SNL Flubs: Michael Keaton / Billie Eilish (S50 E4)

(UPDATED TO ADD NEW FLUB 10/26/24) After last week’s show-stopping once-in-half-century technical failure, it was a relatively quiet night for LateNighter’s Saturday Night Live Flubs Desk, with just two real flubs to report from this week’s Michael Keaton-hosted SNL.

Who Yelled “Dismukes”?

Aside from the cold open, the one sketch that’s probably received the most attention since the show aired is “Forbidden Romance,” which imagined an interracial couple in 1955 professing their love to their two respective families, and receiving two very different responses. 

While Ego Nwodim’s father and brother are accepting of the romance, Andrew Dismukes’ mother and father are not, leading him to make his case with a historically incongruous rendition of the song, “Hey, Soul Sister.”

The sketch itself a was showcase for the unique talents of Dismukes, so much so that after it ended (and the show threw to its “TikTok” pre-tape), someone—possibly Kenan Thompson?—can be heard yelling “Dismukes!” with members of the studio audience clapping in recognition. 

Although we’re with them in expressing our appreciation for the often unsung Dismukes, it was enough of a distraction from the top of the TikTok piece for the show to remove that audio from the archived versions of the sketch. You can compare and contrast below:

Curiously, another edit was also made for the online version of the TikTok pre-tape, replacing the sketch’s capper image of a newborn baby with one showing the newborn baby with her mom (played by Heidi Gardner):

Odell Drops the Ball (Or Did They?)

Sometimes you don’t realize you’re seeing a flub until the show fixes it in post. That was the case during this weekend’s “Shop TV: Halloween Cookies” sketch when a “ghost moaning” sound effect apparently couldn’t be heard in the studio, leading Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner to improvise over what they thought was a missed sound cue.

To fix the error for online versions of the sketch, the show snipped a quick segment from dress rehearsal, where Day and Gardner could hear the sound effect, enabling them deliver the intended line about it being “icky.” Because the sketch proceeded in a single shot, the show’s editors then cut to a full screen “spooktacular savings” graphic in order to semi-seamlessly return to the “live” version of the sketch:

Ego Breaks

We’re not counting this one as an official flub, only because she largely kept it together, but apparently Kenan Thompson’s delivery of a line encouraging Andrew Dismukes’ “Forbidden Love” character to “Play your song, young man. Play your song” was a bridge too far for Ego Nwodim, who let out an appreciative snort to the audience’s delight. The snort remains in the online version of the sketch (as it should): 

I before O Except in Detroit

An eagle-eyed redditor caught this one a week after the fact, but a flub is a flub. Also in “Forbidden Romance,” the chyron reading “Detroit, Michigan 1955” at the top of the sketch was initially misspelled in the live version of the sketch before it was corrected in real-time. The momentary glitch was corrected for the online versions of the sketch:

What did we miss? If you happened to catch any live flubs that were later fixed (or not), drop us a line and we’ll add them to this list.

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