Episode 85 - SNL 50th Anniversary Special Recap

[00:00:06] It's the Ten to One Podcast with your host Brad Oman, featuring Ben Conowitz and Nate Lauchs. And here's the podcast! It's the 50th anniversary of our show, The Ten to One. I'm 50! And I'm... Guys, we did it. We are here. It's been five decades. 1975 we started this show. You look great. Back then you were driving a taxi. Yep.

[00:00:35] Nate, you were in seminary. Yep. And I was hooking. Yep. Yeah. And it was tough out in those streets. It was tough in those streets. Yeah. We were always loading up on heroin. And your handler got really sick and he coughed a lot. Yes. He was very sick. RIP. Dustin Kaufman. Yeah. Dustin Kaufman. RIP. Guys. We're back. Holy shit. Can we just say holy shit? This was fun. It was so fun.

[00:01:05] Also, I don't know about you guys, but there were times where I was a little emotional watching this. Well, you're getting ahead of yourself. Let's... This is the 50th anniversary episode... Don't tell me what I'm doing. ...of Saturday Night Live. You don't know. SNL 50. SNL 50 is what they're calling it. I don't like your face. Shut the fuck up, Nate. I'm trying to introduce the fucking episode. I don't care. SNL 50. We love it. We know it. There was so much leading up to this. They had those documentaries that were released, which we were going to do an episode about. We're still going to do an episode about.

[00:01:35] We all got sick. Well, Nate didn't get sick. I didn't. Nate has the protection of Jesus. Ben and I are from the devil. Heathens. We got very sick. So we didn't get to do what we wanted to do. We will be covering those very soon, as well as another documentary that was released on NBC and Peacock about the music of SNL. So good. As well as the SNL 50 homecoming concert, which was basically like a pregame 50th anniversary special in itself. So we'll talk about all those later.

[00:01:59] But tonight is just about the SNL 50, a proper anniversary special that aired on Sunday night on NBC and Peacock. I was just I what I didn't have any anxiety. I was I love the show so much that normally I have to defend it because there's good and bad, good and bad and a lot of bad sometimes because it's hard to do live television. I had no anxiety here. It was like perfect. Like even the sketches that didn't go well because of technical issues.

[00:02:27] But anybody that watched that that had a problem with it, you just you just don't understand comedy. You don't like comedy. You're not a good person. I also didn't have anxiety about it either because I knew this wasn't. Listen, if you don't like it, I don't care. This is not for you. Yeah. This is for us. Right. This is for Lorne Michaels. This is for SNL cast members, writers, crew and in the millions and millions and millions of people that love it.

[00:02:53] If you ever hear anybody say something to the effect of, oh, that's not as funny as it used to be. You look them straight in the eye and you say, fuck your whole family. Whoa. OK. All right. It's easy. It's worth dismissing an entire family for. OK. But no, it's I was equally excited for this. I was just I couldn't wait to see what they did. You know, you knew it was going to be a star set at event. They were going to have a special guests from cast members to former hosts and big cameos.

[00:03:20] And just it's a basically two and a half hour episode of SNL. And like, even though it can be hard to sustain a two hour comedy movie. This is like little chunks of sketches with, you know, recurring characters and funny bits. They could have doubled the length. They could have doubled the length. Oh, it could have went long. There were characters like I wish I would have would have seen that. So we talked about a little bit about the 40th compared to the 50th and the 40th definitely felt like obviously more of a celebration.

[00:03:47] And it was like, OK, we're going to have we're going to have famous people recreating some famous characters from the show. This just really felt like an episode more or less. Yeah, the 40th felt more self-congratulatory, like a real like, oh, man, let's look back at SNL's history. Kind of like it was like the first time they'd really properly done that, you know, in a way, because like the 25th anniversary, they did a similar big celebration. The 40th felt even bigger. And I expected something similar from this.

[00:04:16] But yeah, this felt almost like if you were to do like a blockbuster movie episode of SNL. That's what this was, you know, and they had a few retrospective things. But it even seemed like potentially to its detriment, if there was one complaint I would have, is that there was no there wasn't as much of a focus on the original cast members. And I think part of that is because they did do a lot of stuff with original cast members and paying honor to them in the 40th.

[00:04:43] No, and I see I don't say I don't paint that as a detriment because I do think that it's they did that right. And it's quote unquote only been 10 years. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, you're definitely gonna focus on stuff from 2000 to now a lot more than you're gonna focus on the original cast because you again, they had their whatever the 10th, the 25th and the 40th to kind of do the history. Yeah. So this was that being said, though, like Eddie Murphy still stole the show.

[00:05:12] So that's the cool thing, though, is when they did the 40th, Eddie Murphy at the time had still had his beef. Yeah, that was a big deal. So he appeared and him just being there to introduce something was like, oh, wow, they got Eddie back. So having him play this time and actually be involved back. He's so good. But yeah, it's I have. I think that this felt more like a proper like episode of SNL rather than just, you know, celebrating in a way. I wonder to Brad if because they're doing all these other things right.

