Table of Contents
Saturday Night Live celebrated 50 years of sketch comedy, memorable hosts, incredible musical performances, controversial moments, and laugh-out-loud stand-up monologues with a primetime special. That’s right, the not-ready-for-primetime players took over Sunday night television with the three-hour SNL50: The Anniversary Special.
To help celebrate this anniversary, Saturday Night Live announced that many of the stars whose careers it helped launch would return to help mark the occasion. SNL stars from every decade were there, including Adam Sandler, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Ego Nwodim, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell, as well as Amy Poehler, Mike Myers, Andy Samberg, Rachel Dratch, Chris Rock, Fred Armisen, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, Jason Sudeikis, Jimmy Fallon, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Laraine Newman, Ana Gasteyer, Leslie Jones, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, and Will Forte. Also on the invite list was Billy Crystal, who was famously cut from the show before the first episode even aired, before returning to the show as an official cast member from 1984 to 1985. Drew Barrymore was also there—a repeat guest in Studio 8H, she holds the record as the show’s youngest-ever host, taking center stage at just seven years old.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Read More: The Best Saturday Night Live Hosts of All Time
With the show attracting so many stars over the years, the night’s guests were A-list, and included Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, David Letterman, Bad Bunny, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Kim Kardashian, Martin Short, Miley Cyrus, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Peyton Manning, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro, Sabrina Carpenter, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, and Woody Harrelson.
Music has always been a huge part of the show and the 50th anniversary special has some jaw-dropping talent onboard to help celebrate, including Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, The Roots, Brittany Howard, Sabrina Carpenter, Lil Wayne, and Miley Cyrus. The Sunday night show wasn’t enough to truly appreciate the scope of the show’s musical impact. That’s why the music got its very own Saturday night special, SNL50: The Homecoming Concert with an epic lineup that featured Cher, Bonnie Raitt and Chris Martin, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Lauryn Hill, Jack White, David Byrne, St. Vincent, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Backstreet Boys, and Post Malone fronting Nirvana. Hosted by former SNL-er Jimmy Fallon, the concert was held in front of a packed house at Radio City Music Hall and streamed online to showcase what has become one of the most important elements of the show’s 50-year existence.
Sunday night’s show packed five decades of memories, references, music, and jokes into a three-hour program that was high on emotion, heart, and laughs. Here are some of the highlights.
Best Welcome Home
The show opened with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter performing “Homeward Bound.”As he introduced the song, Simon explained that he originally performed the song on SNL in 1976 with George Harrison. “I was not born then—and neither were my parents,” replied Carpenter.
Strong Monologue
The monologue is “traditionally the weakest part of the show” according to Steve Martin, who was naturally delivering the night’s opening monologue. While Martin has appeared on SNL 35 times, he was never actually a cast member. But that wasn’t the only fun fact of the night. Martin delivered another salient one. “A fun fact: A person born during the first season of Saturday Night Live could easily be dead of natural causes.” He was then joined on stage by former SNL writer John Mulaney. “We writers really appreciated that tribute, but I believe the heart and soul of this show is the celebrity hosts,” he said. “Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted Saturday Night Live, and it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder.” (Mulaney was most likely referencing Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson.) Martin’s Only Murders in the Building co-star (and five-time SNL host) Martin Short joined him on stage, but he was quickly taken away by ICE, because he’s Canadian.
Best Shout-Out
During his monologue, Steve Martin honored the SNL writers—and the camera cut quickly to show the writers standing out in the rain.
Most Niche Reprisal
Fred Armisen played a Lawrence Welk-inspired character, introducing Will Ferrell reprising his role as Robert Goulet, asking “Oh my god. Did they put LSD in my Caesar salad, or do I see three beautiful ladies hitchhiking my way?” They were joined onstage by the Maharelle Sisters played by Scarlett Johannsen, Ana Gasteyer, and Kim Kardashian, as well as Kristen Wiig reprising her character Dooneese in an alarming prosthetic forehead and baby doll hands, all cooing at Goulet.
