The Beach Sketch
The Oct. 15, 1988 episode, hosted by Matthew Broderick (above), featured a sketch in which men at a sans-clothes beach spend several minutes commenting on one another’s organs.
Conan O’Brien later revealed that Robert Smigel was the lead writer on the sketch, which seized on recently softened broadcast standards that allowed SNL to say “penis.”
The NBC switchboards lit up. Weeks later, family-friendly host Mary Tyler Moore jokingly squirmed through a monologue in which she explained that a family group had urged a boycott of the show because the show “used a bad word 28 times.”
She ended the monologue by announcing the musical guest: “Elvis Costello’s penis is here tonight!”
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