[00:05:42] Peacock and NBC went all out on this special or on on SNL's 50th anniversary. Yeah, with the documentaries, the other specials. Also, I've been sending you guys some YouTube stuff, you know, like, you know, different variety, I think did a, you know, everyone's doing interviews and specials with either former cast members or whatever. Tonight Show and Seth Meyers had interviews with all we cast members all week. Yeah.

[00:06:04] And so I wonder if they felt like that wasn't as important because it feels like everyone is getting time right now, even if it wasn't necessarily the special, the 50th anniversary special. There's so much other stuff happening. Yeah. And that's a that's a fair point, Nate, is if you do have this incredibly deep retrospective in the run up to this, then the show can just be what it is. Yeah. And so but I was thinking about this. So it's 50 years.

[00:06:33] What was the first season that you remember actually starting to watch SNL? Probably it was the early 90s. So I probably saw like Phil Hartman and I remember Farley. I remember Spade. I remember Sandler. Oh, yeah. But I do remember Lovitz and. Yep. Same.

[00:06:57] And Hartman and like Jan Hooks maybe before that, like staying up too late at 10 or 11 years old. That's so you and I are roughly the same age. You're you're you're older than me by like a month and a half years. But I remember at around 10 or 11 years old. For me, you don't have an older brother. I have an older brother that's four years older than me. He was watching at 15. And so I started watching it. Yeah.

[00:07:24] And like you said, it would have been the pre Farley years by a couple of years. But by the time Farley and Sandler and all those. I was a legit fan. I wouldn't miss an episode. Yeah. By the time 95 96 rolled around, I did not go out on Saturday nights in middle school and high school because I wanted to watch that.

[00:07:47] So you think about that, even though we're in our early 40s, we've seen so much of SNL. Right. I mean, really, 16th, 17th season on. Yeah. So 25 years of it. Yeah. What about you, Brad? So I started watching the 44th episode. My favorite original cast member was Jimmy Fallon. No, I don't know what specific season it was.

[00:08:14] But how I got into SNL to begin with was I saw Wayne's World, the movie first. That's right. On VHS. And I would watch it all the time at my aunt's house. And because I liked Wayne's World, every now and then my parents would like call me into the room, like if Wayne's World was on SNL and I would watch it. And then there were times when I knew when SNL was on and stuff like that, that I would like go to watch it when they were watching it. And I'd be like, where's Wayne's World? Where's Wayne's World? Why did they do Wayne's World? I'm like, we only do it every time. I'm like, why? Why?

[00:08:43] That would be what I would do. Yeah. And so that was my first thing. And so I would try and catch it. And because of that, I would see other sketches and whatnot. When I think when I started really going out of my way to watch it was around the time that the Roxbury sketches started, because at the time I was also obsessed with Jim Carrey. Yeah. And when he hosted, I was like, oh, I got to watch that. And so seeing that Roxbury sketch with Jim Carrey. So like late 90s-ish? Mid 90s was when I really started to watch. And then after that, I was watching all the time as much as I could. Yeah.

[00:09:13] Yeah. Man, it just, it was so, again, like not anxiety ridden, because normally I'm so nervous that I want the show to go well. It just felt good. Yeah. In high school, I was, the two awards I won, you know, went at the end where they do the high school most likely to. Fattest hog. No, no. Surprisingly. No. Surprisingly. This is funny. Most likely to be the next Donald Trump was me. Oh. Whoa.

[00:09:43] And that's actually come true. Now, I will say 1999-2000 was a different time. But also. Donald Trump was still bad though. Oh, I know. But, yeah. People didn't know it though. We're like, well, it was pretty fresh after that. He was more like a game show host at that point. He was a character. Right. Yeah. A game show host who raped his wife. Oh my God. He wasn't a game show host then. That was like a couple of years after Home Alone 2 lost in New York. I thought, wasn't The Apprentice in like 2000? No.

[00:10:14] Not yet. No, The Apprentice was around that. No. Not long after. No. Stop. Pretty early 2000s. I'm going to look it up right now. If The Apprentice premiered in 2000 and that's why you got it? Because Survivor started in like 1998, right? The Apprentice started in 2004. Okay, so pretty close. I mean, no. I mean, four years earlier. So wait, okay. So what was the thing about Donald Trump in 1999 that winning that means what? You're going to be a successful business person?

[00:10:42] I think because my dad was wealthy then I was going to be wealthy. That makes sense. Which I did not go that route. But the other one was most likely to host SNL. So my friends even knew. I just, I was passionate about it. And Donald Trump did both. Yeah. He did. Wow. So I have not, I don't have the wealth of Donald Trump and I've never hosted SNL. But it has been a part of my life and has influenced so much of the comedic, like just

[00:11:11] enjoyment and sensibilities that have defined so much of who I am that it was fun to watch, but it was also there were times where I was getting emotional because the cast members that I love are all getting old. They're all getting old. Oh, yeah. You know? And they're great and they're still so funny. But did you guys feel that at all? I mean, did you get a little nostalgic watching any of it? I've been getting nostalgic the entire time leading up to it. I mean, watching the documentaries, watching the concert and everything.

