Fight!!
- Madeleine Mendell
- May 7, 2015
- 3 min read
This sketch is available to watch here! Please do that!
Saturday Night Live - Feat. Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, and Dane Cook - 2009
In this SNL Digital Short, cast member Jason Sudeikis shows a new office worker, Bill Hader, to his cubicle and introduces him to his cubicle mate, played by Dane Cook. As the two square off in the small space, the words “Cubicle Fight” flash across the screen in a bright yellow reminiscent of a late ‘80s advertisement. After the characters espouse the over-used clichéd phrase, “two men enter, one man leaves,” they break into a fight. This is where the violence and, with it, the comedy begin.
Before I get into any analysis part of this post, I just want to say that what I love about this sketch is that, the first time I watched it, it defied all of my expectations of what current SNL (90s-now) does by first reinforcing them and then breaking them. I’m a huge fan of the earlier SNL cast as I grew up on sketches like Bee Hospital, Bass-O-Matic, Land Shark, and Roseanne Roseannadanna, and it takes a lot for me to find the current SNL lineup inventive and funny. This sketch was a really great surprise because it crushed my pretentions about the level of quality of current SNL.
The sketch starts out with only one level of subversion that is very predictable and very boring: the two characters fight using ridiculous office objects mimicking a UWF match with various office mates jeering on the sidelines, giving the fighters tools like a coffee mug filled with hot coffee that is accidentally thrown into Fred Armisen’s face. This concept is a very typical one in that all of the humor comes from the reduction of violence. The behavior of the characters is completely different from, say, Hulk Hogan’s in a wrestling match or even Andy Kaufman’s for that matter, but the tenor of the event remains the same. This classic juxtaposition is very basic in that it requires only one change – wrestling, but in an office!
Sudeikis’ character returns, interrupting the fight, which at that point is very obvious, what with the spilt coffee and panting Dane Cook in the corner, and leaves. Immediately the characters return to Cubicle Fight as the music surges again, and in the last fifteen seconds of the sketch, just after Andy Samberg hands Cook his magic 8 ball, just as he smashes the ball on Hader’s skull, the music cuts. As in Inside No 9, the difference in realistic sound and slapstick sound is what draws the audience to the humor. The audience surrounding the cubicle changes their faces into a perplexed confusion, and though the music is removed and the audience is removed from the frothiness and epicness of the fight, Cook’s character is not. He finds a letter opener, tears off the cap with his teeth, stabs, and blood spurts everywhere. Cut to black, with title in same yellow font.
What is being laughed at is not only the abrupt change in tone but also the juxtaposition now between the very realistic, even hyper-gory, violence and the ridiculous violence of blowing the cut out holes from a hole-puncher in someone’s face like they are bits of sand. The comedy also stems from the alienation of Cook’s character. For everyone else, he has gone too far. The audience enjoys the slapstick joke of the Cubicle Fight because it’s cute, funny, relevant to white collar workers, and suburban middle class, but Cook’s extreme violence at the end is completely distancing. We are not on his side anymore. It is in that moment of snapping out of it that the comedy flourishes!
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