For years, I have wondered why some Saturday Night Live sketches (frequently after 12:30 AM in the last half hour of the show) die horrible unfunny deaths. Watching this old sketch from the 1989-1995 series, A Bit of Fry & Laurie (starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie), I realized the way good comedy writers turn a sketch around.
Too often the sketches run out of steam, or beat a dead horse. The great thing about this sketch-which for the most part has Laurie singing an absurd American jingoistic parody-was just as you thought it ran out of steam, Fry enters the sketch and punches Laurie in the throat.
Ending a sketch can be a challenge (as any writing, of course), but this struck me as a great lesson in Sketch Writing 101.