[00:11:41] It's just, it's been bringing warm feelings to my heart. And so. Even Loren seems older to me right now. I mean, he is old. He's an old man. Yeah. But for some reason, I knew he was getting older. He never looked like he was getting older to me. He's starting to look like a grandpa and he's also getting so old that he doesn't sound like the typical Loren voice anymore. Exactly. And so. His posture is just. It happens. It's definitely hunched. Yeah. His head's starting to sink into his shoulders. A little turtle guy. A little turtle man.

[00:12:11] But. So I was grateful for this. And we're going to talk about each sketch, all these kinds of things like we usually do. I was grateful for it. And I was nostalgic about it. And I just, I loved every minute of it because it gave me everything I wanted in that two and a half hours. It made me hopeful for like a 60th, a 70th. You know, I want to, every 10 years they should be doing this.

[00:12:36] I really do feel like it's worth celebrating every 10 years because you're going to have people that definitely you've lost. You're going to have, I think the number one thing that I would like to see moving forward if they do this every 10 years, let's say, is the do it like this. Because the ability for like Will Ferrell and Eddie Murphy in a sketch for the first time ever. Yeah. Things like that, those crossovers across generations.

[00:12:58] This is like if you grew up in the 90s and you're like, oh, hey, what if, what if Michael Jordan could still play at a high level and was with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and Shaq at the same level? Because sketch performing, you know, Will Ferrell and Eddie Murphy are still peak, right? They're still amazing performers. It's like having a dream team. And I want to see it every 10 years. Now, Brad, before this, we talked a little bit and you were really excited. About Jim Brewer.

[00:13:28] About the potential for Jim Brewer to do Go Boys. Of course. And that did not happen, nor did Rob Schneider doing Copy Guy. Were you upset about that? So upset doesn't even begin to describe. Because I think that if they did Goat Boy and the Copy Guy and they did something like blow up the office. Making copies. Blow up the office they're in or something like that. That would have been pretty nice. But no, yeah. I mean, Rob Schneider was there at least wearing a stupid hat. And whoever put him right by the Reverend Al Sharpton, kudos to you. Smart. Let them annoy the hell out of each other.

[00:13:59] Well, guys, you want to just get into this? Yeah, let's talk because we got a lot to cover. A lot of show. A lot of meat in this sandwich. That's a great way to get into it. A lot of beef in this cheeseburger. Oh, boy. All right, opening monologue. Steve Martin opens the special with a monologue reflecting on his long history with Saturday Night Live. He is joined on stage. Well, hold on, because before we get to that. Are we going to do all the music? No, no, no. We don't do music. We don't do music.

[00:14:29] We don't do music. Shut up, you ugly shit. So the show opens with Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon, who's retired, doing a ballad. And it was meaningful. It was a song from early on national history. To me, it was kind of an odd way to start the show. And I wonder if they did it like this because they wanted to give everyone time to get to their seats. Because the red carpet ran right up to the beginning of the show.

[00:14:56] Well, also, I'm sorry, but if you're being pragmatic about this, you're not going to have a cavalcade of laughter and be like, you know what we should do? Let's slow it down with Paul Simon. If I was saying, let's get everyone's attention, I'm going to put that up there first. Yeah, in that way, it's a good decision. Part of me wishes that they maybe would have saved that for later, though, because it felt like a more meaningful song and did a different performance up front to get everyone's attention.

[00:15:24] Only because the thing that felt weird was they gave them the chance to say live from New York at Saturday night and the mics were too low and it kind of flubbed it. And so it just felt like a weird way to start the special. There was a lot. You could tell this. Early on, the technical stuff was tough. I don't know that there's, I don't have a problem with them opening the show with a thing like that. I really don't think, though, that they needed to have those two be the ones to do live.

[00:15:51] Like, there could have been a different segue to do that. Yeah. That's all. It's just weird. Paul Simon has a pretty storied history. Well, exactly. And Sabrina Carpenter is very hot. Right now. And she did have the good joke about her parents not even being born yet. Yes, that's true. But really, Steve Martin. All right. Steve Martin. Again, I kind of got interrupted. Well, he didn't start when the show started.

[00:16:18] Steve Martin opens the special with a monologue reflecting on his long history with Saturday Night Live. He is joined on stage by John Mulaney and Martin Short, leading to banter and interactions among the three. All right. Let's start with that. What did you guys think? Was he the right choice to start and do the monologue? I think so. Oh, yeah. All right. Moving on. No.

[00:16:39] Steve Martin obviously sets the right tone for the entire night here because you've got a comedian that is a legend in his own right outside of SNL. And then when he speaks, people listen. And in that room of all of these incredible A-list comedians, they have so much reverence for him. Yeah. They're hanging on his every word in that moment. And so were we then. So what did you think about the David Letterman kind of bring in a little bit?

[00:17:09] There's a lot of good audience work in this episode as a whole. What did you think of David Letterman? I mean, it was just a fun little bit. I think one of the funniest bits that I actually liked was Mulaney going through the list of Grammy nomination? Emmy nomination? Emmy win? No. No. There we go. Gold Globe nomination? Yeah. Yep. There it is. I knew it. It's so funny because I watched this with my daughter who's 16 years old.