Greatest Tracy Morgan
“Welcome to Black Jeopardy, the only Jeopardy where every single viewer fully understood Kendrick’s halftime performance,” said Kenan Thompson, reprising his role as host of Black Jeopardy. This time contestants were played by Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and Eddie Murphy playing an exaggerated version of Tracy Morgan, while standing next to the real one. Chris Rock then joined, as did Tom Hanks, reprising his role as “Doug”, the token white man he originally played eight years ago.
Finest 50-Year-Old
Sally O’Malley, Molly Shannon’s nimble would-be Rockette, showed up to announce that she is excited to be 50 just like SNL, and then led Emma Stone in a series of her signature “kick, stretch, kick” move.
Most Honest Appraisal
“Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey” was a long-standing segment on SNL in the ‘90s where Phil Hartman offered surreally soothing adages as Jack Handey. “Looking back over 50 years, we treasure the laughs, the friendship, the fond memories,” Handey’s voice said.”But the real treasure was how much money we were making.”
Hottest Sketch
Martin Short and Molly Shannon played parents at a wedding, where a musical toast by a group of bridesmaids went awry. Led by Sabrina Carpenter, the song, a rendition of “Defying Gravity,” details how the bride had been carrying on an affair with the always irresistible Domingo. Played by Marcello Hernández, the character was famously “arrested” IRL at Carpenter’s concert for being “too hot.” Also on hand were Pedro Pascal as Ronaldo and Bad Bunny as Santiago, Domingo’s brothers.
Funniest Q&A
Amy Poehler and Tina Fey showed up to answer questions from a wildly star-packed audience, including Cher, Jon Hamm, Keith Richards, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Quinta Brunson, Tim Meadows, and Ryan Reynolds, sitting next to his wife, Blake Lively. “Ryan Reynolds, how’s it going?” asked Fey and Poehler, to which he answered innocently, “Why? Have you heard something?” appearing to reference the legal controversy between Lively and Justin Baldoni. Reynolds went on to ask whether the material the Coneheads’ heads were made from was edible, and Fey and Poehler decided it was almost certainly very toxic. Keith Richards wanted to know if they could find his missing scarf from a 1998 appearance. (Zach Galifianakis has it.) Jon Hamm and Bad Bunny wanted to know if they were funny (Hamm, no; Bunny, yes) and Fred Armisen wanted to know why Lorne Michaels cut his sketch, “Vampire Office,” suggesting he re-pitch it for the next time Kevin Spacey hosts.
Most Poignant Performance
Aubrey Plaza made a surprise appearance to introduce a musical performance by Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard. The artists covered “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a song written by Prince and made her own by Sinead O’Connor. As both musicians delivered wildly memorable performances on the show—and both are gone—it was a fitting and gorgeous tribute.
Best Weekend Update Character Update
Drunk Uncle (Bobby Moynihan) cracked himself up ranting about Captain America, but it was Cecily Strong’s Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party who got the best line: “You assume I’m pregnant? Just cuz I have a baby inside me? That’s misogynastic.” Turns out she was pregnant and it was with Drunk Uncle.
Best Ranking
Former Weekend Update host Bill Murray arrived to rank other Weekend Update hosts. He started by ranking “Weekend Update’s” Black hosts, which put current co-host Michael Che at number one because he is the only Black host in the show’s history. Murray had to recuse himself from the ranking, as he was on “performance-enhancing drugs” during his tenure a.k.a. “an 8H Shaker,” which he described as “Quaaludes, cocaine, and Nighttime TheraFlu.” As he worked his way from Colin Quinn to Kevin Nealon to “Tina & Amy” and “Tina & Jimmy” to Norm MacDonald, he noted, “I only wish we had the time to say something nice about any of them.” While Colin Jost noted that there probably was time, Murray moved right along, skipping Colin Jost entirely and putting his brother Brian Doyle-Murray in the top spot.
