Did ‘SNL’ Steal a Sketch Last Weekend?

By Kayla Cobb @kaylcobb
Published Dec. 8, 2015, 3:15 p.m. ET

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Last Weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live was a pretty good one in what has been an inconsistent season. We had a stellar Ryan Gosling crack up and a pretty good opening monologue from the host, but the sketch that stole the show was a commercial parody for a new millennial dating app called Settl. Unfortunately for SNL, this sketch may make the history books not for hilarity but for sketch thievery.
The pre-taped parody featured female cast members giving testimonials praising the app’s ability to match them with average men. Vanessa Bayer delivers an especially good line: “I joined Settl and went on tons of OK dates, and that’s how I met my Henry.”
However, claims are now beginning to emerge on social media that this commercial parody was a rip-off. According to Flavorwire, the collaborators in question are developer Matt Condon and designer Ben Zweig, who presented at the Los Angeles event, Comedy Hack Day. The event encourages comedians, designers, and developers to come together and show off their fake apps before a panel of celebrity judges.

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A video posted in September shows the pair presenting their Grindr-esque dating app to Cameron Esposito and James Adomian, who you know from his spot-on Bernie Sanders impression. There’s no denying that there are a lot of similarities between the two sketches. They share the same name, focus on Millennials, and feature limited swiping capabilities. You can watch the Cordon and Zweig’s version below:


Now for the SNL sketch:

So what do you think? Are we looking at joke thievery or is this a case of parallel thought?