‘SNL’ Removed Their Offensive Safelite Sketch From The Internet And From Repeats

This weekend’s repeat of the October 7 episode of SNL, hosted by Gal Gadot, was missing a sketch from its original airing. A parody of a commercial by Safelite AutoGlass which earned complaints from the company was replaced by a rap parody that had been cut from the original episode.

Safelite, a company that replaces broken windshields on the spot, features real technicians in its ads. The parody starred Beck Bennett as a Safelite technician who, after establishing trust and spouting the company’s bona fides, intentionally breaks a customer’s windshield so he can get close to her teenaged daughter, played by Melissa Villasenor.

Here’s what I wrote about the sketch in my episode recap:

This is followed by a commercial parody where Bennett plays the head of a windshield repair service who, it turns out, is a creep who repeatedly breaks a woman’s windshield so he can hit on her teenaged daughter. That’s the entire joke. The less said about this, the better. I can’t imagine what the hell they were thinking here.

As it happens, neither could the people at Safelite, who objected on Twitter to the all-too-realistic portrayal of one of their technicians – Bennett was made to resemble one of the company’s actual technicians from their ads – in a decidedly un-family-friendly manner.

The sketch is no longer available on SNL’s official YouTube or Hulu pages, and NBC seems to be moving aggressively to keep the unauthorized copies of the sketch offline. The Safelite parody was replaced in Saturday’s airing by a Bennett/Kyle Mooney video parody which was cut from the same episode, where the pair rap about Gadot taking their last french fry while oblivious to an ensuing apocalypse swirling around them.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Safelite told Decider:

“When the SNL sketch featuring Safelite first aired, we expressed our disappointment with how it negatively portrayed our people. It was SNL’s decision to remove the content, and they have not shared their reasons behind that decision.”

Decider has reached out to NBC for comment.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. His greatest wish is to see Stefon enjoy a cheeseburger at John Belushi’s diner. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.