[00:17:36] And there was a lot of people she doesn't watch SNL. So there's a lot of people she doesn't know or just kind of knows of but isn't familiar. But when Steve Martin came on, she's like, I love Steve Martin. Yeah. And then when Martin Short came on, I love Martin Short. For a 16-year-old girl to understand and have reverence about it. To love those two because of Only Murders, right? Well, also, I mean, Jack Frost and Cheaper by the Dozen. Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Yeah, bring it out of the house.

[00:18:05] But again, though, not with a 16-year-old who was born in 2008. Yeah, you're barking up the wrong tree there, Brad. I don't know. I feel like the Santa Claus 3 probably appeals to nobody. That movie came out when? The youth. When did it come out? 2003. Yeah, so she was not born yet? No, but like children love movies. But you stop after Santa Claus 2. Well, you stop after Santa Claus 1. Yeah, that's true. But no, great monologue. Lots of fun. I love that Steve Martin called Ice on Martin Short.

[00:18:36] So yeah, it was good stuff. Do you guys know that David Letterman did audition for SNL? He did? I did not know that. In 1975, he had auditioned for the original cast. I want you to know this. He did not get hired. But he's doing okay. Eh, we'll see. He's still got a while ago. We'll talk about the documentaries. But one of the things in the documentaries that I loved most was where they featured the people that auditioned that didn't make the show.

[00:19:06] And just a small snippet, right? Because so many incredible. Incredible. And those were just ones they had the video of, right? So many incredible comedic actors and comedians have auditioned for SNL and did not make it. And ultimately went on to incredible careers. Of course. I like the Steve Martin talk directly to the audience. Maybe it's your fault. That's a great thing about what are you bringing to the monologue? Yeah, exactly. I love that.

[00:19:35] A lot of inside baseball. You know, what do you say? Downey writes the monologue five minutes beforehand or whatever. Or who's the guy that writes the monologue? Oh, yeah. He made an offhand reference to like, you know, clearly they don't write the monologue until the day before. And he's kind of phoned in half the time. So that's the first of a lot of inside baseball as far as how anxiety ridden the show is and how you're just competitive and you're really trying your best.

[00:20:03] And you hate it here a lot of times. I did feel like, and again, because we watch and listen to so much of the cast members talk about their experience. And we take a lot of that in through different podcasts and stuff like this. But I did love how much of the show was also cast members talking to other cast members and having fun with their experiences. Right. They were not speaking to the camera. They were. There's a shared dynamic. They were having an anniversary special for the people in the room. It felt like a lot of times, which I loved.

[00:20:32] I got to just kind of peek into a party that I was not invited to. Fly on the wall, right? Is that the podcast? That's how we all felt. Yep. All right. Moving on. The Lawrence Welk Show. And is this Maharel Sisters? From the Finger Lakes? No. It's the sisters that sing the songs. Yeah, they're from the Finger Lakes. From the Finger Lakes. But is it Maharel? I wasn't sure if I pronounced that right. It's Matahari. I don't know.

[00:21:02] They say it in the sketch. I don't remember. I know, but I don't remember that. Now you're confusing me. All right. A revival of the classic parody of The Lawrence Welk Show features the singing Maharel Sisters. With Dunice. Dunice. And her tiny hand stealing the spotlight. All right. So this had Fred Armisen, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Anna Gasteyer. Anna Gasteyer. She had a great episode. Sixth person of the year here.

[00:21:31] Kim Kardashian, Scarlett Johansson, Kenan Thompson. It did leave Nora, the daughter, with the question, why is Kim Kardashian in this? Did you guys feel the same way? I think about that every time I see her. I don't understand why she's around. But yeah, I mean, I think she's there just because she's Kim Kardashian and she's friends with famous people. And so, yeah. Because I didn't feel like her episode was all that great. No. No. So I think Lawrence Welk Show parody kind of started in the late 2000s, roughly.

[00:22:00] Is that probably right? Sure. Because there's Kristen Wiig. Sure. Yeah. And then we've got Will Ferrell as who? Goulet. Robert Goulet. Robert Goulet. Goulet. So what did you guys think of this? Dinkle, donkle, donkle, donkle, someone's calling you. Goulet. He's just, I mean, I just, I watch Will Ferrell do anything, you know? I don't care that it's maybe not his best character of all time. I just, I love Will Ferrell. He's good at it.

[00:22:30] It's very Ron Burgundy adjacent. Yep. But the look does help. And the fact that he's singing also makes it better. But yeah, this is one of my favorite things when they do anniversary specials is the opportunity for character crossovers. So doing Lawrence Welk again is one thing, but then bringing Will Ferrell into it as Robert Goulet puts down a different plane, you know? Yeah. No, it was just epic. And a lot, you're going to hear me say pretty much the same thing all night, which is like, it was just so cool to see. It was so cool to see that. Yeah.

[00:22:58] And like here, it's always the response to Denise that is the best. And because it's Ferrell's version of Goulet reacting, it's that much more funny too. It is though. There's nothing you can say right now that's not going to make me fall in love with you. Forehead. Forehead. Oh, take that again. Forehead. Yeah. You've got a lot of cast members in this, right? And you're reminded of some of the things they did well. Some of them are okay. Appreciate all of them.

