If there’s one thing Saturday Night Live loves, it’s self-deprecation, and if there are two things, add self-congratulation. (There are way more than two things.) This is how you get jokes about how the long-running show isn’t funny or relevant anymore, often delivered by A-list stars during their hosting gigs, or priceless exchanges like “can we be funny?”/“why start now?” on the first show after 9/11—which are then memorialized in clip shows and documentaries about that moment for the next however many decades. The instinct to show a little humility and then self-mythologizing that humility is a natural outgrowth of a half-century TV institution, and also just on the line of being insufferable. (For some, it lives well on the other side of that line. But then, part of being an institution is people in any given social/online/anywhere circle complaining about your very existence.)
This means, for a near-lifelong fan of SNL—long enough to have watched Dana Carvey-anchored episodes live, too-late enough to have rented the 15th anniversary special on VHS and remember almost none of it—these period celebration specials become an object of fascination and dread. That the lead-up to SNL50 has been a lot of fun—with documentaries and a concert special and an entertainingly sort-of bad feature film and ridiculous projects for your friendly neighborhood pop-culture writers—relieved pressure on the actual anniversary special to cover everything while also raising the possibility that nothing on the special would be as good as, say, the opening montage on Questlove’s big music doc, or the behind-the-scenes material on the writing of the show now accessible on Peacock.
In a sense, that possibility became a reality, albeit in a weirdly pleasing way: SNL50, even more than the 40th-anniversary special from a decade ago, really did aim to work as a kind of supersized, normie-friendly, yet insistently inside episode of the show. There was a monologue, Weekend Update, musical guests, and a lot—a lot—of recurring characters. Retrospective montages were kept to three, two obligatory (here’s a tribute to physical comedy! And no other types of comedy! Oh, except fake commercials!) and one clever: an “in memoriam” to sketches and appearances that for, whatever reasons, haven’t “aged well,” a tongue-in-cheek catch-all for everything from genuine racist caricatures to the later actions of people who once hosted, which by John Mulaney’s earlier count of only a few murders is impressively low. (Cozying up to fascists, though, was apparently too partisan an apology to make, even jokingly.) Other non-sketches were similarly unconventional, at least by clip-show standards: Adam Sandler performed a sweetly sentimental song shouting out a ton of castmates; Garrett Morris introducing a full airing of “Don’t Look Back In Anger,” Tom Schiller’s chillingly ironic (and also weirdly delightful) short from the third (and arguably best-ever!) season, featuring John Belushi outliving everyone else and dancing on their graves.
Those moments weren’t the majority of the show, either; jettisoning the awkward introductions-to-introductions-to-clips segments that tripped up the previous special, this really did feel like an SNL episode doubled: four musical performances instead of two; four Weekend Update bits; double the monologues, with Steve Martin’s crisp intro later followed by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler doing questions from the audience; and about ten busy, lengthy, recursive, all-star sketches. At times, it felt like a monkey’s paw might have curled at any point where longtime fans had wished that episodes could inch five or ten minutes longer (and indeed, recent SNL episodes do actually run a little past the standard 1AM curfew); here’s three hours, but instead of making room for one more weird-funny sketch that might otherwise be consigned to YouTube or wistful documentary recollections, that extra time is devoted to fanfic-y sketches about what would happen if Linda Richman asked the Bronx Beat ladies to talk amongst themselves.
On the other hand, wasn’t this the SNL Fantasy Leagues comedy nerds have been talking about for decades? Yes, there was a bit of that in past anniversary specials, but this one went further in adding cast members, crossing over characters, and making a litany of show in-jokes; these were sketches that would never really fit together on a proper episode, would probably not crack the top five of their subjects’ past iterations, yet had an undeniable dream-team excitement presented in aggregate. Will Ferrell did a sketch with Eddie Murphy. Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman got to sing in a Digital Short with Andy Samberg, who was also part of all-star Scottsdale bro squad with Yang, Beck Bennett, and Kyle Mooney. Laraine Newman played opposite Pete Davidson. All-stars assembled for another John Mulaney New York musical.