Best Tribute
To truly pay homage to longtime Weekend Update host Norm MacDonald, Murray paused to ask whether O.J. Simpson just might have done it. MacDonald famously roasted Simpson for years, and was eventually reportedly let go from SNLfor his jokes about the murder trial, which barely slowed the comedian’s trolling of the fallen football star.
Best Breaks
Aidy Bryant and Jon Hamm played military folks interviewing alien abduction survivors Woody Harrelson, Pedro Pascal, and Kate McKinnon. McKinnon’s antics describing the aliens’ actions caused Pascal to break and then got Harrelson to break, too. When Meryl Streep showed up to play McKinnon’s mom, the whole cast lost it, particularly over the line where Streep referenced her character Miranda Priestly, noting that when it comes to underwear, “this Devil wears nada.”
Best Math
Introduced by Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler brought his guitar on stage to perform a moving and nostalgia-packed tribute to SNL’s 50-year history. The song included many inside jokes, including ones about how cast members couldn’t use Lorne Michaels’ “little bathroom in the office” and asking the interns to get their laundry without realizing the intern was “Martin Scorsese’s kid or Nora Ephron’s kid or Randy Newman’s kid.” He also paid tribute to behind-the-scenes folks, including “drunk Wally” who would hold up cue cards upside down. “Fifty years of the best times of our lives,” Sandler sang at the end of the song, seeming to choke up.
Finest Flashback
David Spade, John Mulaney, and Pete Davidson took viewers on a trip through time to the New York City of the past. While musical lovers should watch the full sketch, highlights include Kate McKinnon as Rudy Guiliani with an assist from Lin-Manuel Miranda singing about the 2000s to the tune of Hamilton and Nathan Lane taking part in a 1980s “power mix” of cocaine and some vodka to the tune of “Hakuna Matata”.
Read More: The 22 Most Controversial Saturday Night Live Moments
Best Ad Break
Over the show’s five decades, SNL has created ads for some memorably fake products. The anniversary special put together a very special ad break of the best worst products on the market.
Greatest Crossover
A good reminder that the show is live, when Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph started their Bronx Beat sketch, it was plagued with mic issues. All was forgotten though when Mike Myers appeared in full Linda Richman costume for a “Coffee Talk” crossover that got everyone verklempt. The two Bronx Beat hosts immediately started saying, “We’re not worthy!” referencing Myers’ Wayne’s World sketch and then Myers mentioned that it was “sweater weather,” shouting out one of Poehler’s most famous lines.
Most Startling In Memoriam
Tom Hanks, clad in a black suit, somberly announced that he was there to pay tribute to sketches that aged horribly. The montage included ethnic stereotypes, sexual harassment, underage sexual harassment, body shaming, sexism, slut shaming, and problematic guests (Diddy, R. Kelly, O.J. Simpson), and a whole bunch of sketches considered “whoa” and “yikes”. It was nice that the show didn’t bury its past, but unclear why we needed to see the parade of yikes all over again. As Hanks pointed out, “You all laughed at them. So if anyone should be canceled, shouldn’t it be you, the audience?”
Best Downer
Rachel Dratch returned as Debbie Downer with Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, Robert De Niro, and Ayo Edebiri all basking in her depressing presence as she talked about microplastics and bird flu, until her attitude led to De Niro going full Goodfellas on her.
Fitting Final Farewell
Garrett Morris introduced the short film “Don’t Look Back in Anger” which starred John Belushi visiting the “not ready for primetime cemetery” to lay a wreath on his co-stars’ graves in the snow. As he walked through the graveyard, he paid tribute to Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Danny Aykroyd and to the Saturday Night show he loved, ending while he danced on their graves.
The Last Hurrah
Sir Paul McCartney led a singalong in Studio 8H starting with “Golden Slumbers” and leading into “Carry That Weight.” The audience was on its feet, swaying, and singing as McCartney capped off the anniversary festivities. To close the show, the entire cast filled the stage to applaud Lorne Michaels, the man who made it all happen.
