Okay, this is a weird thing to write about but someone did an epic thread about it on Twitter and, well, I’ve always loved this skit so we’re going to talk about it. This all started with a writer named Noah Smith who writes opinion pieces for Bloomberg. Smith argued that the famous “More Cowbell” skit from Saturday Night Live (in 2000) wasn’t funny at all and was actually proof that “gaslighting has benign uses”:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1121480716372496384

That was news to a lot of people who’ve seen the skit and thought it was funny. One of those was film critic William Bibbiani who went on a long rant attempting to explain why:

I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would have to explain the @nbcsnl "Cowbell" sketch to another human being, but okay, here we go….

First: Yes, there's a joke, and no, it's not watching other people pretend they get it. They actually get it. You're the one who's lost. pic.twitter.com/uwssSw6NqX

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The first layer of the gag in the "Cowbell" sketch is: there's a massively popular, iconic song that's considered totally dark and meaningful, but one of the instruments Blue Öyster Cult used to make it was a cowbell. An inherently silly instrument. Nobody looks cool playing it.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The next layer of the gag is that the cowbell wasn't the band's idea. It was a studio note from a producer who's ultra successful but doesn't seem to understand music. The well-intentioned band, which just wants to produce a good song, tries to say no but they can't argue.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The band knows that the cowbell is really loud and distracting, so they try to subtly hint that something is awry, but the producer is on a totally different wavelength. That conflict, where an unstoppable force (logic) meets an immovable object (absurdity) generates humor.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

Will Ferrell, the cowbell player, earns the freedom to take over the stage and become totally obnoxious, embarrassing and annoying the band. The creation of a legendary song now looks like nonsense. The irony is undeniably amusing.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The comic tension finally breaks when the cowbell player, feeling unappreciated, defiantly starts playing out of synch with the band. He's the bane of their existence and they can do nothing about it. Fate, it seems, is testing Blue Öyster Cult.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The perspective shifts from total sympathy with the band in an annoying situation to genuine sympathy for their seeming oppressor, whose life is another kind of cosmic joke. He's a cowbell expert in a world where cowbells are considered "inherently silly." That's tragic comedy.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

The real joke here is that humor warrants sophisticated analysis and yet many people are eager to write it off as ineffable nonsense. Or worse, as "gaslighting," which makes no sense in this context. You're not making the audience doubt their sanity. You're making them laugh.

— William Bibbiani (@WilliamBibbiani) April 26, 2019

There’s more but you get the gist. There’s a lot going on under the hood of this seemingly simple skit. According to Wikipedia, it was written by Will Ferrell and submitted to SNL for production 7 times before they actually used it. He rewrote it the final time for Christopher Walken and they placed it near the end of the show. So maybe you could say the producers didn’t fully get it at first.

But the skit definitely had a huge impact. It instantly became one of the most memorable skits of the season and people were quoting the lines everywhere after it aired. I’m actually a fan of the band and the song and I remember thinking it was hilarious immediately. No one had to gaslight me. I got the joke. Allahpundit still turns lines from this skit into headlines decades later so I guess he thought it was funny too. More to the point, everyone gets the reference. It’s part of our culture because it was so funny.

The skit itself is a takeoff on a style of cable TV show that was popular in the 90s, i.e. VH1’s Classic Albums. It’s presented as a chance for fans to learn more about the production of records they love. That’s mixed with an observation about cowbell in a classic BOC song and an absurdist story about a fictional producer who just needed “more cowbell.” That’s the structure.

The humor comes from the reversal in the skit where it’s clear the cowbell is odd and a bit annoying and yet when the top producer is called in for his opinion, it turns out to be his favorite thing about the song. If you actually watch the skit, that’s where the big laughs start and they continue every time he doubles-down and demands more cowbell. It’s just absurd. And the straighter Walken plays it the funnier it gets.

In fact, one of the things that’s great about the skit is that both Walken and Ferrell are so funny that Chris Kattan and Jimmy Fallon are struggling to stay in character. Watching them try not to break-up as Ferrell dances and Walken delivers his lines is hilarious by itself.

Is there a big point to all of this? Yes. People need to lighten up a little. Dear god, does everything need to become a political fable for the Trump era? Can’t we just have some areas of life where we can laugh without having to explain why? To be fair, I don’t know if that was Noah Smith’s point but it’s hard to talk about “gaslighting” these days without the political reverberations surrounding the word. It’s bad enough that we are spoiling comedy in the present, let’s not reach back nearly 20 years and try to spoil it in the past as well.