TVSquad

The Saturday Night Live digital shorts created by the Lonely Island fellas have helped draw some new attention to the series, but they're certainly not the first previously-filmed inserts to be included on the late night comedy show. In fact, the commercial parodies that have been a part of the show since the beginning have almost always been pre-taped.

Below, I've placed two videos from Saturday Night Live in the '70s. The first is a classic "Mr. Bill" episode, and the second is a video for the Barnes and Barnes novelty song "Fish Heads" ("eat them up, yum"). The "Fish Heads" video, according to Popwatch, was directed by Bill Paxton. Why Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video is always considered one of the best music videos of all time and "Fish Heads" never even gets recognition is beyond me. I find it quite charming and provocative, actually. Plus, no one can argue that fish heads "are never seen drinking Cappacino in Italian restaurants With Oriental women."

No, it's not the start of a dumb joke. I'm sincerely asking you good folks at TVS the question, because it seems like the answer would be the same since Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb: about half a second.

Somehow, NBC executives think it takes a lot longer than that: an hour, to be exact. That's how long tonight's special, Christmas in Rockefeller Center, will last. The 74th Rock Center tree-lighting ceremony, hosted by Ann Curry and Al Roker, will be padded with performances Christina Aguilera, Taylor Hicks, Enya, John Legend, Sarah McLachlan, and others. If you live in the New York area, you'll actually get two hours to bask in the tree's darkness; WNBC will begin airing their special at 7, and the rest of the country will join them at 8. And you thought New Yorkers moved faster than the rest of the country.

Anyway, all the performances lead up to the climactic last thirty seconds of the show, when [SPOILER ALERT!] the tree will be lit. Not sure what they're going to do with the last twenty-nine-and-a-half seconds, but I'm sure they'll think of something.

You know how The Brady Bunch was a decent enough show, but then they pushed their luck a little too far with that Brady Bunch Variety Hour nonsense? Even diehard fans had to say, "Okay, seriously people, that's enough." Well, that was sorta my response to Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, which aired as part of the Adult Swim block and lasted for only two episodes in 2000, placing it chronologically between two much better series featuring Brak: Cartoon Planet and The Brak Show (not to be confused with Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak). The show utilized Brak's singing "talent" quite a bit, just as Cartoon Planet had, but it essentially felt like a gussied up version of Cartoon Planet (although we did get to finally see the lower half of his body, which was always obscured on Cartoon Planet). Of course, I say this as a huge fan of the nonsensical, stream-of-consciousness ramblings that Brak so gleefully delved into, but Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, much like its title, seemed to cross the line from goofy to just superfluous.