In SNL‘s 50th Anniversary Special, Musical Comedy Stole the Show

Steve Martin took the stage at 30 Rock on Sunday to deliver the monologue for NBC’s Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary special with a few absurdist nods to current events.

One of SNL’s all-time most successful alums, Martin introduced himself as its “newest diversity hire,” joked that a gag about its writers was written by AI, and made reference to “the Gulf of Steve Martin” (I, for one, would sign the change.org petition supporting this name change).

It was the right way to open a three-plus-hour live telecast that offered a commingling of the comedy institution’s iconic past and minefield present, amid the backdrop of our surreal 2025 reality.

Not every segment worked as well as Martin’s, and that was to be expected. One thing that has always been true about SNL is that just about every episode contains some mix of the brilliant, the merely clever, the five-minutes-too-long sketches, and the full-on “what were they thinking?” And too much pomp, of the sort that is inextricable from a victory lap like this one, can threaten to kill the anarchic spirit of a show that thrives on spontaneity.

Fittingly, though, among many highs and lows, SNL50 was at its best—and most distinct from both the heaps of anniversary content the Lorne Michaels factory has recently cranked out as well as similar specials from decades past—when it blended the elements of comedy and music that are the show’s essential components.

The SNL golden anniversary party has, by now, been raging for months. It began, in September, with Saturday Night, the Jason Reitman movie that reenacted (with plenty of print-the-legend embellishment) the frenzied 90 minutes leading up to the series premiere. The night after the film hit theaters, SNL kicked off what NBC has branded as The Anniversary Season. Come January, Peacock had both a four-part docuseries, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night—which included a full episode on the classic Christopher Walken-Will Ferrell sketch “More Cowbell”—and the feature doc Ladies & Gentlemen…: 50 Years of SNL Music, directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. On Friday, Lady Gaga, Cher, Bad Bunny, and many more took the stage at Radio City for SNL50: The Homecoming Concert, which aired live, also on Peacock. Meanwhile, there have been many articles and books commemorating the milestone; one of the latter made headlines Friday for a publicity gaffe involving Tina Fey and Jon Hamm.

When you consider that 50 years is an eternity in TV-comedy time—even Cheers got old after a decade—this level of fanfare doesn’t seem crazy. Michaels must’ve felt pressure to top 2015’s 40th anniversary special. That program’s mix of VIPs in formalwear (Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Jerry Seinfeld, Pauls McCartney and Simon), clip montages, and all-star sketches (“Celebrity Jeopardy,” “Wayne’s World”) felt convivial but a bit perfunctory. Eddie Murphy, who hadn’t graced the Studio 8H stage since his last hosting gig in 1984, was the biggest draw. But his joke-free cameo was even shorter than its intro by Chris Rock. Reviews called the evening “patchy,” “imperfect,” and “funny, except when it wasn’t.” (In true SNL fashion, Amy Poehler got there first in “Weekend Update”: “Saturday Night Live turns 40 this week with a live broadcast that won an Emmy within the first 10 minutes and then lost it somewhere in the middle.” As it turned out, the show would win Outstanding Variety Special, among other Emmys.)

If you want to know how much TV-comedy time has passed since then, well, a recent viewing reminded me that Sarah Palin popped up from the crowd to joke about running for president in 2016 with Donald Trump as her VP. Michaels had, of course, not yet granted Trump his fateful hosting gig. Subjects of #MeToo accusations like Louis CK and James Franco were part of the celebration, as was Kanye West (in the same studio where Taylor Swift was hamming it up in an all-star “Californians” sketch, no less). Culture wars in which comedy would become a fiery front were only just beginning to reignite. Since then, audiences have fragmented along lines of platform, generation, identity, and ideology. SNL’s survival in the 2020s has depended on its ability to attract eyeballs on live TV, streaming, and social media; to blend boomer icons and Gen Z faves (Stevie Nicks and Billie Eilish performed in successive episodes this season); and to capitalize on the popularity of edgelord comics like Dave Chappelle, Shane Gillis, and Bill Burr—not to mention edgelord billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk, who hosted in 2021—without alienating fans of progressive darlings like Chappell Roan, Quinta Brunson, and Ramy Youssef.

