Saturday Night Live celebrated its 50th anniversary on Sunday night in the hallowed grounds of Studio 8H, and it was a reunion show for the ages.
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Like the best episodes of SNL we grew up with, there were some truly hilarious sketches, some that probably needed just a bit more work on the back end, a couple of very memorable music performances, a few priceless breaks from the cast and plenty to discuss with our friends the next morning.
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For a three-and-a-half-hour reunion show encompassing 50 years of an American pop culture institution, they couldn’t bring every beloved character back or nail every single sketch. However, there were plenty of moments from this historic broadcast worth celebrating. Let’s rank 10 of our favorites on the night.
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Some NSFW language to follow.
“Close Encounter” might not strike with the same bewildering shock as it did the first time Kate McKinnon portrayed her most iconic SNL character. However, Meryl Streep coming in as Ms. Rafferty’s mom made this one stand out. Seeing Streep and McKinnon side-by-side in one of the show’s wackier recurring sketches in recent memory was very cool.
The SNL 50 “Weekend Update” was always going to go for broke, and this was a very solid ode to the show’s long-running news parody. Bill Murray’s cast-member rankings will get all the attention (and deservedly so), but Seth Meyers making his return behind the desk and Bobby Moynihan and Cecily Strong reprising their beloved “Weekend Update” characters scratched the nostalgic itch.
Eddie Murphy’s killer impression of Tracy Morgan was one of the best moments of the night, and “Black Jeopardy” remains one of the most consistently funny recurring sketches in the show’s run. Tom Hanks’ cameo at the end is the perfect kicker to close the sketch out.
Watching Tina Fey and Amy Poehler take questions from the audience went as well as you could’ve hoped. Fey, Poehler and this brilliant assembly of crowd members maximize what could’ve easily been unnecessary filler turned into one of the funniest moments of the night. Zach Galifianakis is the MVP, as he always was when he appeared on SNL.
Pete Davidson bringing Chad back for original cast member Laraine Newman’s stroll down memory lane was one of the funniest sketches of the night just on a joke-by-joke basis. Davidson plays an airhead with the best of them, and Newman is literally the perfect foil for this sketch concept. This was a slam dunk that might have won the night if it wasn’t an SNL reunion show with big moments.
Sandler’s sweet tribute to SNL the institution reminded us of his Chris Farley tribute and his ode to comedy from his recent Netflix special. Anytime the Sandman picks up a guitar and just riffs for a crowd, you can’t help but smile. This was a really nice way for the show to reflect with a legend.
Debbie Downer is an all-time SNL sketch, and Rachel Dratch can still destroy a room with her balloon-deflating factoids being unleashed at the worst possible time. Getting a new Debbie Downer sketch is cause for celebration, and it makes a reunion show like this worthwhile.
John Mulaney led his SNL musical masterpiece for SNL 50, the latest in his Broadway-style tributes to the strangest corners of New York City. This epic mash-up went through the Big Apple’s evolution through the years, and it was modern SNL at its best. Mulaney’s glowing appreciation for the stage collided perfectly with a rousing ode to such a wonderfully strange city New York is. Forgive the pun, but this really was a show-stopper. Nathan Lane’s cameo nearly made the entire show.
The SNL Digital Short remains the show’s 21st-century triumph, with Andy Samberg returning for a glorious duet with Bowen Yang about the well-documented anxieties show employees face while putting on the broadcast. Complete with the gut-busting lyricism and genuinely unpredictable spirit of the best Lonely Island videos, almost nothing on Sunday night quite matched watching Samberg and Bowen taking us through the perils that befall those who work at Studio 8H. This was amazing.
The fact that we got an all-time SNL sketch for the 50th-anniversary show … wow. “Scared Straight” was always a scream-funny sketch, one of Kenan Thompson’s best recurring bits. Bringing in Eddie Murphy (!) and Will Ferrell (!) as fellow convicts to help scare a bunch of teens into behaving brought in some of the biggest laughs the show has gotten… this century? Seriously, this was a dream come true to have these three SNL legends playing off each other like this. We will be rewatching this one over and over again in the years to come, as it represents the show at its peak.