What Explains the All-Out 'Beavis Sketch' Media Blitz?

How many articles do we need about a funny wig?

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For the last few years I haven’t watched SNL every week like I used to (not really a value judgement, just a fact), but the morning after the “Beavis” sketch with Ryan Gosling aired on April 13th, it seemed like it was everywhere. There were tweets, articles, recaps — one honest-to-God IRL friend even sent it to the group chat because he thought it was funny.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s… fine. Ryan Gosling wears a funny wig and a fake nose that makes him look like Beavis from Beavis and Butthead. Mikey Day shows up later looking like Butthead, in makeup that manages to perfectly utilize his usual off-putting qualities (that’s a “me” thing, and I’m okay with that).

And the sketch they built around this joke — Kenan Thompson playing a professor doing an interview about AI — is half-assed, hack, and irrelevant to the actual joke to the point that on some level, the transparent laziness of it makes it funnier (essentially the Austin Powers trying not to say “mole” bit, only the mole is a guy who looks like Beavis, who we also remember). Oh, and Heidi Gardner broke character during it (while playing the interviewer, who was sort of comically superfluous to the actual joke).

Again, fine. That an essentially lazy sketch has a joke in it that hits hard for the most basic of reasons (funny wig is funny!) is part of the magic of a live sketch show (such that it still exists; I think I’d like SNL better if they just did 30 minutes of pre-taped sketches but this is not the piece for that).

And yet, the amount of digital ink being devoted to discussing, remembering, praising, breaking down, going behind the scenes of, etc. on this sketch is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Soon after it aired, The Daily Beast declared  “‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ Is One of the Best ‘SNL’ Sketches…Ever” (I’m sorry, but are you insane?). “‘SNL’ Star Heidi Gardner Feels Terrible She Broke Character During ‘Beavis And Butt-Head’ Skit,” wrote Huffington Post. “‘SNL’ Star Heidi Gardner Says ‘Anxiety Set in’ After Breaking So Hard During ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ Sketch: ‘I’ll Never Be Able to Shake’ What I Saw,” added Variety.

Countless other outlets covered similar stories, from Today to Marie Claire to the New York rags both Post and Times (I guarantee NY Mag/Vulture did too and I’m not even going to look it up).

I gather that people were searching for the sketch, and so a lot of the early coverage can be easily explained by the usual low-energy SEO chasing that drives most ad-supported news these days. If you weren’t covering the incredible news that Baby Goose dressed like Beavis in an SNL sketch and another castmember laughed at it, you were basically leaving money on the table. Fine.

But it is now TWO MONTHS later and the news juggernaut that is “man wore funny wig” is still going strong. That ‘Beavis And Butt-Head’ Sketch On ‘SNL’ Was 6 Years In The Making, wrote the Huffington Post two days ago. This in what was mostly an explainer interview with the hairstylist and make-up artist who worked on the sketch (in fairness, the true stars of the sketch). It was originally supposed to have starred Jonah Hill and aired in 2018, the article reveals. What an incredible scoop!

Now, isn’t part of the magic of this sketch (of which I’m not entirely convinced there is any, but I’m being diplomatic here) that it was kind of half assed? And that something so plainly stupid made a professional comedy person laugh that hard? (Not a criticism, I’m a firm believer that comedy should be stupid). Doesn’t the idea that it took six years to make it to air kind of cut against that? Isn’t part of the draw of a “live” show that they can do timely jokes on a quick turnaround? Yes, I’m over analyzing this, but if I’d been sitting on an “actor wears funny wig” concept for six years, you couldn’t beat that information out of me with a wet bamboo cane.

In case that coverage wasn’t sufficient, Vanity Fair today (TODAY!) has a full oral history of the sketch. It quotes presumably lengthy interviews with just about everyone involved and goes on for upwards of 5,000 words. I am not kidding.

Now, I’m not one of those people who loudly proclaims “SNL sucks now.” For one thing, I haven’t watched enough lately to make that judgement. For another, SNL has always kind of “sucked,” depending on how you look at it. No matter what your favorite cast was (and mine is Farley/Sandler/MacDonald, because I’m part of Gen Y and those were my formative years), if you go back and watch any given one of those episodes, there were probably one or two incredible sketches that you might remember for your entire life, and eight or nine bad ones you forgot the second the credits rolled. That’s kind of the nature of sketch comedy, and especially of live sketch comedy. It’s mostly not great, which makes the moments when it actually is that much more sublime. Comedy is an ephemeral business. Serendipity is at a premium, and “you kind of had to be there” is the dominant emotion.

But if you were looking for ammunition to declare that SNL sucks now, you’d be hard pressed to find better evidence for this than that everyone involved is still dining out on “funny wig + remember funny show” two months later. For the love of God, let it go.

It’s gotten to the point that I’ve become an SNL Beavis Sketch conspiracy theorist. SEO and the crumbling of the media apparatus alone are not sufficient to explain the breathless, inexhaustible coverage of the funny wig sketch. It’s starting to feel like an organized PR push. An influence operation. An astroturfing campaign. A psy op!

But for what? It’s true, Beavis and Butthead was renewed for a third season just yesterday. (I loved the Beavis and Butthead movie from a few years ago, but even I had forgotten they were making new episodes of the show). But that show airs on Paramount+ and Comedy Central, which is owned by a completely different corporate entity (Viacom) than Comcast.

I feel like I’m losing my mind trying to understand who is paying for all this coverage, and to what end. (Just to promote SNL, a 50-year-old television show? Maybe). We have congress working overtime to protect our children from TikTok, as well as, hilariously, black mold from illegal marijuana operations. And yet no one is asking questions about the obvious influence campaign that’s happening right under our very noses? I don’t buy it! What has the CCP been up to? They seem a little too quiet about this, if you ask me.

It’s not going to end, either. There’s simply too much momentum now. If there isn’t a callback sketch starring actor-as-Biden-as-Beavis debating actor-as-Trump-as-Butthead during the buildup to the 2024 election I will eat my funny wig! I smell a rat. There are powerful forces behind this that we have not yet begun to comprehend. Please join my cult.