‘SNL’ Is Fixing Live Screw-Ups in Their Online Videos Now

Part of the fun of watching Saturday Night Live is knowing that things might not go exactly as planned. Cast members may inadvertently drop F-bombs, certain musical guests could be caught lip-syncing and you just never know when a host is going to get slashed in the head with a Samurai sword.

The “L” part of SNL was very apparent in this past weekend’s Nikki Glaser-hosted episode, thanks to a technical hiccup involving a vape pen. In a sketch about a White Chicks-esque imposter crashing a sorority meeting wearing a “hyperrealistic mask,” Mikey Day’s frat guy character’s conspicuously terrible costume fools all but one member.

But when it came time for Day to vape beneath the mask, teeing up a gag in which vapor seeps through his eyeholes, nothing happened. But when the sketch that was later posted online, the vape bit goes off without a hitch. 

While this may have created a new Mandela Effect parallel universe for some confused viewers, others suggested that footage of the dress rehearsal had likely been uploaded in place of the performance that aired. 

This isn’t a wholly new strategy for SNL. The show famously films every single dress rehearsal – which is how we have video evidence of the godawful sci-fi parody set on top of Donald Trump’s head – and sometimes the producers opt to substitute the live footage with the dress rehearsal material when the show is later rebroadcast.

As Vulture pointed out, one of the earliest examples of this practice was when the show changed up which take of Sam Kinison’s 1985 stand-up routine for reruns, simply because it went better at dress. Even the famously controversial “Chippendales Audition” sketch, starring Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze, was “a mixture of dress rehearsal and the air show.”

And a rerun of a 2004 Debbie Downer sketch even came with a disclaimer informing audiences that “The following is from Dress Rehearsal, simply because it worked better.”

Of course, not every mistake later gets George Lucas-ed out of the official SNL record. Some unscripted moments end up becoming the most memorable parts of the show, such as when a canine performer chowed down on Dana Carvey’s “Massive Head Wound Harry” prosthetic.

Or when Candice Bergen referred to Gilda Radner by her character’s name back in 1976’s “Extremely Stupid,” only to be called “brainy” in the script moments later, prompting a huge bout of laughter from the audience, not to mention Bergen. 

In retrospect, it’s kind of surprising that Lorne Michaels hasn’t used computer technology to de-giggle every past Jimmy Fallon performance.