The 20 best cutfortime “SNL” sketches of all time Jesse HassengerThu, May 28, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC 0 'Gus Chiggins, Old Prospector'; 'Alan'; 'Cool'Credit: NBC(3) Saturday Night Live’s production strategy has changed little during the tenure of creator Lorne Michaels. During show weeks, writers and cast members pitch material to the host on Mondays, write on Tuesdays, have a table read on Wednesdays, refine material that makes the cut on Thursdays, and rehearse on Fridays and Saturdays. Tons of material gets cut between Tuesday and Saturday — right up until airtime.
The 20 best cut-for-time “SNL” sketches of all time
Jesse HassengerThu, May 28, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC
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'Gus Chiggins, Old Prospector'; 'Alan'; 'Cool'
Credit: NBC(3)
Saturday Night Live’s production strategy has changed little during the tenure of creator Lorne Michaels. During show weeks, writers and cast members pitch material to the host on Mondays, write on Tuesdays, have a table read on Wednesdays, refine material that makes the cut on Thursdays, and rehearse on Fridays and Saturdays. Tons of material gets cut between Tuesday and Saturday — right up until airtime. The dress rehearsal can run a full 30 minutes longer than the show’s 90 minutes, meaning every week some sketches are written, rewritten, blocked, rehearsed, and fully produced, only to be cut for time. All that work, never to be seen again! That is, until the advent of the internet.
Though SNL helped usher in YouTube’s widespread popularity with the success of its “Lazy Sunday” digital short in 2005, it only became common practice in the last decade or so to upload sketches cut after dress to the show’s YouTube channel. This means that any list of the best cut-for-time SNL sketches will always skew recent.
Only a few of our picks date back further than 2010, but there are a couple from the Will Ferrell years (and another from one of his hosting gigs). But since many episodes yield at least one cut-for-time piece deemed good enough to share later, there are a whole lot of them — and they’re often just as funny as the show itself. Sometimes the reason for cutting them will be obvious; other times, it will seem downright inexplicable.
Below, we share our picks for the best cut-for-time SNL sketches.
01 of 20
'Gus Chiggins, Old Prospector' (2001)
One of the earliest sketches on this list is also one of the best. It was actually first seen on the Best of Will Ferrell DVD compilation that was put out in 2003. Ferrell plays — you guessed it — Gus Chiggins, an elderly prospector like the kind you might see in a Western or a cartoon from the 1930s, who has joined up with a military unit about to go on a mission in Afghanistan.
It’s easy to see why it was cut back in 2001: The sketch assembles an entire barrack’s worth of cast members (including Tracy Morgan, Darrell Hammond, Chris Kattan, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers), and hardly any of them can keep it together at the sight or sound of a bearded, pot-rattling Ferrell exclaiming old-timey nonsense like “Aw, peaches!” But for those not tasked with maintaining a straight face, the sketch is another indelible one for Ferrell.
02 of 20
'The Last Fry' (2017)
During his nine seasons on SNL, Kyle Mooney became known among fans as the king of cut-for-time material, as he often spearheaded sketches that were too strange or off-putting — even for the last slot of the night.
Still, the music video for “Last Fry,” one of his many team-ups with Beck Bennett, truly deserved to make it to the big leagues. In an expert parody of early white-guy rap and kitschy appreciation of same, Mooney and Bennett play a couple of goofballs rap-narrating their trip to a burger place. Along the way, they lament that a pretty girl (host Gal Gadot) nabbed the last french fry — oblivious to the fact that the country around them is panicking over an imminent nuclear attack.
It’s a slow, dark build beneath the chipper inanity of the last-fry rap. Honestly, it might be the Mooney/Bennett masterpiece.
03 of 20
'My Little Step Children' (2018)
Writer, director, and performer Julio Torres is responsible for a number of SNL classics from his three years on the writing staff, but this companion to his “Wells for Boys” ad, often considered part of frequent host Emma Stone’s best-of reel, somehow didn’t accomplish the same for host Natalie Portman.
Torres continues to show great flair in writing for Oscar winners, though, with Portman playing a mother delighted by her daughter’s interest in a step-child doll to torment. Torres has an ongoing fascination with how toys, culture, and real-life quirks intersect; his wonderful feature film Problemista continues in this vein. This makes “My Little Step Children” an essential part of his SNL oeuvre.
04 of 20
'Sporting Goods Commercial' (2015)
Sometimes a cut-for-time sketch can make the difference between a recurring character and a bizarre one-off. Case in point: Janine (Aidy Bryant), the fame-thirsty pitchwoman who inserts herself into her husband’s waterbed warehouse ad.
In that first appearance, her husband was played by Martin Freeman. In a cut-for-time sequel that makes the first sketch even funnier in retrospect, she has apparently abandoned Freeman’s waterbed salesman in favor of a sporting goods seller played by Michael Keaton, who introduces her as his “wife of one month.”
The idea of Janine rapaciously climbing her way through various small business owners in the hopes of furthering her career as an operatic fixture of local advertising is irresistible to Bryant fans.
