Saturday Night Live has yet again found itself accused of plagiarism, after a New York-based comedy troupe accused the show of stealing two of their ideas for recent sketches.
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The sketches in question are “Pumpkin Patch“, which aired last October in an Awkwafina-hosted episode, and “Pound Puppy“, which was part of a recent episode featuring Don Cheadle.
The first of these is about a Halloween pumpkin patch where employees keep having sex with the goods, and sketch comedy troupe Temple Horses claim that they had this idea first.
Nick Ruggia and Ryan Hoffman told Variety that the bit is lifted from one of their YouTube videos, entitled “Not Trying To Fuck This Pumpkin“. They said:
“Imagine, one day you come home and it looks like somebody’s robbed your house. What do you want from that situation? We feel like somebody took our stuff, and this isn’t the kind of thing where you can just get it back or call your insurance company to have it replaced, so at this point we’re just speaking out about it.”
The SNL sketch “Pound Puppy” is about a device that blocks pets from watching their owners have sex, a premise which is extremely similar to a 2011 Temple Horses’ sketch entitled “Pet Blinders.”
The two SNL videos in question are currently geoblocked outside the United States, but you can see the two Temple Horses videos below:
Ruggia and Hoffman’s lawyers have sent a letter to NBC, the network which broadcasts Saturday Night Live, detailing their similarities between the two sketches.
NBC has yet to formally respond to the claims, but has reportedly conducted an investigation, finding “no similarities to the Temple Horses sketches that would be protected by copyright law.”
Ruggia told Variety that they are seeking “attribution and compensation” for their work, saying that these situations arise “far too frequently” in comedy.
