Charles Grodin’s bizarre SNL episode embodied his brand of meta-comedy

The show’s commitment to such an absurd premise has only one rival, a 1986 episode that was ostensibly hosted by George Wendt, but where Francis Ford Coppola continually interrupts sketches to give direction. Grodin’s performance was convincing enough that some believed he was banned from the show. Though as he told the A.V. Club, “They asked me to do it again, but I chose not to, because I can do two things: I can learn a script, or I can improvise. But you can’t improvise there, because it’s all done to time, and you can’t learn a script, because they’re changing it, changing it, changing it, so you’re pretty much forced to read teleprompters, and I just didn’t want to do it again.”