05 of 20
'Car Song' (2026)
Perhaps the most exciting pairing to emerge from SNL’s 51st season is the TikTok-trained duo of Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska, who recently served up a season highlight that was relegated to internet-only status.
Their song about cruising home after-hours in a cab has a clubby dreaminess that gives way to harder-edged frustration when it reveals its true subject: pointlessly complicated door handles on new cars. It’s a niche complaint, but an utterly relatable one for city dwellers, and their joint lyrical dexterity lets both performers’ seemingly disparate personalities shine through in unlikely harmony.
06 of 20
'Alan' (2015)
Vanessa Bayer and Taran Killam experience “the future of casual entertainment” when they’re unexpectedly gifted an Alan, a human-sized sorta-robotic entertainment unit played by Bill Hader in full silent-mugging mode.
All Alan seems to know how to do is a lil-stinker dance while making cheeky expressions, distilling the sketch comedian’s talents into an unnervingly tidy package. Hader’s physical performance obviously sells it, but don’t count out Bayer’s chipper acceptance of — and even delight at — Alan’s antics, which further elevates the sketch beyond its familiar “guy points out something weird” structure.
07 of 20
'Friendship Song' (2018)
Most of SNL’s music videos make it to air, if only because of the amount of craft and preparation that goes into them. But for whatever reason, this expert parody of the Grammy-nominated pop trio HAIM never made the final lineup despite featuring Tina Fey and Nicki Minaj.
With Fey, Aidy Bryant, and Kate McKinnon doing a pitch-perfect imitation of HAIM’s musical style — and a relatable comic hook about the willingness to hate whoever your friends hate for the sake of toxic supportiveness — it deserves a place among SNL’s best music videos.
08 of 20
'Amazing Anna' (2025)
A go-to sketch format in recent years of SNL features a weirdo making strange suggestions for consumer-facing Instagram captions or advertising campaigns. This form was mastered by writer Julio Torres, and while he didn’t actually write “Amazing Anna,” it feels like his work inspired this Walton Goggins showcase.
Goggins plays a man pitching phrases for a new talking doll, all of which revolve around dramatic excuses for not going places because either “I’m sick” or “my assistant died.” The gambit works: The other employees really are intrigued by the way Anna manages to make every situation about herself.
It’s a simple joke that doesn’t evolve much, but the conviction with which Goggins delivers “I’m sick!” and the sketch’s other would-be catchphrases really sells it.
09 of 20
'Dance of the Daisies' (2015)
Dwayne Johnson is a confident guy and has donned any number of ridiculous guises during his Saturday Night Live hosting gigs over the years. But while this sketch does feature him wearing a goofy tulip costume, it’s even more impressive for the way it weaves together the inner monologues of performers played by Johnson, Aidy Bryant, Vanessa Bayer, and Kenan Thompson as they quickly realize their local “pageant” might be far more embarrassing than their initial hubris allowed them to believe.
Not only do all four performers pull off some excellent silent acting alongside their piped-in narration, there’s also a fun meta-textual element at play: Surely other SNL cast members have had these exact same self-loathing thoughts run through their heads during shakier sketches. Ironically, this one gets a huge reaction from the dress rehearsal audience and seems to have been cut purely for logistical reasons.
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10 of 20
'Cast List' (2019)
Even after his time on the show came to an end, Will Ferrell continued to produce classic sketches, on and off the air. His performance as a manipulative drama teacher holding the precious cast list over his tortured students never actually made it to the broadcast, but it was apparently well-liked enough (with almost 10 million YouTube views!) to warrant a sequel that was produced for his most recent hosting gig.
This may be the first time a cut-for-time sketch inspired a follow-up that was on the main show, and it’s fitting that an all-timer like Ferrell would set that bizarre precedent. Even when he’s no longer on SNL, he feels like a part of the cast; good as he is here, part of the fun of the sketch is how much space he cedes to his younger costars.
11 of 20
'Children's Show' (2015)
Ex-stand-up comic Michael Keaton has an oddball energy that’s made him a particularly game SNL host, even though he’s taken his time accumulating episodes. His 2015 episode in the wake of his Birdman comeback might be his best, yielding two separate sketches on this list.
The earlier one is a showcase for Aidy Bryant, but Keaton takes center stage in this kid’s-show sendup, where it’s gradually revealed that the magical world the childlike host has created for himself has sinister undertones (as well as unpaid bills). Making fun of goofy children’s programming is a comedy go-to, so it’s impressive that this sketch finds a new way into that style of parody.
12 of 20
'Work Banter' (2016)
A new coworker awkwardly failing to use annoying slang — in a cut sketch, no less! — seems like prime Kyle Mooney territory. But no, Mooney’s contribution here is just as a background player.
Instead, the sketch pairs his usual scene partner Beck Bennett with Bobby Moynihan. This team-up is a refreshing combination, as their characters frustrate the newcomer played by Drake with their admonishments over his failure to fit in, even as they insist that they truly like and appreciate him despite having just met him minutes ago. It’s that last odd, endearing detail that keeps the sketch from feeling too mean-spirited or one-note.
