Been there, done that: Who did “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” better? Key & Peele, SNL or someone else?

Twas the day after the day after Christmas, so now it’s safe to take another look at comedic takes on the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

You may have loved watching Jimmy Fallon and Cecily Strong put their spin on the Christmastime song in last weekend’s Saturday Night Live. Of course, they weren’t the first to think of this, not even recently, which may even be how they and their writers thought of it. It’s just in the air. And baby, it’s cold outside.

It was only a year ago, for example that Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele figured out how to heighten the lyrics and dance, and it certainly helped to keep the melody but change the lyrics. This, from a sketch uploaded last year from Comedy Central’s Key & Peele, was “Just Stay For The Night.”

Just earlier this very holiday season, recent SNL hosts Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt took a time-out from playing with The Muppets to turn the tables in a role-playing duet of their own on the number.

And now, since you made it this far, check out the original source material from the 1949 movie, Neptune’s Daughter, starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán and Betty Garrett.

Does that put what Fallon and Strong did on SNL in a new light? A different light? Or just make you want to crawl back into the shadows?

https://www.hulu.com/watch/575539

But no, you shout! That last one was rather sweet! Why are you raining on our Christmas parade? Why are you parading about in the rain when you should be singing in it? Hey, I wonder if anyone has made a comedy sketch about that…

It’s such a catch-22, sort of, isn’t it? You want to free your creative mind to go wild and not get blinded by everything that’s already come out before you, but then again, sometimes just looking back to what great art already is out there might — just might — inspire you to do something better. Push the art forward. I think I just learned that by watching Six By Sondheim. Push the art forward. Be inspired. Do better.

Or do you want to sit around here and debate this one sketch some more?

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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