Tuesday, January 03, 2006

The Undiscovered Sketch

There's been much buzz on the 'ol Internets about the last December episode of Saturday Night Live, the one with Jack Black as host, and the very funny "The Chronic (What?) -Les of Narnia" video featured within. But that episode (one of the best SNLs I can remember in a long while) also featured other good stuff, as Nat notes, including a Jack Black King Kong song and a great Darlene Love-sung Christmas song and cartoon ("Christmastime for the Jews").

But the funniest sketch of the evening was, for me, the final one (and how often does THAT happen), with Will Forte playing a nervous young spelling bee contestant. After some humorous back and forth mocking the predilection of bee contestants to ask for every bit of info they are allowed to ask for (origin, use in a sentence, definition, etc.), the Forte character attempts to spell the word given ("business"). Here's the transcript of that moment (taken from this indispensable-to-the-SNL-fan site):

" 'Business,' b-r-d-t-f-k-l-m-g-h-r-k-w-t-f-n-y-l-k-p-q-w-q-r-t-d-f-p-l-m-k-q-k-w-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-q-s-t-f-j-r-q-m-t-s-d-t-q-m-p-r-f-t-d-p-d-p-m-h-r-k-t-b-t-f, "business."

Not funny on paper, but in performance it killed. SNL rarely does this kind of absurdist sketch humor, but sometimes it hits perfectly. This was one of those times.

Until Whenever

2 comments:

Tom the Dog said...

I'm one of the people who missed the episode, and only saw the Narnia sketch on the net. And I'll tell you, that spelling bee sketch IS funny on paper. I was laughing so hard I think I hurt myself. Thanks for letting me know I REALLY need to catch that episode when they rerun it.

Roger Owen Green said...

I can't do SNL on a regular basis. Too much filler to fun ratio- but I'll make a point to catch this one. Thanks.