13 of 20
'Cool' (2015)
Speaking of Bennett and Mooney: It wouldn’t be a cut-for-time compilation without one more contribution from the masters of the form. These boys love an era-accurate parody of junky ‘90s culture — see Mooney’s underappreciated Netflix series about Saturday morning cartoons for more of this — and would periodically turn in pre-taped pieces goofing on old sitcoms.
This one ropes Ryan Gosling into what feels like aliens attempting to recreate the hackiest Earth comedies ever seen, with mismatched lessons about coolness, fitting in, and drunk driving — complete with Urkel-inspired flights of fancy. It’s arguably more Adult Swim than SNL, so it was never a surprise to see these pieces relegated to YouTube.
14 of 20
'Casual Friday on the Death Star' (2001)
Another rare pull from the Will Ferrell years. It’s hard to imagine a similarly high-concept Star Wars-centric bit not making it to air nowadays, especially given how well later pretapes have done with concepts involving auditions, toy ads, and Undercover Boss parodies. This sketch about Casual Friday aboard the Death Star almost plays like a prequel to the latter classic, only with a much higher degree of difficulty. It’s a live segment rather than a pretape, featuring a whole control room’s worth of cast members and extras decked out in a hilarious mix of Star Wars iconography and office casual wear.
As a bonus, the sketch also features a walk-on from then-Weekend Update anchor Tina Fey — not yet known for appearing frequently in sketches at the time — in her beloved Princess Leia costume, which she would later reprise in multiple scenes of 30 Rock years later.
15 of 20
'Espresso Martini' (2025)
“Girlies everywhere are meeting up for dignified ladies’ nights, drinking espresso martinis, and transforming into BMDs.” We can let you work out what BMD might stand for, or you can heed the full warning of the spokeswoman played by Ariana Grande and learn more about this social crisis and how it can be avoided with an elaborate new safe-room product.
This silly and relatively quick bit, which relies on Grande’s straight-woman skills until the very end, seems like an unusual sketch to cut, but the episode it was cut from had a lot of business to attend to, including multiple holiday sketches, Grande’s triumphant return to the show, and Bowen Yang’s tearful farewell. Yang does turn up here briefly as an “understanding gay,” sequestered behind bulletproof glass — just in case.
16 of 20
'Renaldo and Alexi' (2012)
Given how often certain Christmas-themed sketches have been repeated on SNL holiday compilation specials over the years — and how many recurring characters Fred Armisen got going during his decade on the show — this one feels particularly refreshing for a two-for-one deal.
Armisen and Bill Hader play chatty and heavily accented doormen hell-bent on telling bizarre holiday stories to various tenants. Sure, Key & Peele did a similar routine better, but Hader and Armisen are always fun to watch, especially when Hader struggles to keep his composure opposite the ever-stoic Armisen.
17 of 20
'Oregon Trail' (2016)
Brie Larson got back in touch with her pop star roots for a sketch about a wife (Aidy Bryant) and daughter (Larson) mourning the death of their father on the Oregon trail. Naturally, they can only express themselves through anachronistic and inappropriately horny pop music — specifically, stuff that sounds like a pastiche of mid-period Britney Spears tunes.
Bryant and Larson both master the sexy-robot-baby intonation of a very particular strain of 2000s pop, making the displacement doubly funny.
18 of 20
'Coal Miners' (2014)
This sketch follows the absurdly presentational style of various “character” sketches from the Dana Carvey era (Massive Head-Wound Harry, Mr. Short Term Memory, Pat, etc.) in presenting Hader as a coal miner who turns conversation between hardworking coal miners into something cattier and more pointed.
The concept of juxtaposing this style with stereotypically macho coal miners was revisited when RuPaul hosted the show in 2020 – resulting in a second coal-miner sketch that wound up cut for time. The RuPaul version is a little clunkier — it’s hard to compete with Hader’s vocal mastery — but the existence of both enhances each of them as a weird bit of SNL lore.
19 of 20
'Horny Little Dork' (2024)
Horror movie trailers for everyday phenomena are common on SNL, and “Horny Little Dork” zeroes into a highly specialized area for its tale of terror: well-established relationships where the guy suddenly feels comfortable enough to express his sexual desires through nauseatingly cutesy voices and pleas.
This simple setup makes particularly smart use of host Dakota Johnson, whose relatively flat affect isn’t a natural fit for live network sketch comedy but works perfectly for the seriousness of the fake horror heroine.
20 of 20
'Hormuz Jeff' (2026)
One more Will Ferrell sketch for the road.
Three sketches were cut from the season 51 finale. The best of them features Ferrell as the owner and operator of the only boat able to ship stuff through the embattled Strait of Hormuz. It’s delightful to watch Ferrell in full dirtbag mode, and the sketch includes a great sidebar featuring painstaking instructions on how to properly contact Hormuz Jeff through a series of software installations designed to appropriately anonymize the encounter.
on Entertainment Weekly
Original Article on Source
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Source: Entertainment
Published: May 29, 2026 at 01:09AM on Source: MORNING MAG
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The 20 best cutfortime “SNL” sketches of all time Jesse HassengerThu, May 28, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC 0 'Gus Chiggins, Old Prospecto...
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