Flawed but Occasionally Funny and Heartfelt, SNL50 Was a Microcosm of the Show Itself—And the Man Who Rules It
Maybe you’ve heard: Saturday Night Live just turned 50. Okay, it actually turns 50 later this year, but as the show tends to do it jumped the gun a bit and celebrated its anniversary a few months early. And despite gathering together some of the most famous and influential celebrities on Earth, along with hundreds of former cast members, and slowly unspooling over a generous three-and-a-half-hour allotment of NBC’s prime time schedule, SNL50: The Anniversary Special didn’t feel all that special. It felt like business as usual for a show that already congratulates itself as often as it possibly can, with only a few highlights coming close to the show’s rep as a comedy institution.
Let’s start with those. An audience Q&A bit, with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler “taking questions” from several of the celebrities in the crowd, was an easy way to cram in a ton of cameos, but it was well-written and funny and included an eclectic mix of stars, from Quinta Brunson to Bad Bunny to Keith Richards. Steve Martin was as reliable as ever in the special’s opening monologue. And the idea of replacing the traditional “in memoriam” segment (which they did on 2014’s Saturday Night Live 40 special) with a look back at all the questionable, problematic, and flat-out racist/sexist/homophobic material from the past that wouldn’t fly today was an unexpected twist (as well as one more chance for SNL to have its cake and eat it too).
Adam Sandler continued his transformation into a purveyor of misty-eyed nostalgia with another bittersweet song about the past. Somehow this always gets me, from his last two stand-up specials, to the recent-ish SNL episode where he sang a song about Chris Farley. Sadness has become a surprisingly prominent part of Sandler’s persona over the last couple of decades, and with its callouts to departed cast members like Jan Hooks, Phil Hartman, Norm Macdonald, and (of course) Chris Farley, his song last night served as a slightly more traditional in memoriam while still celebrating the show’s history.
The sketches didn’t fare as well, with some weird choices as to what characters and concepts were back. Eddie Murphy was excellent, of course, in his two sketches, doing a hilarious Tracy Morgan impersonation (alongside the real Tracy Morgan) in the return of Black Jeopardy, and joining Kenan Thompson and Jason Sudeikis in the latest version of their Scared Straight sketch. Scared Straight seemed like a weird one to tap for such a big special, though; it can be funny, but given how formulaic it is, and the fact that Thompson is still a cast member after 22 seasons, it feels like something we’ve seen recently—even if an online fact-check shows they apparently haven’t done the sketch in over a decade, since 2012.
One sketch we have seen recently, and that is just as formulaic, is the Close Encounter sketch where Kate McKinnon’s character Miss Rafferty details an alien abduction. It’s basically an exercise in seeing how many rhyming genital puns the writers can come up with, but McKinnon always made it work. It was initially a groaner to see it dragged out again last night, though; it was last done on the show less than a year ago, in the episode Ryan Gosling hosted in 2024, and was done several times during McKinnon’s run on the show, including a big “final” send-off in her final episode in 2022. And even for a show whose recurring sketches tend to be heavily repetitive, this one is notable for sticking tightly to its formula.
It became obvious why Miss Rafferty was brought back out for this special, though, about two-thirds of the way through the sketch. Meryl Streep—legendary actress and very good close personal friend of SNL legend Martin Short—made what is somehow her SNL debut as Miss Rafferty’s mom, nailing McKinnon’s matter-of-fact speech patterns and blase demeanor. It was a legitimately good cameo, and a fun moment that’s obviously getting a lot of media attention today, but given how many former cast members barely made an appearance during the special, they easily could’ve passed on more of Miss Rafferty.
For a 50th anniversary special about a show that started in 1975, it didn’t seem that interested in anything that happened in the 20th century. All of the sketches performed were from the last 25 years, and although they occasionally peppered in cast members from earlier eras (Murphy in two sketches, Mike Myers as Linda Richman in Poehler and Maya Rudolph’s Bronx Beat, Laraine Newman in a pretape with Pete Davidson’s Chad, David Spade in the latest version of John Mulaney’s elaborate musical theater homages), non-regulars like Pedro Pascal and Bad Bunny appeared in more sketches than almost any cast member from the show’s first 25 years. When you have almost everybody who’s ever performed on the show in one building, why roll out the umpteenth rendition of Debbie Downer, a sketch that was only ever popular to begin with because of how thoroughly everybody broke during its first performance? I can understand wanting to give Kristen Wiig a spotlight, and redoing the Dooneese / Lawrence Welk sketch let them fit in a couple of celebrity cameos (Scarlett Johnansson and, inexplicably, Kim Kardashian) and provided a perfect excuse for Will Ferrell to dig out his tremendous Bob Goulet, but it’s a character that’s been done nine times before, all within the last 17 years. Maybe let a character from the show’s first quarter-century have some of that time?
