That Show Hasn't Been Funny In Years: an SNL podcast on Radio Misfits

Nick looks back at one of his favorite Saturday Night Live characters of all time, Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy. Created and performed by Vanessa Bayer, Jacob is an awkward 13-year-old Jewish kid and die-hard Yankees fan who delivers painfully corny, carefully rehearsed jokes from a binder on Weekend Update. Inspired by Bayer’s real-life brother Jonah, the character quickly became a fan favorite. Nic...

Saturday Night Live has a long history of great celebrity impressions, but some of the funniest moments happen when the real people being impersonated show up to confront their TV counterparts. In this first installment, Nick revisits some of the best examples, including Ego Nwodim’s Dionne Warwick standing face-to-face with the real Dionne, Hillary Clinton joining Amy Poehler during a Cold Open,...

Nick looks back at one of the funniest and strangest characters ever created by Will Forte during his time on Saturday Night Live: Senator Tim Calhoun. Soft-spoken, painfully awkward, intensely nervous, and completely unpredictable, Calhoun became a recurring favorite through a series of memorable appearances, most of them on Weekend Update. You’ll hear some of Tim Calhoun’s funniest segment...

Nick looks back at the rare occasions when professional wrestlers stepped into one of television’s toughest jobs: hosting Saturday Night Live. Only four wrestlers have ever hosted the show, beginning with Hulk Hogan and Mr. T, who took the stage on the eve of the very first WrestleMania in 1985. From there, Nick revisits the five appearances by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the only wrestler to host...

Nick looks back at one of his favorite recurring Saturday Night Live sketches, Morning Latte, featuring Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri as Tom Wilkins and Cass Van Rye, the clueless and endlessly upbeat hosts of a ridiculous morning talk show. The pair are hilariously scatterbrained, overly enthusiastic, and far too willing to share details from their personal lives with the audience. You’ll he...

Nick looks back at the one and only time comedian and actor Sinbad hosted Saturday Night Live. The 1992 show made great use of the cast, packed with memorable sketches that ranged from clever and absurd to a little risky and questionable by today’s standards. Highlights include the first gay platoon in the Civil War meeting the first African American platoon, Superman’s funeral, a hilarious Blacul...

Nick looks back at one of the funniest recurring commercial parody sketches from Saturday Night Live, the Kickspit Under Underground Rock Festival promos that aired between 2009 and 2012. Inspired by the real-life Gathering of the Juggalos festivals, the sketches feature Jason Sudeikis as DJ Supersoak and Nasim Pedrad as Lil’ Blaster, hyping up the most ridiculous music festival imaginable. You’ll...

Alec Baldwin has hosted Saturday Night Live more than anyone else and has also shown up over the years as a frequent guest and special cast addition. For more than 35 years, he’s been one of the show’s most reliable and funniest presences. Nick looks back at some of his best work, including standout sketches, recurring bits like his take on Donald Trump, and plenty more. You’ll hear behind-the-sce...

Nick looks back at the ten former Saturday Night Live cast members who have been nominated for Academy Awards, including one who actually took home an Oscar. Each story has its own twist, and not all of the nominations were for acting. Kristen Wiig earned a nod for Best Screenplay, Michael McKean was nominated for Best Original Song, and George Coe, whose background gets explained here, received a...

Nick looks back at one of Kenan Thompson’s funniest SNL characters, Willie. A regular Weekend Update correspondent and Michael Che’s neighbor, Willie is brought on to lift spirits whenever the news gets too heavy. He’s endlessly upbeat, even though his life is about as rough as it gets. Created by Che and Thompson, the character quickly became a fan favorite thanks to the way Willie cheerfully sha...

Nick welcomes Dr. Jason Barr, Associate Professor of Music at Glenville State University, to talk about the history of music on Saturday Night Live, with a focus on the legendary live band that has been part of the show since it debuted in 1975. They get into the origins of Studio 8H, including the technology and its early days as home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra, along with a look at both the o...

Nick pays tribute to one of the most underappreciated cast members in Saturday Night Live history, the late Danitra Vance. Raised on the south side of Chicago, Vance came up through improv, earned her Master’s degree, taught for a time, and eventually found her way to Second City before landing on SNL as the show’s first female African American cast member. Unfortunately, she arrived during the tr...

