UPDATE: 8/28/24, 10:30PM PT: As quickly as it disappeared, Nate Bargatze’s SNL episode returned to Peacock Wednesday evening with no obvious edits.
It was among the most lauded episodes of the show’s 49th season, but Nate Bargatze’s Saturday Night Live debut is no longer available for streaming on Peacock.
Among the sketches included in Bargatze’s episode was “Washington’s Dream,” which was hailed as an instant classic (and even earned its own excellent mid-season oral history). Another viewer favorite was “Lake Beach,” which saw Bargatze joined by James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes and Dave Gohl in a musical homage to swampy southern partying.
The episode also featured the return of seven-time host Christopher Walken, who cameoed in the cold open and reprised his much-memed 2003 Foo Fighters introduction. It was Walken’s first appearance on a regular episode of the show since 2008.
Clips from the episode are still streaming on YouTube, with the exception of two musical performances from Foo Fighters. (This isn’t unusual. In recent years, performances from the show’s musical guests are uploaded to SNL‘s YouTube channel only for a short period after the show airs.)
Although the complication and expense of retroactively clearing music rights for pre-streaming era seasons of SNL has kept large chunks of many older episodes off Peacock, those rights have been secured since Season 40. All of which is to say that Foo Fighters aren’t likely to blame for the episode’s sudden disappearance from the NBC Universal streaming platform early this week
We can only assume the episode will return to Peacock, which has touted the availability of every episode of SNL in its marketing materials. Whether portions will be edited or excised in some way (it’s happened before) remains to be seen.
NBC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, but we’ll update this post when/if they do.
