After a half-century of comedy and music (and what at times felt like an equal amount of buildup and hype), how do you at last kick off a prime-time 50th anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live”? Calmly and serenely, it turns out.
The long-awaited “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” opened on Sunday with the musicians Paul Simon (an “S.N.L.” stalwart through the decades) and Sabrina Carpenter (who was its musical guest in May 2024) sharing the stage at the show’s familiar home base at Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
They exchanged a simple joke, setting a theme that would recur for the rest of the night: Time passes, whether you like it or not. Simon said they were about to play a song that he had performed on the show with George Harrison in 1976. “I was not born then,” Carpenter said, “and neither were my parents.”
And who else could perform the opening monologue on this occasion but Steve Martin, a 16-time host whose own rising star in the 1970s imparted some needed credibility and momentum to “S.N.L.” when it was just starting out.
Introducing himself on Sunday night as the show’s “newest diversity hire,” Martin reminded the audience that “S.N.L.” turned 50 this year while he turned 79. “But I feel like I’m 65,” he said, “which is also not good.”
Martin said, though, that he didn’t mind getting older, asking, “Do you think these hearing aids make my ass look smaller?” He also pointed out what he called a “fun fact”: “A person born during the first season of ‘Saturday Night Live’ could today be easily dead of natural causes.”
John Mulaney, a former “S.N.L.” writer turned frequent host, came onstage and offered his own reflections on the show’s longevity. “Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Mulaney said. “And it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder.”
And of course you can’t have a Steve Martin monologue without an appearance from his friend and co-star Martin Short (or “the only Canadian who wasn’t in ‘Schitt’s Creek,’” as Martin called him.) Short said he had thought the two were meant to host together, and Martin asked him if he had his passport. When Short answered no, Martin shouted for two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pull him off the stage.
“I’ll name names!” Short pleaded as he was dragged off, shouting out the names of other Canadian performers.
To conclude his monologue, Martin looked into the camera and told viewers that if they weren’t enjoying it: “Maybe you should get up and take a good look at yourself in the mirror, and say to yourself: ‘What have I become? This can’t be Steve’s fault.’ And ask yourselves, ‘When did I abandon joy?’”
Celebrity all-stars of the night
In an early sketch, he performed as a contestant on the long-running game show parody “Black Jeopardy.” But he wasn’t just any contestant: Murphy was playing Tracy Morgan, alongside the real-life Morgan, who was playing another contestant named Darius. And Murphy — as he tends to do — delighted in his alter-ego role, boasting as Morgan might in order to prove his wealth: “I eat four-cheese lasagna,” he declared. “If it only got three cheeses, I ain’t eating it.” (Not even Tom Hanks, reprising his “Black Jeopardy” role as a conservative voter named Doug, could steal the sketch away from him.)
For sticking around until the end of the night, your reward was a second helping of Murphy as one of the prisoners in the recurring “Scared Straight” series (although this time, he was very nearly bested by a late appearance from Will Ferrell as a fellow prisoner in a revealing pair of shorts).
And if you were waiting to see how Meryl Streep might finally make her “S.N.L.” sketch debut, it came tonight — not in a musical number or a dignified homage to Hollywood history, but sitting alongside Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal and Woody Harrelson as a fellow alien abductee in the show’s “Close Encounter” series. Much as McKinnon does in these sketches, Streep had no problem recounting stories — in this instance to Jon Hamm and Aidy Bryant — in which her character lost her pants. As she put it, “Underwear-wise, this devil wears nada.”
Questions from the audience of the night
It’s a proud tradition with “S.N.L.” monologues when the writers don’t know what else to do with their celebrity hosts: Have them take questions from audience members (who turn out to be ringers played by the cast members and writers). Tonight that tradition was cleverly updated by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who fielded questions from the celebrity guests in attendance.
The many highlights of this segment included Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”) asking what Tim Meadows had whispered to Sade at the end of a 1993 episode (he answered that he had invited her to drink Zima, play Mortal Kombat and watch “the new, cool Menendez trial”); Jon Lovitz asking why he had to watch the anniversary show from the American Girl store across the street (“I’m not mad, I just want to know why,” he said); Julia Louis-Dreyfus using her service dog to try to flirt with Adam Driver; and Fred Armisen advocating a sketch he had written called “Vampire Office,” which he said was cut in 2005 after a successful dress rehearsal.
Fey and Poehler encouraged him to resubmit. “Great,” Armisen said. “Next time Spacey hosts.”
Weekend Update jokes of the night
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the show’s 50th anniversary.
Jost began:
It is an honor and a thrill to be hosting Weekend Update for the 50th — and if it was up to our president, final — season of “S.N.L.” It is incredible that “S.N.L.” is still going after all this time. And I’m just talking about tonight’s show. There are so many famous hosts and musical guests here tonight that some huge names actually have to watch from Studio 8G next door, as well as from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. [His screen showed a picture of Sean Combs.]
