounds excruciating.
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“I had a guy at a moving company I was trying to convince about moving my fat wife,” remembers prank caller Adam Carolla. “He was laughing with his friend about picking my wife up in a pickup truck, and I got indignant. I got upset saying, ‘She has a medical condition. How dare you!’ And he backed off and said, ‘No, no I get it. I have a 3-year-old daughter who breathes through a trach hole in her throat.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, well that’s her fault ‘cause she was a smoker. My wife was a victim.’ And the guy started screaming, ‘I’m gonna kill you!’ That was about as pissed as anyone ever got. That never made it to air.”
Yeesh.
Kids in the Hall: Hitler (Blanks) A Donkey
OK, we’re cheating a bit here. This is an actual sketch that KITH performed about fictional sketches that were supposedly rejected by the censors. Check out Kevin McDonald and prepubescent Dave Foley:
But who wouldn’t want to see these sketches:
* Hitler (Blank)s a Donkey, a comedy bit designed to discourage any budding neo-Nazis out there. “He’s one bad customer.”
* The Home Run, a sketch about a baseball player who fails to hit a home run for a deathly ill kid -- so the ballplayer makes it up to him with a $20 prostitute.
* Soup Du Jour, a sketch so offensive that the other members of Kids in the Hall nixed it. The joke is simple: Kevin McDonald samples soup that Dave Foley made with a secret ingredient: His very own … and we’re left to our own devices to fill in the blank with the grossest thing our imaginations can conjure.
For more ComedyNerd, be sure to check out:
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Freaks And Geeks: 15 Behind-The-Scenes Facts
$44 Billion For Twitter? Let's Revisit When Elon Musk Quit On Writers From The Onion
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Top image: CBC Television
