Was This Actually The Worst Saturday Night Live Sketch of All Time?
Chris Rock's SNL hosting debut got a lot of attention for Rock's opening monologue about terrorism and the new Freedom Tower, but it also contained what some are calling the worst SNL sketch of all time: "The Couple."
The three-minute bomb is notable for Leslie Jones' painful 10-second pause, followed by a botched line, that snuffed out what little momentum Jones and Rock had to work with. A.V. Club's Dennis Perkins called it "the most painful episode of stage fright I've seen in a decade." The mortifying pause was cut from the Hulu rebroadcast, but you can see it in the live version above.
Splitsider speculated in their episode review that there was "a painful cue-card mixup," and revealed in an update that the sketch may have beens scripted by Rock's writing team, a rare instance of a host invading the SNL writers' room.
(Almost) everyone seems to agree that Jones, a member of the SNL writing staff who was promoted to featured player just a couple of weeks ago, will bounce back from this episode, especially if she didn't write the sketch. But will it still go down in history as The Worst Ever?
Before you answer, consider that Ching Chang existed ("Chicken make lousy housepet!") and that we're only 3 years out from the time SNL did one long joke about Grace Kelly farting.