Nick takes a look back at one of Kate McKinnon’s funniest and most memorable Saturday Night Live characters, Olya Povlatsky. As the Russian correspondent on Weekend Update, Olya reports from a bleak, remote village where life is so miserable that everyone, including her, seems to be constantly hoping for the end. Her segments cover everything from the Russian economy and the war with Ukraine to th...

Nick takes a look back at the notorious Season 26 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by comedian and talk show host Tom Green. Riding high from his MTV success and his role in Charlie’s Angels, Green was invited by Lorne Michaels to host, and he brought his signature chaos with him. The show opens in fairly traditional fashion with a political Cold Open about the 2000 election recount, but thin...

Nick goes back to October 27, 1990 to revisit the only time Patrick Swayze hosted Saturday Night Live, and it turned out to be a great showcase for him. Fresh off the success of Ghost and in the middle of filming Point Break, Swayze came in ready to do a little bit of everything. He opens with a memorable monologue dancing with his wife, Lisa Niemi, then jumps into a wide range of sketches, poking...

Nick tackles another listener request and spends the show digging into what he calls “SNL adjacent” movies. These aren’t the obvious ones based on sketches like Wayne’s World or The Blues Brothers. Instead, they’re films connected to Saturday Night Live through the people involved, the history of the show, or the overall spirit of it. Among the movies discussed are Wired, the controversial film ab...

Nick heads back to January 10, 2009 to revisit the one and only time Neil Patrick Harris hosted Saturday Night Live. It turned out to be a terrific show, and Nick plays some of the funniest moments while sharing stories about how a few standout sketches from that season came together. He also talks about Harris’ career arc, from child star on Doogie Howser, M.D. to Emmy-winning actor, singer, and...

Nick revisits one of Kate McKinnon’s strangest and most lovable creations on Saturday Night Live, Barbara DeDrew from Whiskers R We. The fake cat adoption commercials became instant fan favorites between 2014 and 2023, built around Barbara’s oddball delivery, heartfelt devotion to her cats, and the unpredictable chaos of live kittens wandering around the set. Nick plays several of the sketches and...

A subscriber request! A loyal listener named Rachel left a voicemail with a simple request, so Nick delivers. This one is all about the classic Saturday Night Live recurring sketch, “The Barry Gibb Talk Show.” The bits feature Jimmy Fallon as Bee Gees frontman Barry Gibb and Justin Timberlake as Robin Gibb, hosting a political panel show that quickly spins out of control. Barry screams in falsetto...

Nick begins a series of shows devoted to Vanessa Bayer, one of the most consistently funny cast members Saturday Night Live ever had. He talks a bit about her real-life story, including surviving cancer as a kid, and how that strength and optimism seemed to carry into her work on the show. He spends this hour revisiting Laura Parsons, the relentlessly upbeat child performer who somehow finds pure...

Nick looks back at the two times Catherine O’Hara hosted Saturday Night Live, following her passing on January 30, 2026. It’s a chance to remember just how special she was, from her work in Beetlejuice and Home Alone to her unforgettable TV roles on Schitt’s Creek and the legendary SCTV. Even though she was once hired by SNL and famously walked away before ever appearing, she eventuall...

Nick revisits what may be the strangest and darkest Christmas episode Saturday Night Live ever put on the air, when Bill Murray returned to host on December 12, 1981. What should have been a holiday show quickly turned unsettling, starting with a deeply odd monologue featuring a silent Santa, followed by sketches that veered from uncomfortable to outright disturbing. There was a fake tampon commer...

Nick digs into a crowdsourced list that tried to crown the five most annoying characters in Saturday Night Live history, and as you might expect, he has some thoughts. The list came from an online survey, and while a few of the picks make sense, others spark some serious pushback, especially when genuinely funny characters get lumped in with the truly grating ones. He walks through each character,...

Nick takes a close look at one of the funniest recurring bits from Saturday Night Live in the 2000s, the “Scared Straight” sketches built around Kenan Thompson’s unforgettable convict, Lorenzo McIntosh. Loosely inspired by the 1978 TV documentary of the same name, the scenes usually drop a group of clueless teenage punks into a police station, where Officer Sikorsky, played perfectly by Jason Sude...

Nick revisits one of the most infamous nights in Saturday Night Live history, when actor Broderick Crawford hosted the show in March of 1977 and earned a reputation that has never really faded. Crawford was a legendary drinker, and while the broadcast somehow stayed on track, the real tension came from keeping tabs on a host who was drinking during the show and repeatedly trying to sneak off to a...