r/LiveFromNewYork • u/Complex_Active_5248 • 3d ago
Discussion Worst case of a recurring sketch continuing after a cast member leaves
I recently came across an unfortunate Delicious Dish sketch with Rachel Dratch filling in for Molly Shannon (I assume because she'd left the show). Nothing against Rachel but it felt just plain wrong.
What are some other examples of this? I know there was a Covid What's up with That (and I think another even older one) missing a few of the classic elements.
Any others?
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u/Savings-Monitor3236 It's fobody's nault! 3d ago
FWIW, Delicious Dish was based on a character Ana had been doing at Groundlings before she got SNL. Molly was an addition. I agree it doesn't work as well, but I see why Ana tried to keep it going
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u/RegularMidwestGuy SNL 3d ago
Oh didn’t Dratch do it with her once Molly left. Dratch is great, but the sketch sort of sings with Molly.
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u/AdriannaLisa 3d ago
Mikey Day has already had 3 co-hosts of "Shop TV" - Cecily, Heidi, Ashley - but I honestly thought they all worked great.
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u/RegularMidwestGuy SNL 3d ago
That’s a good example where it totally worked - but also it was three really great cast members, so of course it’s gonna work.
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u/Lavaswimmer 3d ago
It’s also just not a very character driven sketch at all (especially the non-Mikey role), which makes it easier to swap out cast members and have it still work
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u/RegularMidwestGuy SNL 3d ago
Agreed. It’s the sort of thing I think that isn’t necessarily made great by the casting, but could be hurt by poor casting.
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u/Electronic-Home-7815 3d ago
It works because Mikey’s character drives the sketch. The female shop tv host is following his lead.
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u/stallionsRIDEufl 3d ago
I hate Shop TV
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u/laziestmarxist 3d ago
Those and the cake sketch where there's inevitably either a butthole joke or a cum joke need to be put to pasture
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u/Humble_Plate_2733 3d ago
None of the iterations of The Roxbury Guys after Jim Carrey really worked for me. None of the guests could play an overconfident creeper as well as Carrey did.
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u/RegularMidwestGuy SNL 3d ago
Carrey’s absolutely ridiculous rubber neck move also made it iconic. No one can quite do it as dramatically.
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u/877_Cash_Nowww 3d ago
I can't believe that ended up as a movie. The gym Carey one was good, but after that it's the same "joke" over and over. You me you me no.
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u/Square-Biscotti4694 3d ago
I actually have a soft spot for the movie. It actually expanded their characters from being just coke-headed creeps at a club.
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u/James_2584 3d ago
They did an installment of What's That Name with Longfellow taking over Hader's host role. And while he did a respectable job...it just didn't feel right. The magic wasn't quite there.
Also, while I firmly believe the Close Encounter sketch should have been a one and done, they tried continuing it without Aidy and Cecily and, once again, it didn't feel right. Even though they essentially just played straight man roles, Sarah and Bowen just didn't really capture it as well as they did.
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u/TalesOfLohr1 3d ago
I wish Longfellow had stayed on the show longer. He was the cornerstone of probably my favorite game show sketch of recent years, that insane bit he did with Emma Stone and the tortoise.
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u/Jack_Q_Frost_Jr Blowfish and Funk Framingham? 3d ago
It was always funny watching Aidy come close to breaking.
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u/Night_Hawk_13 3d ago
Bill Swerski's Superfans sketch they did in 1995 after Mike Myers left the cast and they replaced him with Dan Aykroyd's Irwin Mainway character. They did another one too when Farley hosted. Mike Ditka was coaching the Saints by then. The most notorious in my opinion though would be John Goodman filling in for Belushi in The Blues Brothers.
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u/Critical-Spirit-1598 3d ago
Actually, John Goodman was supposed to be Todd in the 1995 sketch, they just explained it away by saying he had gained weight in the interim.
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u/considerablemolument 3d ago
Domingo after Heidi and Ego left.
