Two 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' Writers Call Out 'SNL' For Ripping Off Their Sketch Idea

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | May 11, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | May 11, 2015 |

We mentioned yesterday the striking similarities between a between a sketch on Saturday Night Live over the weekend (the smartest sketch of the night, in fact) and one from the Canadian sketch-comedy show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Both sketches had the exact same premise (a contestant in a game show is asked to draw Mohammed in order to win $1 million) and both end with the same result (the contestant won by guessing Muhammed based on the fact that it was a clue that the other contestant didn’t feel comfortable drawing).

in the earlier post, I didn’t feel comfortable in outright suggesting that SNL plagiarized the sketch, and while it could be a case of parallel thinking, the similarities are hard to ignore. In fact, two writers from This Hour Has 22 Minutes thought enough to mention it on Twitter:

Really liked the @NBCSNL Muhammed sketch when @jwPencilAndPad wrote the exact same one for @22_Minutes. http://t.co/eoLILk2gIT

— Bobby Kerr (@MrBobKerr) May 10, 2015

This has happened a few times both ways but this is the closet I've ever seen http://t.co/x3MswM7OMQ

— Mark Critch (@markcritch) May 10, 2015

The link in both of those pieces goes to a post noting the similarities between the sketches. Someone also mentioned in another comment thread that this is not completely unheard of on SNL, and that Jay Mohr said that he once confessed that he lifted an idea from somewhere else out of desperation and that, when he was caught, Lorne Michaels chewed him out.

SNL was also accused of plagiarizing a sketch from The Groundlings just last year.