http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/stage/193…

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_thea…

Bob Odenkirk said on one of the “Mr. Show” DVDs that a reason sketches run long on “SNL,” which he wrote for in the late '80s and early '90s, is because the production team had already spent $20,000 on a set, so why not showcase it? Odenkirk's method for “Mr. Show” was: Who cares about the set? Make it as flimsy as it needs to be.

But the main reason seems to be filling up enough segments in a 90-minute show that can't be edited later. That's also why there's no room for improv on “SNL,” despite what most people think. Of course, there's room for 90 seconds of applause following some lame celebrity cameo …

Sketch-stretching is the main problem with SNL for me — it'll be a lame premise to begin with — maybe something that could get a couple laughs in 2 or 3 minutes, but at 10, it's just painful. I can see why — with a live show, it might not seem worth it to do short sketches (that aren't taped like the ad parodies), but still.

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/columni…

Those early-'80s episodes of “SNL” are interesting to see now mostly because of Eddie Murphy. He dominates every sketch he's in, even when he's not trying to. However, those early-'80s episodes featured some relatively short sketches compared to the last quarter-century or so, when even the thinnest premises are stretched out to five minutes or more. (NBC showed some of these episodes five years ago when they were airing old episodes at three in the morning on Saturdays. They eventually replaced those reruns with some poker show.)

The “Saturday Night” book says that the “blow hole” sketch did air, but without the disturbing prop.

I think _Mr. Mike_ referenced the 10 days In Fred Silverman's Bunker sketch, but otherwise, I don't know really anything about it…

The Blow Hole sketch doesn't even really ring a bell at all for me — did that one air? I'm thinking it did from your mention of the prop guys but, dang — I wanna see that. I tend to find comedy best when it's at least slightly disturbing. But what do I know — I love _The Dark Backward_.

While I was always more of an SCTV fan, I did like the early SNL — and I find it definitely pretty interesting, just because of the wealth of talent they had, particularly starting out.

Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad's book “Saturday Night” describes a sketch cowritten by O'Donoghue for the first show of “SNL's” 1981-'82 season called “The Last Ten Days of Silverman's Bunker,” in which recently fired NBC programming chief Fred Silverman was compared to Hitler and the network was renamed the Nazional Broadasting Compay. New programming chief Brandon Tartikoff liked it, but it never made it to air.

The book also says that the sketch you described was written for the Halloween '81 episode hosted by Donald Pleasence; he would've played the Nazi whispering the “good reason” to everyone.

Another sketch O'Donoghue cowrote about a family who lived too close to a nuclear power plant was to feature a prop that was meant to look like a “blow hole” — overexposure to radiation would cause every mutated human to have a new orifice in the future — ended up looking like “a cunt with ears, and it was deeply disturbing,” according to O'Donoghue. The authors wrote, “The props people took out some of the teeth and hair and muted its purple color down to lavender, but it still looked like a vagina.”