[00:23:28] But there are some when they get back onto the stage, you are reminded why they were just electric. Will Ferrell and Crystal Wig do that to me every time they're on the stage where you're going, oh, there is something different about you guys as performers, right? And I will say in this episode overall, I was constantly reminded of that. Yep. Eddie Murphy, you know, hasn't done sketch comedy or whatever. It doesn't matter. He's a fucking pro.

[00:23:58] You know, it made me laugh so hard. Sudeikis, he just jumps right back in. And they, Forte, right back in. Dratch, right back in. It doesn't matter. They haven't done this. There was no cop-waves for a lot of them. It's literally just like riding a bike. They are just right back in. And it was so fun to see. Again, maybe that was also very helpful. I wasn't nervous because there's no host here that isn't one of our favorites, right? Yeah. Well, except for maybe Kardashian.

[00:24:26] But even she didn't fuck up her lines, right? Everybody got it, you know? And just, it's like watching an episode of somebody who you trust over and over and over again. And it was fantastic. All right, moving on. Black Jeopardy, a special edition of Black Jeopardy, features a mix of current and former cast members. Keenan Thompson hosts the game show with contestants Shanice, Darius, and Eddie Murphy playing the role of Tracy Morgan. And Tom Hanks comes back and reprises his role as Doug.

[00:24:56] This had, again, Keenan, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Tom Hanks in it. I kind of expected to see this one back there because, again, it's such a good sketch. But this one I've seen the most fodder on social media about. Obviously, conservatives didn't like it because they feel like Tom Hanks was making fun of them. You know what's so funny about that?

[00:25:24] Because I did see a couple of the stupid Twitter conservative pundits. The kind of people who they're like, I'm watching the SNL 50th anniversary episode and I haven't laughed once so far. And it's like, cool, you're hate watching. You're not going to laugh because it's not for you because you're a dumb piece of shit. But then they specifically comment, oh, they had Tom Hanks come out in a MAGA hat just to make fun of everybody. It's like, no, no. You obviously didn't see the first one. In 2016, I think. Because this is a callback. And actually, that bit is great because it actually humanizes you fucking monsters.

[00:25:52] Because he's a character who actually identifies with the black audience and comes to common ground with them. It's a lovable version of you. Yeah. It's a lovable version of you. And people were obviously mistaking what happened, too, because it's not that he didn't want to shake Kenan's hand. It's that he didn't know what kind of handshake he should do. That's the joke. And if you don't get that, it's like. That was the stuff on, oh, why is he scared of Kenan? No, that's not the joke. The joke is I don't want to fuck this up.

[00:26:19] But I will say, I think that what didn't help, at least as far as comedically, is they did have a technical flub. They cut to Tom Hanks as he entered and was waiting to be introduced. And they spoiled the character introduction. And the sketch never quite recovered after that. I felt bad, honestly, for their tech people because there was a couple coffee talk. The mic. There were mic issues there.

[00:26:46] There was just a lot of stuff going on. And obviously, there was, I mean, I think I didn't count it, but probably 80 at least people that were using microphones. There's just no. So they're sharing. It's just a lot going on. There was, I think, somewhat less technical difficulties this time than a normal episode in a lot of ways. Yeah. Obviously, they were smart. They didn't do a lot of sketches where they're going to jump cut a lot and there's not a lot going on.

[00:27:13] The Mulaney thing was probably the most grandiose part of that. But again, if we saw the documentary about how many wigs they use, 80 wigs in a single episode, a normal episode, 350 in this one. Exactly. You just amped up to 11. And so every time that something happened with the tech, I'm like, this is fine. Honestly, this is not bad. It was understandable to me. It was so forgiving. What did you guys think of Eddie Murphy playing Trace Morgan? Oh, my God.

[00:27:43] So funny. I didn't know that I needed it. Yeah. And I'm sure, like, Eddie Murphy has this, right? This is a parting trick for him, I'm sure. Oh, God. Because I'm sure they're friends. What is the line? I don't eat three cheese lasagnas. Yeah, he's got three cheeses on. I don't eat it. Yeah. It's amazing. It was just so good. And, you know, knowing, again, listening to Tina Fey talk about Trace Morgan and stuff like that, I would almost be willing to bet Trace Morgan had said that in real life. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:13] Right? Like recorded. Exactly. Like that. Because you don't even, from what I understand, you don't have to parody Trace Morgan. You just say the things that he says, and it's just funny. So, no, I thought this was very well done. And, honestly, I don't know. We'll get through it because there's like 19 sketches, but I don't think I'm going to say there was a terrible one. So, we'll keep on moving on. Physical comedy clip montage.

[00:28:39] This was presented by Emma Stone and Molly Shannon as Sally O'Malley. This montage showcases the best physical comedy moments from SNL's 50-year history featuring Pratt Falls, slapstick, and exaggerated physical performances. I love that they did this because, again, going back to the things that we've read and seen,

[00:29:03] the physical comedy aspect to SNL is actually one of the things that cost the cast members most. I'm talking about sometimes, I'm not saying it gets them addicted to pain medicine, but it comes at a cost to many of them. It hurts them. Right? Right? And so, and it's such a funny part of SNL.