Che continued:
“Saturday Night Live” has won 95 Emmys, one Grammy, three Peabodys and has over 100 Tonys on the crew. [His screen showed a picture of several middle-age white guys who looked like crew members.] I’m kidding, but let’s actually take a moment to thank those hard-working crew guys. I want to thank those crew guys, and also I would like to congratulate them all on their Jan. 6 pardons. Good to have you back, fellas!
In further deskside appearances, we learned that the Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party (Cecily Strong) is having a baby with Drunk Uncle (Bobby Moynihan) and that the whispery, undermine-y friends of Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin (Armisen and Vanessa Bayer) have dirt on their pal Lorne Michaels, too.
But perhaps the most surprising cameo came from Bill Murray, a former Weekend Update anchor himself, who offered this ranking of the best anchors ever to host the segment:
10. Colin Quinn, 9. Kevin Nealon, 8. Dennis Miller, 7. Seth Meyers, 6. Fey and Jimmy Fallon, 5. Fey and Poehler, 4. Chevy Chase, 3. Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, 2. Norm Macdonald, 1. His brother Brian Doyle-Murray.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Sentimental Sandman of the night
Who would ever have thought that Adam Sandler — one of the so-called “Bad Boys of ‘Saturday Night Live’” from its 1990s era — would grow up to be a big old softy?
Sandler has lately been summoning nostalgic tears with Springsteen-esque ballads like his Chris Farley song and his comedy song. And the Sandman did it again on Sunday with another humorous but tenderhearted tribute to the 50-year history of “S.N.L.” that was packed with inside jokes and homages to offscreen crew members like the cue-card handler Wally Feresten and the nurse Theresa Hayde, as well as shout-outs to underappreciated cast members like Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, Melanie Hutsell, Tim Kazurinsky and Ellen Cleghorne.
If that didn’t make it poignant enough, Sandler’s song was introduced by his “Anger Management” co-star Jack Nicholson, who made a rare public appearance to be at the anniversary special.
John Mulaney mini-musical of the night
If you have Mulaney at “S.N.L.”, it’s only reasonable to expect another entry in his series of musical sketches about the highly unsavory food products you can buy — and the detestable places you can get them — in New York.
But, wow: Who was prepared for the tour de force he and his collaborators delivered on Sunday, one that took viewers through a musical history tour of the city from the scuzzy 1970s to the present day? This one was chock-full of song parodies from movies and musicals like “Fame,” “The Lion King,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Les Miserables” and “Hamilton” (in which McKinnon, as former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, declares that she will, in fact, be throwing away her shot).
It was a cleareyed and loving tribute to New York as a perennial epicenter of disaster and opportunity — and it’s going to be really hard to top the next time Mulaney is on the show.
In the saga of other continuing “S.N.L.” franchises, there was also a new entry in the story of Domingo (Marcello Hernández) — the unexpectedly viral series that began with the “Bridesmaids Speech” sketch this past October — adding Pascal and Bad Bunny as his equally lascivious brothers. And although the series predates social media by several decades, Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” was back too, just in time for the era of bite-size TikTok consumption.
In other segments from the night:
A re-airing of Tom Schiller’s 1978 short film “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” in which John Belushi, in old-age makeup, visits the gravesites of his deceased “S.N.L.” co-stars, now plays very differently: Belushi became the first “S.N.L.” performer to die just four years later, at the age of 33. But what still comes through in the film is the refusal by “S.N.L.” to get too sentimental about its own past.
That vibe that was also strongly felt in new segments like “The Stagehand” (in which the original cast member Laraine Newman revisits “S.N.L.” and meets a laborer played by Pete Davidson, who has no idea who she or the show are) and Andy Samberg’s digital short “Anxiety,” in which he assures us that every single person who has ever worked on “S.N.L.” has anxiety. (And possibly I.B.S.)
The all-star anniversary format was a welcome opportunity to see characters from different generations of “S.N.L.” casts hang out and goof around with one another, whether it was an awkward duet between Robert Goulet (Ferrell) and Dooneese (Kristen Wiig), or a guest appearance from Linda Richman (Mike Myers) on “Bronx Beat,” hosted by Betty (Poehler) and Jodi (Maya Rudolph). We’re getting verklempt just thinking about it!
It was a pleasure to see Rachel Dratch return to the role of sourpuss Debbie Downer — and just as pleasing to see Robert De Niro finally tell her off after a misplaced scolding about microplastics. “I want to laugh and feel joy and have a sliver of hope for three [expletive] hours of my life,” De Niro protested. “That’s all I want. I came here tonight to get a little friggin’ break from our world right now. Which is like living in a full diaper.”
May “S.N.L.” carry those words in its heart for the next 50 years.
