Lazy Sunday

In 2005, Josh Levin of Slate wrote that “If you haven’t seen Lazy Sunday, then you don’t have any friends.” Today, if you still haven’t seen the SNL digital short starring Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell, you might just be Amish.

Introducing catchphrases “true dat, double-true” and “like McAdams loves Gosling” to an unsuspecting America, this hilarious parody of gangsta rap ended up pushing Saturday Night Live and its audience into the previously foreign territory of online video — due entirely to new cast member Andy Samberg and his collaborators, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.

The comedy team known as The Lonely Island were Internet-famous as the creators of the Channel 101 series The ‘Bu, and as writers for SNL were able to bring, according to Parnell, “a breath of fresh air to the show.” But although Lazy Sunday was billed as “an SNL digital short,” somehow the connection between shooting something digitally and putting it online never came together for the NBC team, who at that point had minimal presence in the world of online video.

However, several intrepid users took the initiative of uploading it to YouTube, and within days it spread like crazy, reaching millions of views over many different copies. While NBC quickly became wise to what they had, and made Lazy Sunday available as a free download on iTunes in late December 2005, Lazy Sunday was pulled on and off YouTube until the fall of 2007, when the network decided to focus its online attentions on Hulu — now the only place online where you can legally watch Samberg and Parnell be transported to “a dreamworld of magic.”

Still available on YouTube, though, are the many homages, responses, mashups and parodies that sprang up, including Lazy Monday, a “West Coast response” from actors Mark Feuerstein, Sam Friedlander and Adam Stein:

And the British reaction, We Drink Tea:

Nowadays, it’s standard practice for TV shows to incorporate online video — South Park has gone completely online, and How I Met Your Mother regularly produces additional content. But 2005 wasn’t that long ago. And it’s important to remember that back then, Hollywood had no idea what it was doing.