Now, is it kind of a waste for two legends like Ferrell and Murphy to first share the screen while riffing on a second-tier Kenan Thompson sketch, unaltered in its formula of punctuating movie plots with prison-rape jokes? Sure, yeah. Moreover, there’s something missing from the SNL DNA when the production essentially disallows the possibility of failure that would come with writing an actually-new sketch for these talented performers. Even the bad recurring sketches are going to get whoops of recognition, so why write an original piece that isn’t at least as self-referential as those Weekend Update jokes or the multiple musical numbers about how great/terrible it is to work at SNL? But if SNL50 sometimes threatened to feel like an office party in public—ooh, are the table reads stressful, guys? Say more about this! Finally it can be told, again!—there’s also something wonderfully ridiculous about recruiting Sabrina Carpenter to be in a new version of a Sabrina Carpenter-inspired sketch, where she sings “Defying Gravity” off-key in tribute to Ariana Grande singing “Espresso” off-key, or mashing the recurring Lawrence Welk bit into Ferrell’s absurdist take on Robert Goulet for one weird mid-century cultural snapshot. It was almost like watching multiple seasons of the show overlaid on top of each other, in a good way. For one night, unmoored from its usual time slot or constraints, SNL’s job was more explicitly than ever to play itself.
What was on
You know what, let’s do a top five real quick:
5. Bronx Beat
Sometimes it’s a simple matter of knowing which character to reprise. There may have been logistical reasons that Myers didn’t do Wayne’s World again, but it was so much more delightful anyway to have him return to a character he hadn’t played since 1997—and a great touch to have Linda Richman show up on Bronx Beat, tacitly acknowledging how these kinds of sketches share a lineage even if they weren’t necessarily consciously inspired by past work.
4. Steve Martin monologue
It’s especially fun that no matter how many times Alec Baldwin hosts or serves as a part-time cast member, Martin still feels like the go-to guy for position of unofficial permanent host.
3. Black Jeopardy!
Eddie Murphy skipped Celebrity Jeopardy last time, so naturally he jumps on Black Jeopardy doing a celebrity impression—of Tracy Morgan, standing right next to him. It was a little weird that Morgan, Chris Rock, and Leslie Jones were sequestered in a single sketch together (Murphy and Kenan popped up later), but the sketch itself could have easily survived on another Murphy-hosted episode.
2. Weekend Update
Do I ship Drunk Uncle and The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party now?! It was great to see Cecily Strong and Bobby Moynihan back in the pocket; also a left-field pull to have Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen do their best-friends-of-a-dictator routine, except applied to Lorne. But nothing was better than Bill Murray’s off-the-cuff charm ranking Weekend Update anchors (and, honestly, doing a pretty great job with it). “They could have done another 10 minutes of Update” is something I thought for maybe the first time since 2002 or so.
1. New York musical
I’ve grumbled before about how every spiritual sequel to “Diner Lobster” has missed the single-mindedness of that sketch’s Les Miserables parodies, and while this was equally scattershot, the time-tripping conceit, the access to a bigger ensemble of bit players, and the cutaways to in-crowd performances made it all charmingly ramshackle and on-theme—the rare recurring bit to be elevated, not just elongated, by its anniversary-show presence.
What was off
The two instances where the show’s self-indulgence most notably spun out were, perhaps not surprisingly, revivals of sketches whose fame derived largely from breaking. Colleen Rafferty and Debbie Downer were both ideal one-and-done characters that the show couldn’t resist reviving, trying in vain to recreate a particular form of giddy magic when people absolutely lost it when faced with Rachel Dratch or Kate McKinnon doing their thing. That’s especially foolhardy to zap back to life years later, for new installments that were more squished-together novelty cameos than the work of actual SNL all-stars. Yes, Jon Hamm, Woody Harrelson, Robert De Niro, and Drew Barrymore are all multiple-time hosts. But was anyone really clamoring to watch a sketch ensemble consisting of, say, Hamm, Harrelson, Meryl Streep, and Pedro Pascal, where Aidy Bryant just kinda sits there? Still, there are regular 90-minute SNL episodes with more than two badly diminished recurring sketches, so this feels like a win in the scheme of things.