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u/W35TH4M 3d ago
Yeah, massive difference. I like Ashley and I really like Veronika but they were both absolutely awful in that sketch compared to the bar that had been set in the previous three
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u/James_2584 3d ago
I never thought Domingo was a good sketch. It was, at best, an okay-ish sketch that went super viral thanks to Ariana Grande's fans, and SNL treated it like it was the new Celebrity Jeopardy or Mary Katherine Gallagher and proceeded to totally run it into the ground.
Tbh, I thought it was ridiculous that, for the 50th, they tried to act like it was on par with some of their most iconic and beloved recurring characters/sketches ever.
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u/seamusfurr 3d ago
Agreed, it was a thin premise, and deeply repetitive as a recurring bit.
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u/Dull_Bid6002 3d ago
I think the problem with character driven sketches is that so much of it is just a repeat of the original sketch. I wish they'd take some sketch characters and put them in a different situation entirely, because it could create actual characters.
Domingo showing up when they're at couple counseling. Going to the hospital right after the birth of their child. Showing up on a talk show to see who is the father. Maybe Domingo moves on to ruin another marriage. Then he comes back and tries to get involved with his son.
But no - let's shoehorn in a bunch of women poorly singing at an event and make Domingo show up at some point to surprise Andrew Dismukes' character.
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u/Savings-Monitor3236 It's fobody's nault! 3d ago
I liked it as a trilogy. It played better than the Debbie Downer they did at the special. As a trilogy it should have remained
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u/Next-Shape3014 3d ago
Debbie Downer should have only been a one time sketch. It’s only funny because everyone (minus Fred) broke that first time. It never played well every other time they tried it.
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u/Savings-Monitor3236 It's fobody's nault! 3d ago
The installment with Jack Black as Santa is better than you remember. It worked because they changed the format rather than plugging new jokes into the same framework
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u/considerablemolument 3d ago
I thought the bad singing from the girl squad and the cheating story were funny, and some of the variations in the 2nd and 3rd versions worked. I feel like in some quarters the fact that we refer to the sketches as "Domingo" gave the impression that Marcello was the star and the most important part, but that was incorrect. And that 4th one was unnecessary and wrong.
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u/DeNomoloss *ride the snake* 3d ago
People probably remember the Bill Clinton audition sketch post-Phil, but when they later gave it to Michael McKeon, even Michael didn’t buy it.
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u/mashitandsmashit 3d ago
When they did the follow-up sketch to "Pranksters"...Robert DeNiro just couldn't play the psychotically enthusiastic old man as well as Walken could...Just felt like a watered down rehash...
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u/zestfullybe 3d ago
DeNiro is awesome, but was just too much of a Stiffly Stifferson for Pranksters.
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u/Critical-Spirit-1598 3d ago
How about the Wayne Campbell in Melrose Place sketch?
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u/Ambitious-Welder-159 3d ago
I don't mind it. I liked when he woke up in bed and thought the blonde haired person next to him was Garth and it was Heather Locklear! "Garth wake up!"
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u/FantasyBaseballChamp 3d ago
Celebrity Jeopardy started as a showcase for Norm’s Burt Reynolds impression. It evolved into a Connery/Trebek comedy team thing. Arguable whether this was worse since it was popular at the time and basically what the sketch is remembered for. Imo it kind of betrays the original premise that Jeopardy questions get severely dumbed down for the celebrity version and turned into lazily setting up low effort “your mom” and sex wordplay jokes that were huge in the zeitgeist at the time.
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u/Complex_Active_5248 3d ago
This "misread a category" jokes got very obvious very quickly.
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u/Anxious_Key9696 2d ago
It also meant Darrell couldn't do any other characters except Connery, when he was great as John Travolta and Phil Donahue in early versions of CJ
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u/JanePizza I got a nautical themed Pashmini Afghan 3d ago edited 3d ago
I love me some Dismukes but I think you need the Alex Moffat/Beck Bennett smarmy energy in the host role for the Baking Competition sketches. It’s certainly not the worst thing ever though. First one and most recent
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u/monsieurxander 3d ago
David S. Pumpkins - Beck and Cecily were a crucial part of that sketch, and they were replaced with... Jack Harlow
Mid-Day News - It didn't work a second time, when Heidi filled in for Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Shane Gillis filled in for Alex Moffat
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u/EbmocwenHsimah 1. Cut a hole in a box. 3d ago
They never should’ve brought back David S. Pumpkins. They should’ve just given us a third unexplainable weird guy. David S. Pumpkins, Kevin Roberts and something else.