[00:29:28] And so, I'm glad they kind of paid homage to this because I wouldn't have thought about it. I wouldn't have done it, but I appreciated it. What did you guys think of this? No, I'm joking. It was great. You know you're going to see Chris Farley in all these. You know, that's a given. Speaking of somebody, though, that it did cost him. Oh, no, absolutely. It hurt him. But the one that sticks out to me more than any that I can't kind of forget about is Molly Shannon. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:56] Her superstar character, Mary Catherine Gallagher, my God, those chairs are real chairs. Those aren't prop chairs. Those do not give away like that. That's like, you see how wrestling's not fake because they hit them with real chairs? Yeah. She's literally slipping and twisting and, oh my, I felt so bad for her watching. Hilarious, but at what cost? And, you know, Chris Kattan famously broke his neck on a pratfall at Saturday Night Live

[00:30:23] and he's had five surgeries on it and you saw him at the 50th and he looks not great. So, there's a real cost when it comes to this stuff. And it's a nice reminder that like these people are literally putting everything they have into the show. Mm-hmm. Yep. I am a sucker for a montage and a super cut. Me too, yeah. I could have watched like four or five things like this, a paying tribute to various aspects of SNL. I'm glad they didn't overcrowd it with stuff like this even though I would have loved it. Let's do another documentary just above snippets of this stuff. Seriously. No, exactly. Exactly.

[00:30:53] So, if you had to say who is probably the best at physical comedy in SNL, would we all say Chris Farley was? Yeah. It's Chevy Chase. I mean, Chevy Chase. I'm not joking. Chevy Chase set the standard that... I mean, a lot of people say Belushi did as well, right? I would say, I think Chevy Chase was the best at the pratfall. No, and that's specifically what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about guy falls down makes funny. Yes. Now, as far as physicality, Belushi by far.

[00:31:23] Belushi or Farley. Yeah. Because they both had the same kind of thing where they were very agile. I mean, Chris Farley can do handstands and cartwheels at 290 power, whatever he was. And dancing with Swayze and things like this. Exactly. Knowing how to use his body physically. Yeah. That's a difference than a pratfall, though. Mary Catherine Gallagher and even somebody like Chris Kattan that did pratfalls. I mean, Will Ferrell did a lot of physical comedy, too, right?

[00:31:52] But Chevy Chase, oh my God. If you watch his stuff, it's embarrassing how effortless it looks and how real it looks. Because I bet you anybody in the 70s watching that had debates at their little dinner parties or fondue in between fondue bites. Like, do you think that was staged? Because it's so lifelike. You're fond of it? Yeah. I'll fondue it. Okay. All right. Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy. Yeah.

[00:32:20] A revival of the Deep Thoughts segment from the 1990s. Jack Handy reflects on SNL's 50 years. Even as a kid, again, this is probably, Ben, when we're 12 years old, maybe 11, 12, Deep Thoughts is one of my favorite things. Always. It's always been one of my favorite. We talked about this when we watched because you didn't want to spend time with us and watch together with us. But me and Ben and our friend Liz, who was watching with us, we talked about our favorite Deep Thoughts.

[00:32:50] Do you have one that you remember, Nate? No, I don't. I didn't re-look at them, but did you have any that you loved particularly? Yeah. I'm getting them right now. I was hoping that you saw more. You wanted me to vamp a little bit? I paraphrase mine because I don't need to look them up. That's what I was going to say. Mine, I don't want to ruin mine because it's the exact wording that makes it. Sure. That's what I'm saying. That's the hard thing with Jack Handy, too, is every word was almost... Exactly. It was very specific.

[00:33:20] And concise. There's no fat on these jokes. But again, listening to Mike Berger talk when they do his podcast where he talks about jokes, every word sometimes with comedians is there are funnier words to use, right? And so Jack Handy is perfect at this. There are funnier words to use and Jack Handy finds them. Yeah. So one of my favorite ones is anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh because what is that thing? It's so good.

[00:33:49] And then one of my other ones is the... Ben, do yours. I mean, I'll just paraphrase mine. No, it's got to be exact. Go. It's the one about when a child asks, why is it raining? It's because... I think a cute thing to say is... I think a cute thing to say is God's crying. And then the child says, well, is it because of something I did? Yes. Yes, it is.

[00:34:17] If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one do you think like dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong though. It's Hambone. By the way... So good. I'm going to read the one that Ben was trying to do because it's better. It's going to be better. Yeah. Yeah. I said, guys, I don't remember them. He didn't want to do the work. Verbatim. If a child asks, why does it rain? Tell him it's because God is crying. And if the child asks, why is God crying? Tell them, probably because something you did. Exactly.

[00:34:48] That's so good. If God dwells inside us, like some people say... Oh, yeah. I read this one last night. I sure hope he likes enchiladas. Because that's what he's getting. I love that so much. The crows seem to be calling his name, thought Kaa. One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned out warehouse. Oh, no. I said, Disneyland burned down. He cried and cried.

