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Scared Straight

Saturday Night Live 2024 Season 50

SKETCH-O-VISION

A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

Officer Sikorsky brings in three inmates to scare a trio of young shoplifters, but every prison horror story they tell turns out to be the plot of a famous movie.

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Community rating

– / 10

The premise

Here’s the bit.

Officer Sikorsky (Jason Sudeikis) sits three shoplifters (Marcello Hernández, Mikey Day and Michael Longfellow) down with Scared Straight inmates Lorenzo McIntosh (Kenan Thompson) and "All the Way" Ray May (Eddie Murphy), who bark contradictory orders before sharing their hard-luck life stories. The teens quickly recognize those stories as Harry Potter and The Nutty Professor, and each warning about prison descends into crude wordplay that Sikorsky has to cut short. Big Red (Will Ferrell) then wanders in, says prison is actually fun and offers a backstory lifted from Elf, until Sikorsky finally sends all three inmates away.

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

That's definitely "Harry Potter."

Hercules! Hercules!

No, because I'm well-read. I got six G.E.D.'s and a nagging U.T.I.

A little extra

Notes from the archive.

From SNL50: The Anniversary Special, broadcast on NBC on February 16, 2025. It revived Kenan Thompson's Scared Straight series, whose eight original installments aired between 2008 and 2012, with Jason Sudeikis back as Officer Sikorsky. Thompson can be seen fighting laughter during the final round of prison warnings.