Saturday Night Live deleted sketch: The James Franco Hallmark movie parody you didn’t know you needed

A new Saturday Night Live deleted sketch has been unearthed right before the weekend, and it’s a James Franco Hallmark movie parody that is really nothing short of awesome. It may actually be funnier than anything that SNL put on the air for this episode and that leads to CarterMatt to a really interesting question: What in the world was Lorne Michaels thinking when he cut this out of the show? This is amazingly accurate of everything the Hallmark Channel does while also being incredibly funny.

The entire pre-taped sketch is a “commercial” for the Hallmark Channel’s upcoming line of movies, including “Prince Santa,” “Young Santa,” and a wide range of other ridiculous concepts. The joke here is that in the minds of the Hallmark Channel, Santa is apparently a young stud who ends up falling in love with a lot of women. He’s also played by Canadian actor Chris Bearstick (Franco), which may single handedly be the greatest fake Canadian name ever. It’s slightly stereotypical without taking the full jump into moose or Mounty territory. We’re almost surprised that the character wasn’t just named Tim Horton.

Also, you’ve got a mock trailer about a young woman (Heidi Gardner) who finds herself trapped in a snow globe while Kenan Thompson plays basically what Hallmark Channel viewers think black people are like.

So why in the world cut this? Maybe there was a feeling that this sketch was almost too safe and there were some bigger swings elsewhere; or, it just wasn’t long enough to operate as a full sketch, but was too long to fit into the rest of the show. Either way, this is one of our favorite commercial parodies that SNL has pulled off all year and it may also be our favorite deleted sketch since the Love, Actually spoof that took place earlier during the Amy Adams Christmas Special — one where Pete Davidson played an increasingly-obnoxious guy trying to get Adams’ character to date him. Typically, these sketches are deleted just because they’re not funny enough. This time around it’s just a lapse of judgment.

Unfortunately SNL is going to be off the air now until the new year, but if you do want to check out the link here you can see a little more news regarding who’s going to be hosting next.

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