That imperatives to please all audiences and bridge generational divides were in full effect when SNL50 opened with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter teaming up for a duet of Simon & Garfunkel’s thematically appropriate “Homeward Bound.”

(When Simon reminisced about playing the song on the show in 1977, Carpenter replied: “I was not born then, and neither were my parents.”) The performance seemed to signal that the night’s program would represent a concerted effort to entertain viewers of all ages, though in truth it spent much more time honoring long-established legends than it did anointing new ones.

Controversy was studiously avoided. Many of the cast members and celebrities who made cameos had also been part of the 40th anniversary show (though loose cannons like Chappelle and Alec Baldwin were relegated to giving short introductions). In fact, Martin had given its monologue, too. The three-and-a-half-hour special closed with McCartney performing a Beatles medley that imparted such a sense of finality, I wouldn’t have been shocked if Michaels had come out onstage afterwards and announced that SNL was ending right then and there. (No such luck, haters.)

Modest improvements on the decade-old formula made SNL50 feel more like a variety show than an awards ceremony. The choice to favor new sketches over montages and other clips, this time, was smart; it’s not like old episodes of SNL are hard to find anymore.

Standbys like “Debbie Downer” (Rachel Dratch’s bummer queen played backstage bartender, serving cocktails and depression fuel to Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, and Ayo Edebiri) and “Black Jeopardy”—in which Murphy, back in top form, brought the house down playing Tracy Morgan alongside… Tracy Morgan playing one of his signature characters, Darius—delivered.

The mashup of Poehler and Maya Rudolph’s “Bronx Beat” with Mike Myers’ “Coffee Talk” was, well, like buttah. Some crowd work, featuring Keith Richards, Cher, and Ryan Reynolds benefited from the self-awareness of its hosts, Poehler and Fey, in poking fun at what was transparently an excuse to spotlight A-listers. And who didn’t tear up, watching the 1978 short “Don’t Look Back in Anger”—in which John Belushi plays an elderly version of himself visiting the graves of his SNL castmates—introduced by one of them, Garrett Morris.

Even the lowlights had their highlights. Teens who tuned in for Carpenter might not have lasted long, with an interminable Lawrence Welk Show sketch at the top of the program. But at least Kristen Wiig provided reliable laughs as weirdo singing sister Dooneese.

With current anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost at the desk, “Weekend Update” could’ve felt more special—until Murray came on to deadpan his way through a top 10 list of “Update” hosts that included neither of them. Unannounced guest Meryl Streep salvaged an overlong alien-abduction sketch, as the equally loony mother of Kate McKinnon’s oversharing serial abductee character (“This devil wears nada!”). Though “Nothing Compares 2 U” was a strange song choice for a show that did Sinead O’Connor, who made the track famous, so dirty, Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard did it justice.

For me, though, the most memorable moments combined comedy with music, rather than situating the two art forms side-by-side. Bowen Yang and Andy Samberg’s ’80s-pop-style music video about how everyone who has ever worked on SNL has been an anxious mess was an instant classic. (That genre-appropriate rap breakdown from Sarah Sherman and Chris Parnell? I mean!) Adam Sandler’s “50 Years” power ballad was by turns extremely funny (jokes about how all the interns are children of Michaels’ famous friends) and extremely poignant (tributes to his late castmates, Norm Macdonald and Chris Farley).

Writing staff alum and frequent host John Mulaney is responsible for a series of beloved Broadway-spoofing sketches that capture the fundamental strangeness of New York: “Diner Lobster,” “Subway Churro,” “Port Authority Duane Reade,” etc.

So of course he had to do a history of the city in song, from SNL’s 1975 premiere through the present, featuring a “Fame” sendup, McKinnon reprising her croaky Rudy Giuliani impression, and Nathan Lane belting “cocaine and some vodka” to the tune of “Hakuna Matata.” It was a sketch that epitomized what makes SNL worth celebrating—hilarious and catchy, witty and punctuated by slapstick, stupid and smart, specific to New York and universal to four generations of fans around the world.