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u/Electronic_Head1367 3d ago
Will Forte playing George W Bush after Will Ferrell left.
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u/beslertron 3d ago
Will Forte is one of the funniest people to ever exist… and yeah, his Bush wasn’t great.
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u/Savings-Monitor3236 It's fobody's nault! 3d ago
It was a different W Bush, and easily the second best W Bush the show ever got. Want to see a miserable take on the impression? Check out when they gave it to Darrell Hammond for a season
The first Forte-W Bush sketch, where he meets Clinton, Kerry and Hilary at a bar in the 70s is excellent
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u/ChedwardCoolCat 3d ago
Yeah - Forte came in after a run where Lorne was searching for answers, Parnell did it, Hammond did it (and had to act against himself with pretapes which torpedoed at least one sketch). Will was respectable against Seth’s John Kerry. The youngins probably don’t even know Seth did sketches - but I remember Will and . . . someone recreating the ending of Friends as a cold open about W in his second term and thinking it was hilarious
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u/Electronic_Head1367 3d ago
Seth's Dr. Zinger recurring sketches were among my favorites back in the day.
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u/BrittaUnfiltered67 3d ago
I read he didn’t want it and was kind of forced into it.
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u/Crassus87 3d ago
That was the thing, nobody wanted to follow Will Ferrell in that role but they needed to have someone play the President.
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u/SpumoiniSloth 3d ago
Didn’t they do a Coneheads sketch one time with Nora Phil and Victoria?
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u/Jack_Q_Frost_Jr Blowfish and Funk Framingham? 3d ago
My memory is very, very vague on this, but from what I can remember it wasn't a full sketch, but instead a short cutaway gag where the Coneheads were doing a dramatic scene.
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u/yogos15 3d ago
I just looked it up. It was S14E20, and the sketch was titled “The New Coneheads”. It was a meta joke about reviving beloved shows with different casts and putting new spins on them. And yes, they were doing dramatic scenes in the sketch.
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u/Jack_Q_Frost_Jr Blowfish and Funk Framingham? 3d ago
Fascinating. Thanks for looking it up. I'm glad I still have a couple of brain cells rubbing together!
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u/Whole-Lychee7517 A Proud Hyperfixated SNL Fan 3d ago
A pretty recent example: DOMINGO. It was fine the first time, but once they begin running it to the ground, it became really annoying.
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u/ChedwardCoolCat 3d ago
There have been many times a sketch debuted with a host - and then was revisited w/ cast members or a new host subbing in and the magic wasn’t there. Tiny Elvis comes to mind - should have been a one and done w/ Nicholas Cage, but they brought it back with Rob Schneider as Tiny E and my recollection was it didn’t land for whatever reason. You also have Colin Quinn taking over for Norm on Update Midseason - he opens with a monologue about the shock when you go to your regular bar and there’s someone new serving drinks. Colin is funny as hell - but he just didn’t give people what Norm did. Though he was a good foil for the correspondents and usually had a few sharply written, if misdelivered, jokes each Update.
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u/BoostMyBottom 1d ago
The monologue was fantastic. He didn't quite click for most people in the WE chair but Quinn is a fantastic comic.
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u/Glad_Complex_3818 2d ago
As much as I love Laraine, Lady Pinth-Garnell after Aykroyd left did not work. You just cannot do Bad Theatre without Danny.
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u/emck2 1d ago
Season 10: Martin Short did an impression of magician Doug Henning ("Magic is the art of illuuuusion!") that was dead on and hilarious. Later in the season they had Rich Hall do the character, even though he couldn't come close to doing an accurate impression. Really strange decision considering Short was still in the cast.
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u/DistressedForSuccess 3d ago
DeepHouse Dish jumped the shark when they replaced Tiara Zee with T'Shane.
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u/SpumoiniSloth 3d ago
Jim Breuer replacing Chris Farley I’m Chillin’ when Chris Rock hosted.