A Saturday Night Live I wish I’d seen

I still watch Saturday Night Live every week, mostly for a few skits and to see Weekend Update. The newer SNL Digital Shorts are always fun as well, from the “‘**** in a Box” to “Lazy Sunday“.

Since the show is done live and most of the sketches are written in the week or two preceding a performance, the WGA Strike killed any new episodes for us.

But that didn’t stop the cast from putting on a show anyways.

The New York Times was there for the show and had the full recap.

Saturday night, in a little comedy theater in Chelsea, New York, the cast put on a complete Saturday Night Live performance for around 200 people, including Lorne Michaels, Jim Krasinski and a few other who’s who of comedy.

The tickets were originally $20, but were going for as much as $200 on Craig’s List.

Amy Poehler texted Michael Cera, the hilarious young actor from the show Arrested Development and the movie Superbad, and asked him to host the show. He accepted.

I hope they invite him back for a real hosting gig, he’d be awesome to see. He’s never been on the show before and I think that would be a real blast.
The show was essentially a repeat, with some favorite old sketches from previous shows, but there were also some that were never seen, due to being cut for various reasons from time to raunchiness. Usually an episode of SNL has seven sketches, but the cast performed around 15 of them over the two hour show.

Some of it was funny, some wasn’t, like a typical episode, but I’ll bet it would have been such a treat to be there. Cera hosting would have been enough for me, but to see these sketch comedy actors put on a show without the help of cameras and producers would have been something worth paying $200 for.

Andy Samberg was quoted saying about the strike and if it wasn’t ended by next Saturday night:

“Probably just watch a video of this,� he said, “and call everyone and be like: ‘Remember last Saturday? We so did not get paid for that.’