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We’re not going to offer any kind of defense of Jonah Hill, who, judging from events that played out on social media last year, may be closer to his This Is the End character than any of us thought. But it turns out that we do have to thank the Superbad star for one thing: He saved one of SNL’s most wonderfully bizarre recurring sketches from the editorial wrath of Lorne Michaels.
This week’s episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast concerned the Digital Short “Andy’s Dad,” in which Hill reveals that he’s been secretly dating Andy Samberg’s father (played by SNL head writer Jim Downey).
The podcast also featured a prolonged voicemail from Hill himself, who discussed not only “Andy’s Dad,” but also “Clancy and Jackie” from the same 2008 episode. That sketch found Will Forte and Kristen Wiig playing country singers Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Snad. The joke is that every single one of their songs works in a reference to four oddly specific things: Model T cars, jars of beer, spaceships and toddlers.
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Why? Because “they love America,” at least according to “legendary music producer Tim Jackalpappy,” played by Hill. And now those two singers who, for some reason, share highly particular lyrical sensibilities, have finally joined forces.
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Meyers called it “one of my favorite sketches ever” and “one of the most uniquely Wiig and Forte sketches of all time.” But, according to Hill, he had to literally beg Michaels to get it on the air. “I am proud to say every time I’ve hosted, all five times, I can sniff out the weirdo shit that the writers love that they can never get on,” Hill claimed. “This was one of them, where Lorne did not want it on the show, and I was like, ‘Please, please, please. I know I’m just, like, a kid and I am hosting, but this is so awesome. I’m begging you can we put this on?’”
Michaels eventually relented because he “kind of knew it was funny.” Unfortunately, Hill found the sketch (written by Forte and John Solomon) so funny that he couldn’t maintain a straight face during the performance. “I couldn’t keep it together,” he admitted. “God damn Will Forte is so funny.”
Considering that rejected SNL sketches often just disappear forever, it’s very possible that Clancy and Jackie would never have seen the light of day if not for the star of The Sitter. In a Reddit AMA, Forte seemed to back up this story, noting that “Jonah Hill was really good about championing the sketch after the table read.” He also revealed that the original concept was to work references to Model T cars, spaceships, jars of beer and toddlers into “existing songs like Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone.’” But that proved to be “too expensive.”
Amazingly, Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Snad went on to appear on the show two more times. In 2009, when Hill’s frequent co-star Seth Rogen hosted, Clancy and Jackie returned to promote their album Clancy T. Bachleratt and Jackie Snad Sing Easter Songs About Spaceships, Toddlers, Model T Cars & Jars of Beer.
And while it may have seemed as though the sketch was done for good, when Forte returned to host SNL in 2022, he and Wiig literally made headlines for reviving the characters over a decade later.
Of course, this story is perhaps less of a testament to the comedic tastes of Jonah Hill than it is a searing indictment of the comedic instincts of Lorne Michaels.