By Jared Harris October 1, 2024 at 11:51am
“Saturday Night Live” played with forces outside of its control during the premiere of the show’s 50th season, summoning a Halloween superstore to disastrous effect.
The comedy show poked fun at Spirit Halloween on Saturday, mocking the store’s ephemeral existence and typical business practices.
As pointed out by the “SNL” skit, the Halloween superstores typically pop up before the spooky holiday in abandoned buildings and seemingly vanish into thin air once all the trick-or-treating is done.
“We don’t see a dead-end town,” an actor says in the skit. “We don’t see an abandoned Kmart. We see a spirit. A Spirit Halloween.
“Since 1983, Spirit Halloween has been helping our struggling communities by setting up shop in every vacant building in the country for six weeks and then bouncing. And thanks to us, what used to be a condemned AutoZone where a murder happened is once again a thriving business … where a murder happened.”
Do you dress up for Halloween?
“SNL” writers didn’t stop at the store’s seasonal nature, but mocked Spirit Halloween’s business practices, including adjustments to famous characters to make costumes that don’t infringe on copyright.
A Willy Wonka Oompa-Loompa outfit is renamed “Candy Slave” in the skit, while a yellow Minions-style outfit is styled as a “Fat Yellow Worker.”
As the comedy sketch continued, a little girl asking for a Taylor Swift costume instead found a “Blonde Singing Woman” outfit.
Writers also mocked store workers, hinting many are registered sex offenders and thus unable to transact with customers under 18.
The comedy show’s skit can be seen in its entirety below.
“Saturday Night Live” soon found out Spirit Halloween wasn’t about to let the show have all the jokes.
On Monday, the Halloween shop responded in devastating fashion.
“We are great at raising things back from the dead,” a message posted to the store’s account on the social media platform X read.
Directed right at “SNL,” Spirit Halloween posted an edited image of one of its costume bags for an “Irrelevant 50-year-old TV show.” The fake costume’s packaging shows it contains “dated references, unknown cast members [and] shrinking ratings.”
We are great at raising things back from the dead @nbcsnl https://t.co/TSlPALgKJ0 pic.twitter.com/EjrYa86Erz
— Spirit Halloween (@SpiritHalloween) September 30, 2024
Users were quick to respond positively to the post.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Not gonna lie: this was funnier than many of the skits I have recently watched on SNL. And I say this as a long-time fan of the show who still enjoys it for the most part.
— Diana’s sibling (@tedccomicsfan) October 1, 2024
this is way funnier than their video
— Vegi (@VegiVoorhees) September 30, 2024
I love Spirit Halloween. The SNL video started funny but went really unnecessarily harsh. Been to Spirit Halloween 4 times already and had nothing but nice employees there and cool stuff there.
— CriticCat (@criticcatdotcom) October 1, 2024
For “Saturday Night Live” writers, the gauntlet has been thrown down.
Will these comedians come back with something funnier to say about Spirit Halloween, or should the show just give up the ghost?
Jared has written more than 200 articles and assigned hundreds more since he joined The Western Journal in February 2017. He was an infantryman in the Arkansas and Georgia National Guard and is a husband, dad and aspiring farmer.
Jared has written more than 200 articles and assigned hundreds more since he joined The Western Journal in February 2017. He is a husband, dad, and aspiring farmer. He was an infantryman in the Arkansas and Georgia National Guard. If he’s not with his wife and son, then he’s either shooting guns or working on his motorcycle.
Location
Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Military, firearms, history
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