[00:35:16] But I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late. But it was getting pretty late. By the way, I want to say, I don't know where you got your... But even your version of the rain one is not accurate. I got it from Reddit and they don't lie. Yeah. If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is God is crying. And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is probably because of something he did. Yeah. Even the word cute, right? Exactly.

[00:35:46] If you ever drop your keys in molten lava, let them go because, man... Man, they're gone. They're gone. Yeah. I actually wish that they would have done like two or three deep thoughts. Yeah, exactly. Brought them back. Yeah. It would have been nice because we used to scatter them throughout episodes. You would have two or three in a single episode. But just having Jack Handy back with a deep thought was nice. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's all about the money. It is. I love money. All right. Domingo sketch for the kids. That's what I'm going to say this is for now. The kids.

[00:36:17] The youths. For the youths. The youths love Domingo. All right. The sketch for a wedding reception centers on eccentric family members and friends. Martin Short and Molly Shannon portray overbearing parents who create chaos throughout the event. The character Domingo and he has other flamboyant relatives that add to this community extension. What did you guys think of this? We had additions to this, right? So we had Sabrina Carpenter in this.

[00:36:44] Heidi Gardner, Sarah Sherman, Ega Wodum, Chloe Feynman, and Andrew Smukes play the couple again. Molly Shannon and Martin Short are the parents. Then they added this other element of groomsmen. You have Andy Samberg, Bowen Yang, Beck Bennett, and Kyle Mooney. Welcome back, boys, by the way. Missed you. Marcelo Hernandez is Domingo. Pedro Pascal is Ronaldo. And Bad Bunny is Santiago. So we're going to get to Domingo and his friends.

[00:37:13] And we're going to get to the men. But let's talk about the raw sexual energy that is Martin Short and Molly Shannon. That was so drunkenly, awkwardly funny. And that's the first time tonight, or when I was watching, I was like, oh, I wonder if that's a little playful back and forth that wasn't on the card. Like, it got a little carried away as they were moving off screen. And it was hilarious. I fucking loved it. It was very different.

[00:37:44] Yeah, there was, yeah. It's weird, right? Molly Shannon booty dancing to, was it Marcelo? Well, that came later. Yeah, but I'm just saying, she was just having fun in this sketch. He's picking her up and moving her. Okay, it's all right. And it's almost like he was talking to Molly rather than. Well, so I think that one of the things that they were great at, actually, was it looked like Molly missed a cue for what you're supposed to say, because that's why Martin Short was like, anyway, and was trying to stall for time and waiting for her to get it. And then they had a fun little thing.

[00:38:13] So she did it, and he goes, finally. Yeah. Yeah. So that was really enjoyable. I was surprised that they did a new Domingo so soon, but it makes sense because. After it was over. Yeah. It's big enough that you want the youth to enjoy it, because they're like, well, of course we're going to do something that the kids are going to enjoy, and it's going to go viral online. Bringing Sabrina Carpenter in to do it with the bridesmaids was a nice touch. And also she can sing, right? And so as per, you can't sing.

[00:38:41] But I like that she did do the bad singing. It was nice. She did what Ariana did. And I think that one of the things, I don't know why, and maybe it's just because they felt like they needed to do it from the guys' perspective. I wish they would have done a different song than Espresso, than doing Espresso again. Because they just did Espresso. Yeah, exactly. But it was still great to see doing the groomsmen and having all the boys back, and then bringing in Pedro and Bad Bunny for another round with Domingo was enjoyable.

[00:39:09] It was just a fun cavalcade of guests and the cast members. Yeah. Of all the recent sketches, I think I can speak for all three of us. It is not one of our favorite things that SNL does. We don't dislike Domingo at all, but it's not one of our favorites. But we do recognize it does go viral often. And I actually think... People tend to love it. If you were... I haven't re-watched the 40th anniversary in a while. I've seen it in full five times now. Domingo was on that?

[00:39:35] No, but I think that Domingo is a rarity among SNL sketches as far as how quickly it's become popular and how much push it's gotten in big SNL situations. Because not only has Domingo been featured at Sabrina Carpenter's concerts, they very quickly made a Funko Pop of Domingo that is available to buy. Wow. And then... I think it's bigger than we even know it is. And then appears in the 50th anniversary special.

[00:40:04] And I don't remember any current recurring characters being in the 40th anniversary special as bits in that. I could be wrong because I haven't seen it in a while. In general. Yeah. And how something that really does catch lightning in a bottle like that and now they know how to capitalize on it. Whereas before... Let's just take, for example, Baby Yoda. They were so far behind in making Baby Yoda toys because they just didn't realize how viral that was going to go and how everybody would want one.

[00:40:34] Well, actually, that wasn't even the reason. The reason was that is because they kept Baby Yoda secret for so long that they didn't have anything made. No, no. They wouldn't even trust the toy makers. Yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. I thought that it was because they... I mean, how do you know that that's not going to be a viral thing that everybody's going to want? Oh, no. They knew. Yeah, they knew, but they just didn't let it out until the episode was out there and then they had to be like, oh, shit, we got to get fucking toys out there. See, well, that's the thing. Oh, shit, it shouldn't have been a thing, though, right? Like, that should have already been planned.

