Let’s be honest about last weekend’s “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch on SNL: On paper, it’s not that funny. In fact, had everything gone right during that sketch — a white whale five years in the making from Mikey Day and writer Streeter Seidell — no one would have been talking about it on Sunday morning. The success of that sketch was almost entirely because Heidi Gardner could not keep her composure and broke into uncontrollable laughter when she turned around and looked first at Ryan Gosling’s Beavis and second at Mikey Day’s Butt-Head.
Breaking during a sketch has the potential to elevate it, but only if it’s not a regular occurrence. Lorne Michaels famously would prefer if cast members not break — in 2011, he conceded that Jimmy Fallon broke too much, and also told Tom Shales in his book Live from New York that cast members “can’t break up just because [they’re] having a better time than the audience is.”
Again, however, that’s why it can often add so much to a skit: Because it’s rare (except when Jimmy Fallon did it during his years). But there are a number of sketches, in addition to the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch, that are memorable mostly because the cast members broke: Bill Hader’s inability to keep his composure during his Stefon sketches attributed to at least half of their success. Likewise, Bill Hader’s inability to keep it together during “The Californians” sketches was responsible for 90 percent of their success (those sketches were otherwise terrible). Another of the most memorable was the rest of the band cracking up during the “More Cowbell” sketch, which was mostly funny because Will Ferrell didn’t break.
There are also times when cast members laughing are the only things going for a sketch, which is almost the case for the alien abduction sketches featuring Kate McKinnon’s Colleen. The first one worked as well as it did because Ryan Gosling couldn’t keep it together. It unfortunately creates an expectation, then, for additional character breaks when it returned as a recurring sketch, but when those laughs don’t feel earned, it’s off-putting.
Still, the all-time greatest character-breaking sketch was “Debbie Downer Goes to Disney,” the first appearance of Rachel Dratch’s character way back in 2004 (hilariously, Kenan Thompson appears in the sketch during the first of his 21 seasons and counting and looks almost the same as he does today). Debbie Downer was always a great sketch, but nothing beats the first time because the rest of the cast hasn’t yet figured out how to engage with her constant negativity.
The sketch does include two of the all-time most obnoxious character-breakers, Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz (who couldn’t appear in a sketch together without laughing), but what really elevates it is Dratch’s inability to keep it together. Also, when Sanz—who is trying so hard not to laugh that he’s crying—wipes away tears with his Mickey Mouse waffles. I’ve watched this sketch four or five times today. It never gets old.