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Yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of the seminal teen comedy Mean Girls. Or hadn't you noticed? Here, let me show you something called the internet. But let's all take that trip down memory lane a few steps further. The day after Mean Girls opened, Lindsay Lohan took her first trip to Studio 8H to host Saturday Night Live, and it was on that very show that sketch comedy history was made.
That's right: today marks the ten-year anniversary of the first, and easily greatest, appearance of Debbie Downer.
SNL makes regular hay out of its performers breaking character to laugh, but few sketches went so catastrophically and brilliantly haywire as this one. As played by Rachel Dratch, Debbie's premise is embarrassingly simple: she's just a lady who constantly references depressing topics while hanging out with her friends. But the "wah-wah" sad trombone sound that comes with every miserable factoid caught the cast by surprise and led to one of the most memorable and tear-inducingly funny trainwrecks in the show's history. Watch the sketch here and relive every hysterical minute below.
0:15: We're at Mickey's breakfast jamboree at Disney World! Kenan Thompson (in his first season on the show) is our server, "Billiam." Gathered around the table, from left to right: Jimmy Fallon, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Lindsay Lohan and Horatio Sanz. Literally within the first seconds of this sketch, you can tell that half the cast is trying not to laugh. Dratch is fighting back a smile as she looks at the camera, and Poehler is looking at her feet.
0:39: Debbie speaks for the first time. "Ever since they found Mad Cow disease in the U.S., I'm not taking any chances. It can live in your body for years before it ravages your brain." The wah-wah trombone, which the cast was reportedly not really prepared for, drops in, and we cut to the Debbie Downer theme tune. By the time we cut back, everyone has regained their composure.