Saturday Night Live
This past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live was an instant classic with host Ryan Gosling who nailed ‘Papyrus 2,’ an extension of his legendary ‘Papyrus’ sketch. Caitlin Clark made an appearance on the Weekend Update and crushed it. Chris Stapleton was the musical guest and delivered the goods. It really, truly felt like one of the best episodes in the past 20+ years and a ‘larger than life’ night which has been missing on SNL for a while.
‘Papyrus 2’ was my favorite sketch of the night until I saw the Beavis & Butt-Head sketch where Ryan Gosling wore a blonde wig looking like Beavis and SNL cast member Mikey Day was Butthead.
The premise of the sketch is Kenan Thompson is a professor sitting in front of a live audience for a Q&A about artificial intelligence and he’s supposed to be taking a very serious approach to the potential existential threats that could arise from AI. He is being interviewed by Heidi Gardner who manages to keep it together until she sees Mikey Day dressed as Butthead and she loses her mind. Once she broke, there was no recovering. And the sketch became an instant classic:
In a subsequent interview with Vulture, Heidi Gardner discussed what happened and how she felt about it. From her perspective, she didn’t do her job. She had no idea that everyone watching the video loved it.
Heidi Gardner told Vulture that she was still trying to figure out what happened to her in that moment but that that Beavis & Butthead sketch had been in the works for years. She explained the other time this happened was when shew as at the Groundlings (in LA / an SNL feeder) and she got “a stern talking to” from the director.
Rehearsal leading up to the sketch was “very technical” which enabled her to be distracted from the costumes. She told Vulture that it was during dress rehearsal (with costumes) when she began to get a sense of how good it would be, saying “dress rehearsal was when the prosthetics made their debut — the noses and the mouths. I didn’t know about Mikey’s exposed gums and teeth.”
Heidi Gardner says she broke in dress rehearsal after seeing Mikey. Telling Vulture “When I looked and saw Mikey in the dress rehearsal, I lost it. I was shocked. I’m thinking about it right now and laughing. I recovered and tried to tell myself in between dress and the live show, You can’t laugh like that again. I was trying to imagine seeing him in my head so I was prepared for it, but I just couldn’t prepare for what I saw. I really tried. I even saw Mikey out of the corner of my eye seconds before I went live. I saw the red shorts. I knew I couldn’t look over there again. Mikey even told me later that he was bending down and hiding himself so I wouldn’t see him.”
She added that she sits next to Mikey often in table reads and they attempt to get each other to laugh. In this sketch, she says there was a moment when Mikey turned “his head just a little bit and bug out his eyes” and she thinks that the moment, the costumes, and the fact that she’d been giving herself pep talks for hours to not break character all led up to that now legendary sketch.
Greatest Character Breaks In SNL History
All of this begs the question, what is the greatest character break in the history of Saturday Night Live? There are a few Debbie Downer sketches that were legendary character breaks. At least one of those has to be in the top 3.
For me, Will Ferrell’s ‘Jeffrey’s’ would probably be number one:
If not that sketch, I’d nominate ‘Stuart Has Cancer’ from The Californians as #1.
Not to be lost in this conversation is Jimmy Fallon unable to keep it together when Christopher Walken demands ‘more cowbell’ which led to Horatio Sanz also breaking. But it’s not the break that makes that episode legendary, it’s the sketch itself.
Heidi Gardner losing it to Beavis & Butthead is now on that Mt. Rushmore of Saturday Night Live character breaks for me. It’s that good. Also, if you haven’t watched ‘Papyrus 2’ yet you need to go do that immediately.