Saturday Night Live: “Ben Affleck; Kanye West”

This is the second year in a row that SNL has had major goodbyes to address in its season finale (Kristen Wiig last time, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen here) and it’s the second year in a row they’ve absolutely nailed it. Sure, this was pretty much a typical season finale otherwise, with a better-than-usual mix of good sketches and clunkers, a very competent host in Ben Affleck (joining the five-timers club) and a friendly drop-in from Amy Poehler. But, as frustrated as I can get with these guys, it’s crazy how emotionally invested I am in these big farewells. Stefon’s wedding got me choked up. Armisen’s lovely, subdued Ian Rubbish song was exactly how he should sign off. It’s just a sketch show, but if you’re deep in your SNL fandom, it’s like a family member moving away.
We’re approaching a huge transitional moment for the show, one everyone wrote about last year with the departure of Wiig but is still far from complete. Seth Meyers will be gone after Christmas to host Late Night; Jason Sudeikis can’t stick around forever either, although the lack of a goodbye sketch and Hader and Armisen’s prominence in the goodbye credits makes me think he’ll hold on a little bit longer. SNL has a talented core to launch its next wave in Bobby Moynihan, Taran Killam and Kate McKinnon (along with Kenan Thompson, a grand old man in terms of years on this show). The future is certainly not dire. But it’s also going to be different, and it’s probably going to be a little shaky for a season or so (while fascinating to watch for us SNL dorks).
I’m going to miss Bill Hader most of all, who would definitely have a place on my top 10 all-time SNL cast members, if not top five. Even though he’s been around for a long time and certainly deserves to move on to greener pastures, I’d happily have him around forever and ever. Wiig and Armisen’s departures made sense because it felt like they had done everything they could do on the show, but Hader is so versatile and talented, there’s just limitless potential there.
Stefon’s wedding was a perfect sign-off for a recurring character that never, ever got old. Which is crazy when you think about it—it’d be perfectly reasonable for me to be sick to death of Stefon considering that he followed such a rigid formula and made countless Weekend Update appearances. But nope, he got me every time which is a real testament to Hader and John Mulaney, who he co-wrote the sketches with (and who returned to the credits again tonight to pitch in, of course). Everything you could have hoped for: appearances by Stefon’s entourage of freaks (the internet is furiously cataloging all of them right now, I’m sure), Anderson Cooper, some genuine emotion from Seth Meyers. Beautiful stuff.
Armisen’s goodbye, where he was joined onstage by Carrie Brownstein, J. Mascis, Kim Gordon, Aimee Mann and Steve Jones, was less of a nod to his enduring presence on the show (11 years, longer than everyone except Franken, Meyers and Hammond) and more to his overall persona and work on Portlandia. It didn’t have quite the emotional punch that Wiig’s dance to “Like A Rainbow” had last year, but it was certainly lovely.