Whoever booked the musical performances did a better job at representing the full history of the show. It started off on a bad foot, with an awkward, meandering duet between Paul Simon (the most SNL musical guest possible) and Sabrina Carpenter on “Homeward Bound.” Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard teamed up on an SNL special for the second time in three days for a cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U;” Cyrus sang the hell out of it, and it’s a song whose most famous performer has an infamous history with SNL, but it’s also just like Saturday Night Live to treat Sinead O’Connor like shit during her lifetime for her entirely justified on-air protest and then try to celebrate that part of its history after she’s gone. Lil Wayne and The Roots did a medley of Weezy hits, Carpenter reappeared in the latest version of the viral Domingo wedding party sketch, and Andy Samberg and Bowen Yang dueted on a very ‘80s Digital Short about how every cast member in the show’s history has dealt with anxiety and IBS. Paul McCartney played the whole special off with the Abbey Road medley, as everybody at home and in the audience thought about Chris Farley asking Paul if the lyrics to “The End” were true. Friday’s SNL50: The Homecoming Concert was the musical peak of this anniversary weekend, but other than the Simon and Carpenter duet last night was perfectly fine from a musical standpoint.
One huge absence by a crucial cast member underscored SNL50’s weird disinterest in the first half of that history. Dan Aykroyd, who was basically “the glue” of that original cast, and who seems like the last person who’d ever want to miss something like this, was a no-show. The original cast was barely used last night; Bill Murray made two appearances, Newman was in that one pretape, and Garrett Morris introduced another replay of Tom Schiller’s 1978 short film “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” but other surviving originals Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin didn’t appear onscreen until the goodnights, when pretty much every cast member in attendance was on stage. I could understand why somebody like Dan Aykroyd would want to skip out on an anniversary special with such a strong streak of recency bias—one that maybe wouldn’t give him anything more than a token cameo—but it was still a bummer that he wasn’t there. (Other notable holdouts: Bill Hader, whose absence was glaring during the many times castmates from his era were onscreen; Dana Carvey, which is especially weird since he’s basically been an unofficial cast member this season; and former Weekend Update host Colin Quinn, who had a job to do, performing stand-up in North Carolina.)
Ultimately SNL50 was a good microcosm of Saturday Night Live as a whole. The special was in love with itself but selective about its history, and still aware enough to frequently mock its own conventions and weird institutional baggage. It also was a special dominated by one man who was rarely mentioned on camera and only seen for a brief moment at the very end.
Like last month’s SNL50 documentaries, the show’s creator and producer Lorne Michaels wasn’t an active onscreen participant in the special. He didn’t appear until the final minutes, and said nothing. His presence loomed over every aspect of the special, though, just as it does the weekly show and the way it commemorates its history. Despite continuing to rule SNL as his own personal kingdom, Michaels has increasingly receded from the spotlight over the years, perhaps because he’s drawn increasing scrutiny and criticism over his management style, the cult of personality he’s constructed, the fear and awe he’s cultivated in his employees, and the way his personal relationships and politics have influenced the show. Maybe that’s why SNL50 seemed so reluctant to acknowledge the 1970s: Michaels was more of an on-air presence back then, but he was also more of an equal to the cast members and writers of that era than he’s ever been since—their boss, sure, but also their friend, a peer, somebody who’d party and socialize with them, and not a cold, aloof, withholding father figure wielding an obscene amount of power over their future career prospects. Maybe Dan Aykroyd didn’t show up because he’s one of the few SNL cast members willing to tell Michaels exactly what he thinks when he finds out he’s not getting much airtime, in which case maybe this show needs more Dan Aykroyds.
It’s not hard to see SNL50 as not just an anniversary celebration but one of the capstones on Michaels’ tenure on the show. He apparently has no plan to step down anytime soon, despite turning 80 back in November. 50’s the kind of big, round number that makes sense for a retirement, but then Michaels has only been with the show for 45 of those seasons. Perhaps he’s gunning for a personal 50—or maybe he’s one of those people who won’t ever retire, who’ll lord over this 90 minutes of NBC’s late night schedule until he dies or is forced out. Either way, SNL50: The Anniversary Special would have been an ideal swan song for the man, letting him go out in a flurry of praise and adulation while also serving as a stark reminder of all of SNL’s many flaws—flaws that are both owned and shared by Michaels himself.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.