During season 1: episode 16, the state of Florida appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch for the very first time. This set the tone for future SNL sketches featuring Florida. It can be summed up fairly easily. A Florida woman is kidnapped by terrorists and killed after they force her to appear in an orange juice commercial. Her last words are simply, “Come to the Florida sunshine.” Why portray a Florida native in this fashion? Well, why not? Saturday Night Live has made it a personal task to include Florida, and even Tampa specifically, in every humiliating way possible during their sketches.

   During season 16: episode 13, the writers on SNL made sure to include a one-liner that showed how “unsafe” Florida can really be. In this sketch, the cast members play a Jeopardy-esque game that asks the question,“Texas and Florida lead the nation in this comedy killer.” The correct response made sure to insult Florida: “What are, ‘children trapped in wells?’” This is the one of those very few occasions where another state is simultaneously dragged down with Florida.

     The latest sketch to feature Florida in a negative light was in the current season (43) during episode 13. The sketch starts with Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, played by Kyle Mooney, deciding which city should house his new Amazon Headquarters. Miami is one of his choices so of course Pitbull, played by Mikey Day, must make an appearance.

   This sketch features lines like, “Miami has a diverse community of Cubans, Jews, gays… and lizards, bugs, beans, cocaine,” and “we present Pitbull as the token of Miami.”  

    SNL head writer Michael Che suggests that the main culprit behind these comedic offenses is that of former head writer Seth Meyers. “Seth Meyers, I mean it all started with Seth Meyers. Maybe not the first, but definitely made it popular.”

  When Meyers premiered his new show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, he featured a ‘game show’ called “Fake or Florida.” He tells an outrageous story and contestants will answer whether or not the story Meyers told was fake or if it happened in Florida. The correct answer almost always ends up being Florida.

  But SNL cast member Chris Redd has a different approach to the situation. “I don’t make [Florida jokes] often so it may not be my area of expertise. I could generally say that most of the comedy, if not all, on the show is derived from what’s happening or has happened in the world.” But does this mean that Florida is always in the news?  

  SNL writer Erik Kenward says yes. “Florida is a very big place.” His reasoning behind this? “The most unique thing about Florida is that it’s kind of three or four states in one. There’s the Miami, more Caribbean-centric part of the state; there’s northern Florida which has more in common with the American south; there’s central Florida which is another thing entirely… any time you have that many different world views and lifestyles rubbing up against one another, it’s going to make for a fertile zone for comedy.” In his response, he also includes one very important piece of information, that SNL Weekend Update producer, Dennis McNicholas, was born and raised in northern Florida.

  John Mulaney, a former SNL writer, had his own take on the subject when Seth Meyers interviewed him on Late Night with Seth Meyers.  Meyers had brought up the story of me approaching Mulaney after his Kid Gorgeous comedy show in Jacksonville, Florida where I had asked him “Why do comedians always go after Florida?” He then responded to my question on air, “That’s a good point, we kind of do. It’s not fair that we laugh at Florida. Comedy writers are often lazy so it’s like a good example of a place.” Mulaney then proceeded to explain his reasoning by joking with Meyers, “If you had a lot of paper towels, I’d be like ‘Seth, what are you? Costco?’ It’s not a good joke but it’s easy so Florida is the Costco of upsetting people.” He then related back to Kenward’s earlier point, “You’d never make Florida on purpose.”

  Another former SNL writer, Conan O’Brien, has also taken his turn at badgering Florida’s alligator wrestling reputation. “For the ninth year in a row, Florida made it through hurricane season without being hit by a single hurricane. So it’s official: even hurricanes don’t want to go to Florida.” But it’s not just Florida hurricanes being attacked. “Yesterday in Florida, a drunk and naked man wielding a machete went on a rampage attacking mailboxes. Local police put out an APB for ‘literally any guy in Florida’.”

  Keep in mind, SNL was not and still is not the only show that regularly exploits Florida for comedy content. After SNL head writer Tina Fey left, she created a show of her own, 30 Rock. For the seven years that 30 Rock was on air, Florida had consistently been used as the punchline for all their jokes. Each character on this show had at least one line poking fun at Florida and its machete-wielding citizens. Jack Donaghy, portrayed by Alec Baldwin, says it best “Why can’t we just cut this state adrift and let it crash into Cuba.”

  The writers on this show even went so far to dedicate an entire episode to making fun of Florida and its citizens. The title of this episode was simply named, “Florida.” This episode consisted of jokes targeted at Florida’s 911 response, “Thank you for calling Florida emergency services. If this is regarding an anaconda in a crawl space, press ‘one’. If a sinkhole full of Indian bones has appeared in your living room, press ‘two’. If you want to know why JAG wasn’t on this week, press ‘three’.” It also included jokes aimed at how native Floridians respond to visitors, “Where are my manners? This is Florida. Let me boil up a pot of hot Gatorade. Is blue all right?”

  But this is not the only episode that features Florida in a boiled Gatorade guzzling light. Throughout all seven seasons, jokes about Florida have been heavily featured with one of the main characters being a Floridian herself. Jenna Maroney, portrayed by Jane Krakowski, is a Florida native. This gave a great excuse for the writers to justify poking fun at her origins. “You can’t play prom queens and murdered runaways forever,” she says. “But those were my majors at the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks.”

  All SNL greats, like Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, and Conan O’Brien, have planted their comedic roots into other shows and programs. But with them, they plant their infamous one-liners and taglines against Florida and its citizens. Because when a writer leaves SNL their jokes leave with them. Perhaps all SNL writers see Floridians as Jack Donaghy does, as a “combination of elderly shut-ins, beach bums, bus passengers who ran out of money, swamp people, and pirates.”