Scott Moschella

Every year, the stunt for our Halloween episode was that the hosts would dress in costume and they would change into a new costume between each commercial break.

The show was live, so the hosts had a maximum of 5 minutes to leave set, run into the hallway, completely undress and then put on new costume.

The year we poisoned Olivia, the costume theme was internet memes. You'd think we would have the time to plan this all out well in advance, but sometimes we threw things together at the last minute or left a ‘small, simple’ detail to the day before or day-of.

Anyway, such was the case this fateful Halloween when someone thought having Kevin dress as the Twitter Fail Whale on Halloween was a good idea.

Jeremy, the guy who produced the show’s "Around the Net" segment every day got screwed this particular Halloween with having to art direct at least a few of the costumes. It had been decided that the orange birds on Kevin’s Fail Whale costume MUST be Marshmallow Peeps.

The unspoken AOTS rule was "food is always funny" even though it rarely ever was.

Here’s loosely what we heard echoing down the hallway: SERIOUSLY, HOW FUCKING HARD CAN IT BE TO FIND ORANGE PEEPS ON HALLOWEEN? YOU'RE TELLING ME IN ALL OF LOS ANGELES THERE'S NOT ONE FUCKING PACKAGE OF ORANGE MARSHMALLOW PEEPS?...

IF YOU CAN'T FIND ME ORANGE PEEPS, THEN MAKE THEM ORANGE GOD DAMN IT! I DON'T CARE HOW YOU DO IT, MAKE THEM ORANGE! (End quote)

Unfortunately, the art department was super tied up with the rest of the costumes and god knows what else, so it fell upon Jeremy and one of our production assistants to trek down to Ralph's and Smart & Final on Wilshire in search of these elusive orange Marshmallow Peeps.

After a long, hot walk: nope, just more fucking orange pumpkin-shaped Peeps and lots of pink, blue and yellow bird-shaped ones. So, Jeremy takes his sad boxes of wrong-colored Peeps down to the art department.

Now it's like 20 minutes before rehearsal. Jeremy's got other shit to do, so the art department decided to use some ORANGE KRYLON SPRAY PAINT and paint these Marshmallow Peeps orange, with hopes that they'll dry before the show.

The costume changes were super-insane and that's not something we bothered rehearsing before the show. The costumes, so fragile and thrown-together, would likely only survive one change anyway.

Throughout rehearsal, no one realizes that the painted Peeps are still wet to the touch. Four o'clock rolls around and it's showtime. The show's going as planned and we make it to D Block (that's three commercial breaks into the show) and Kevin and Olivia bolt back onto the set.

The whole point of the Peeps is that it's funny when Olivia eats stuff, so in all of two hours of rehearsal SOMEONE must have told Olivia, "now, don't eat the Peeps, because they're covered in orange spray paint." But it's Kevin's costume, not Olivia's so no one warns her.

We're back from break now and Kevin and Olivia both explain their costumes. Kevin's the Fail Whale and Olivia's the salty whale hunter, so she's got a pair of wire cutters and she hacks off one of Kevin's Fail Whale Peeps. Then, they toss to a packaged segment.

As the package wraps up, Olivia and Kevin head back to their marks to toss to the commercial break. They read the toss and then, just before we roll the "coming up after the break" teaser, Olivia gets a mischievous look in her eyes.

Olivia reflexively grabs one of Kevin's orange Krylon spray-painted Peeps and stuffs it in her mouth. As we cut to commercial, Olivia's going "om nom nom nom" with orange/blue Peep all over her lips. She ate the whole thing in one bite.

All the producers were on set for every show to hoot and holler and laugh (and fake laugh) and clap - to make it sound like an audience - because real audiences cost money.

The instant Olivia ate the peep, those of us who knew about the paint traded glances behind the cameras and, in that shared moment, wordlessly decided to not speak of this again. No one ever did (until now) and I’m pretty sure no one has ever told Olivia.