Today the New York Times ran an excellent multimedia piece on the history of “breaking” on Saturday Night Live - that is, cast members bursting into laughter during a sketch.
As it happens, we here at the Wasn’t That Special podcast keep a detailed database of each sketch, including when a cast member breaks. And NYT comedy reporter Jason Zinoman (author of an excellent book on David Letterman) asked us for some recommendations to highlight. So we did, and also sent him what we believe to be the first break on the show back in 1975:
Read the full NYT piece here, and join up with the flood of people subscribing!