Also, in the spirit of what was quite literally off, here are the top five most conspicuous absences for the night (among living alumni; the absence of Gilda Radner, Chris Farley, Norm Macdonald, etc. is a whole other thing):
5. Dennis Miller: His politics have probably alienated him from plenty of SNL folks—though honestly, given what we’ve learned about Lorne’s rich-guy politics over the years, I’d wonder whether that conventional wisdom is even particularly true—but given how few people are actually left from the late-’80s cast, it was a little strange not to even catch so much as an ah cha cha.
4. Jane Curtin: She was there in the goodnights, helping to hold up a picture of Gilda, but seeing Laraine Newman score a starring role in a filmed piece made the absence of Curtin’s perfect deadpan all the more glaring.
3. Dana Carvey: He must have been there in the room where it happened, and obviously he got plenty of screentime this past fall, but it’s still a little shocking that he wouldn’t have any official appearances.
2. Dan Aykroyd: He raised multiple crystal skulls of vodka to the show on social media, so it was odd that he didn’t even appear to be in the audience.
1. Bill Hader: Is there bad blood? Aykroyd and Curtin are original-cast members, yeah, but they also might be fine with emeritus positions, while all of Hader’s most frequent scene partners were there.
Most valuable player (who may or may not be ready for prime time)
Conceptually: the music! The Digital Short, “Domingo” revival, Sandler song, and Mulaney musical all underlined just how much of the best SNL anniversary material has been music-related. There was a massive Radio City Music Hall concert this weekend that probably did some heavy lifting in terms of taking some material out of contention for the anniversary show, and in that context, the actual pop-music performances on SNL50 could feel a little like afterthoughts. But it would be great to see, in the future, the show taking these specials as a reminder that they can do more with the musical guests beyond book hot artists and have them play the last single and the next single. Maybe Sabrina Carpenter dueting with Paul Simon is an extreme old-meets-new example; maybe having Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard duet on a song famously sung by Sinéad O’Connor as a roundabout posthumous tribute to someone the show threw under the bus a bunch of decades ago isn’t in the best case. Maybe I wasn’t one hundred percent certain why Lil Wayne in particular had a slot here and not at the Radio City show. (No guff to Lil Wayne; the other musical guests just seemed more connected to Lorne, specifically.) But that I was even wondering these things felt like a nice change of pace, accelerated by the wealth of SNL music material over the past couple of months. Let’s keep this going with the rest of the season proper!
Next time
Speaking of which: It’s still a mystery who will be on the next live episode, but we have a date of March 1st. My money is a Milla Jovovich-hosted episode to promote In The Lost Lands, with guest director Paul W.S. Anderson taking the reins to promote the season 11 documentary on Peacock.
Stray observations mostly adapted from texts I sent during the episode
- • Adam Sandler’s loyalty knows no bounds: He was passing out tenure shout-outs like they were bit parts in Grown Ups 3. Most notable: the little-mentioned Melanie Hutsell (who is indeed in Grown Ups 2), and a designation of Michael McKean as “killing it” during two of the show’s worst seasons.
- • As with any number of proper SNL episodes, I could have done with about 40% fewer extra-special guests. That said, Scarlett Johansson playing Audrey from Little Shop Of Horrors was actually for me directly, so I appreciated it.
- • “The Gulf of Steve Martin”! Great, well, Steve Martin-style joke.
- • The commercial parody montage really was quite well done, and also daunting to me personally because one of my earliest immersions in SNL across time was taping the SNL Goes Commercial prime-time special in the early ’90s and rewatching it constantly. Accordingly, my elementary-schooler who sometimes watches SNL sketches with me doesn’t always care for my selections, but commercial parodies are always a hit.
- • Add Sabrina Carpenter to the lengthy list of people Paul Simon would rather sing with than Art Garfunkel.
- • Did Lorne get super-excited to see Dave Chappelle holding his cigarette when he introduced Lil Wayne? The man is simply does not care who he offends. He is an iconoclast for the ages.
- • It feels a little cowardly that SNL didn’t utilize a longtime favorite sketch format that’s perfect for a parade of disparate sketch performers and celebrity guests: the unwanted stream of speakers grabbing the mic at a wedding, funeral, baptism, whatever, always including an appearance from Will Forte’s Hamilton. (I briefly and foolishly thought the Domingo revival was going to be this.)
- • The 60th anniversary special really should open with Armisen doing “Dracula Office.”
