How SNL Subverted Its Own Format In This Ryan Gosling Sketch

I have been a Saturday Night Live viewer for a very long time. I think it started in college, when you'd be pregaming going out, and even before, I remember watching older episodes on TV in the afternoons. Now, I get the benefit of living in Los Angeles, where the show starts at 8:30 PM, which is easier in my old age.

Each week, you tune in to see these funny sketches where the point is that you crack up, and the people in the scene play it all off as real.

We've even logged what we think are the best SNL sketches of all time.

Now, I remember from the 50th-anniversary show, where they went behind the scenes, and from some interviews I saw, that breaking in scenes was sort of frowned upon for a long time. You're not supposed to break; you're supposed to deliver the funny.

That's a rule handed down by the great Lorne Michaels.

But this past weekend, with Ryan Gosling hosting, SNL broke that unspoken rule and formulated a sketch completely built around getting the host and the participants to break.

Let's dive in.

Ryan Gosling Passing Notes on Saturday Night Live

Okay, right up top, I want to talk about how funny this sketch is. It really got me, and the premise is so simple. But the actual hook of the comedy sketch comes as a surprise. Instead of being what they referenced, the notes in the scene are brand new and designed to get them to break while reading them.

Designing a sketch with a gimmick like this one, I haven't really seen on SNL. We've seen some Weekend Update gags done like this one, but in my fandom, I don't remember this happening.

Now, Gosling is a delightful and experienced host. Each time he makes an appearance on the show, he has trouble not breaking, which is part of his charm.

So in this episode, they used that against him, and for our enjoyment.

In the above sketch, Ashley Padilla played a high school faculty member intercepting notes passed among students. And Gosling plays the principal of the school.

As Padilla grabbed the first piece of paper, an on-screen chyron appeared with a startling admission: The contents of these notes have been changed since rehearsal.

We got a sense of excitement as the sabotage played out in the form of stories like the principal missing 133 layups in a row and Ms. Perry asking ChatGPT for makeover tips.

And, of course, we saw both Gosling and Padilla breaking. They tried to hold it in at first, but eventually they could not stop from letting it all out.

Meta Comedy At Its Finest

This was such an interesting beat for the show because it subverted everything they had done before. This was not John Mulaney swapping out cue cards to break Bill Hader’s Stefon on Weekend Update. It was explicitly telling the audience what was happening and involving us in the prank.

We were no longer watching a sketch about teachers; we were watching highly paid professionals try and fail to do their jobs.

And it really worked. It might have been the funniest sketch of the night, and it amplified why Gosling is so good at doing SNL; he's okay laughing at himself. He did an entire monologue about feeling lesser than Harry Styles, and he was okay being a buffoon in more than one sketch, hello Cyclops bit.

Now, look, you can't do a show about making someone break, and I still think SNL is in the right, trying to take these skits seriously. When every sketch devolves into the actors laughing, the underlying writing can suffer.

We lose what made those ideas funny in the first place.

But it was nice to see the show switch it up a bit and find a new way to get us involved in the laughter, too.

And doing this once in a while can be an interesting way to both capitalize on a host everyone knows will break, and to let them have a sketch without the pressure on them.

So, we'll have to see how they employ it in the future.

Summing It All Up

Saturday Night Live may not be able to rely on the "sabotage sketch" every week, nor should they. But as Gosling and the cast bowed at the end of the night, it was hard to argue with the results.

I was just happy to get something that felt like the show was willing to evolve and try something new.

Let me know what you think in the comments.