We'll Do It Live!
Do east coasters know SNL airs at 8:30pm on the west coast? Bed by 10 baybeeee.
Here’s a complete list of the kinds of people I don’t want in my life: *clears throat* Those who declare with absolute certainly that Saturday Night Live isn’t funny.
One idea is to just loosen your pants and relax! And here at my free1 internet publication that I named “Mostly Full”, I like to see the positive side in things; assume most things are a glass mostly full, especially when it comes to culture because sayitwithme most culture is good. Life is too short to think that Saturday Night Live hasn’t been funny since [fill in the blank with the year you turned 17-ish].
And I’m sorry not sorry to the BIG GAME we’re still digesting but babes we all know there’s no other culture as important to our shared conversation this month as this show. I’ve struggled compiling some thoughts on SNL prior to its big 50th anniversary special this week. My thoughts on the series became so meandering I couldn’t focus on any singular point— should this have been expected for something with such a vast history? Heck even I had to narrow down some ramblings when I tried to make points about Survivor or Grey’s Anatomy in the category of “shows that are old yet ongoing”.
I began to think about defending its place in culture today, but who am I to something as huge as Saturday Night Live? Or I thought about trying to give space to all of my favorite performers, but that turned into me keyboard screaming about how women are and have always been the funniest part of this show. Then I just fantasized about what I expect to see in the upcoming special, instantly dating these paragraphs. So ALL OF THE ABOVE is dropped in below with bad segues in between; forgive the tangents!!!!
I had to zoom out to think about my first experiences with SNL. For many humor-focused children (me; like, name another important personality trait) who chose the couch on many Saturday nights through adolescence and college and adulthood (brave), this show and its lore became a cornerstone of my personal sense of humor. Even if I wasn’t conscious of SNL as a young kid, I was tuned in and turnt up for All That! which, to paraphrase everyone’s all-knowing-parent at some time I’m sure, is a kid-friendly version of the SNL format, down to the spinoff movies from its most successful characters. Ask me sometime about my theory of the alternate reality we’d be in if Lorne Michaels selected Kel instead of Kenan2 way back when… But I DIGRESS. (Kenan, retire bitch).
As a kid, when the concept of ELEVEN THIRTY PM didn’t exist, the formative view into SNL were the colorful Best of DVD collections. Maybe I don’t recall knowing what I was watching, but I know that Chris Farley living in a van down by the river was my family’s exclusive bit for years, until we learned about the Spartan cheerleaders, and so on and so forth.
I watched everything Molly Shannon did and probably didn’t even get half of the jokes. And, what do you mean the guy from The Wedding Singer used to be on this show? But regardless of knowing the context, I let this show become my personality before I even knew what I was watching. I had the child-lens of thinking these 25-year-old performers were full adults. You haven’t lived until you’ve burned a mix CD that included audio-only versions of 90s SNL sketches. Imagine putting in a CD to hear Britney Spears followed by Alanis Morissette cutting straight to the quiet comedy of “Schweddy Balls” - your Spotify Daylist could NEVER.
As I’ve grown up and continued to watch every week since I had control over my own television set, it has lived in this space between niche humor (nobody watches this!) and monoculture (everybody watches this!). The fancy open-floor-plan office of this decade doesn’t have a water cooler but if there’s any show that everyone seems to know still exists, it’s SNL. As opposed to the aforementioned Survivor, Grey’s Anatomy, etc etc, SNL is so culturally significant that everyone has at least one point of reference with the series. Even if they haven’t watched in years and years, they may have their opinion on who the best cast member was. Make nostalgic conversation with anyone by asking for their favorite SNL performers in relation to their birth certificate deets. Millennials, you’ll hover somewhere in the zone of Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri or Ana Gasteyer. If you didn’t find yourself until college or later, you may dabble in a Fred Armisen or Bill Hader with a Tina Fey rising. If you discovered the internet in 2008, Andy Samberg is your man. My millennial siblings’ senses of humor could boil down to a single personality or amalgamation of personalities from SNL: My brother is Will Ferrell-coded whereas my sister is very Kristen Wiig.
As long as this show has been important to me, it’s the ladies (and select men, Bowen Yang, Andrew Dismukes’ ears) that bring me back every week. The way I grin when almost any woman enters into the frame — I wish misogynists could experience the happiness of a mediocre script landing because it has Heidi Gardner at the helm. And Ego Nwodim creating the only new recurring character in years on this show with “Lisa from Temecula”!! In my professional life, my team once lost an entire afternoon in a television writers room after watching Liza Minnelli Tries to Turn Off a Lamp… Then proceeded to rewrite an entire episode to slot in a character modeled after Kristen Wiig’s Liza Minelli. The list goes on: formerly Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, JUST TO NAME A FEW. Meanwhile Chris Kattan (famously a man) is being bad on Celebrity Big Brother.3
Much of my 2025 attention has been focused on Saturday Night Live’s upcoming anniversary special (a great way to ignore the bad news of the world is to only take it in small doses via Colin Jost and Michael Che’s news desk). It’s one of those big event TV shows that will make me happy regardless what happens — how’s that take for someone who fancies himself a cultural critic?!?!?!?!1??
The SNL50 celebration should be about celebrating the old and new together. The guest stars that had a great relationship with 30 Rock in the 90s and now. Save the clip packages that we’ve seen one hundred times (on DVD, recall), and bring us something unique, new, old, borrowed, blue. Let Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch recreate Debbie Downer to see them break anew. Give new talent the stage time to work with old talent: Give me Leslie Jones redoing “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood”. Give me Jane Curtain as “Target Lady”. Line up every Weekend Update anchor to do… something! Above all else, just give me more reminders why this show will be around forever, despite rumors of Lorne Michael’s imminent retirement (Kenan, take the hint) and that’s tea for season 51 but for now, its lore is still being built with new sketches all the time.
Also I just can’t wait to see who gets to say LIVE FROM NEW YORK IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT (it airs on Sunday but 🤷🏻♀️).
(Kenan, cash in the 401k).
Peacock (top-tier streaming service!!!) has been slowly releasing various SNL50 content over the past month leading up to the big celebration. Of note:
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night - this four-episode docuseries is uneven at best, and tonally all over the place in a way that just had me writing down questions for the creative team. However, episodes 1 and 3 were IT.
Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music - a two hour documentary celebrating and highlighting what this show has done for modern music. Yes they talk about Ashlee Simpson. If you don’t have two hours, please watch the 8-minute introduction sequence and then compose yourself after.
Wait would you pay for this 👀
A sketch doesn’t work for me if Kenan is the lead; he can have 3-5 background lines.
(To his credit, Will Ferrell just made a lovely documentary and I saw Jason Sudeikis at a local gay bar for trivia night so… ally.)
If Kyle is Will and Kevyn is Kristin, who is your mother. I stand with Kenna!😘
I wish we were all sitting on the couch watching this together!