[00:41:02] But they couldn't because they didn't want anybody to know about it and have it leak. I know, but you would have thought at 9-0-1 after this episode... Exactly. No, I mean, they did, but it still takes time to do that, you know? I call it bullshit. I think they dropped the ball on it. No one's saying that they didn't, but there was a reason they did. Yeah, I know they dropped the ball on it. Wow. I know more about Star Wars than you do. And toys. All right, moving on. One of my favorite things of the night, the Q&A segment hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

[00:41:31] This is them doing crowd work and just having a lot of fun. What do you think Ray Romano and Al Sharpton? Yeah. Let me go through all of the people that were included in this Q&A because it went a long time and it was so much fun. We had Quinta Brunson, Tim Meadows, Ryan Reynolds, Nate Bargatze, Donna Richards, John Lovitz, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Adam Driver, Cher, Keith Richards, Zach Galifianakis, John Hamm,

[00:42:00] Bad Bunny, Seth Meyers, Al Sharpton, Ray Romano, Jason Momoa, Fred Armisen, and Peyton Manning. Welcome back. What did you guys love about this? I loved everything about it. I mean, I loved every little question. I love John Lovitz. I forget what his screen name was, but John Lovitz. John Lovitz fan. Yeah. Yeah. 69 or 70 or something. But it was just so, so fun.

[00:42:30] Everything was great. I mean, honestly, I think the most surprising thing was the Keith Richards scarf bit because I'm like, oh shit, that's really Keith Richards. I didn't even think he was alive still. Zach Galifianakis just did so well. Out of nowhere. I love that. I also liked that. Adam Driver. Well, Adam Driver, I mean, of course, it's great just having him sit there in silence. Smolder. Yeah. But also the fact that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively showed up and then having the, are you guys okay? He's like, why? What have you heard? Does that help them, you think?

[00:42:59] I don't know if it helps them, but I think that it's the best thing to do because if you don't say anything, it's like, why wouldn't, that's weird. That's got to be awkward. Why are you guys there? But if you do address it, it's like, oh, well, at least you're willing to address it, make fun of yourself a little bit, but not get digging to the weeds too much. Yeah. That's a very, no matter what you feel about the situation, it's a tightrope walker. Yeah. And it was handled pretty well. Fred Armisen. Was that this one? Oh, yeah. Next time Spacey hosts. Next time Kevin Spacey hosts. And he's high-fiving.

[00:43:26] And the fact that they held on him for so long trying to get a high-five too. Oh, it's so good. I love Peyton Manning's thing, though, too. Like, just the- Don't retire. Seriously, guys. Don't do it. Yeah. I just, I thought this was so good. I thought there wasn't, when you're going back and forth to that many, you expect to have, I would have expected to have a couple that maybe fell a little flatter than they did. Well, Quinta Brunson flubbed her lines a little bit, but other than that. But that was the first one, I think. So it helped.

[00:43:56] But no. The Seeing Eye Dog thing, or the service pet thing with Adam Driver and her, that was great. It's all fun. Did you also love, because whenever this would happen, whenever they go to the audience, I'd be like, okay, who else can I do? I know. I'm looking at Conan. Do something. Conan, do something. I was a little surprised Conan did. I was a little. Maybe he wrote. Did he write? I don't know. We don't know who the writers were yet. So I went to look back at the sketch list for SNL 40.

[00:44:24] The closest thing to a current Domingo would have been something like the Californians. And even then, which was pretty close. I know. That would have been 2015, and the Californians would have been 2012. So three years, though. Yeah, exactly. Not the year of. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Domingo's pretty crazy popular so fast. But that was at least a popular sketch of the current cast. Right. But yeah, for sure. All right.

[00:44:51] Moving on, SNL Digital Short, a pre-taped musical short of anxiety at SNL, combining live action with digital manipulated clips from classic sketches. I assume, I didn't, I don't remember. This is a Lonely Island. I'm sure it's not just Andy Samberg. It was Lonely Island. Yeah. And so this had Bo and Yang in it, Andy Samberg, Sarah Sherman, Chris Parnell. Welcome back, Parns. Anna Gossdier, Molly Shannon.

[00:45:19] Again, Gossdier and Shannon. Yeah. Big episodes for them. Will Forte, Taron Killam, and Kyle Mooney. If you listen to the podcast that the Lonely Island does with Seth Meyers, I think it's called the Seth Meyers and Lonely Island podcast. It's the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast. I listen to every episode. The podcast Lonely Island Meyers. Yes. They talk often about the anxiety they had on the show.

[00:45:50] Andy Samberg particularly. Yeah. He left the show because he felt like it was hurting his mental health, and he said that he felt a little bit that again when he went back. It is, again, we'll talk about the docs, but it was really alarming how many of the writers also said, I think it was Jimmy Fowler that said, he's the least mentally stable he's ever been. Right? And I know it's a little bit of a joke, but I think it's probably true. No, absolutely. And that's why they made this.

[00:46:18] It's because I think something a lot of people don't realize is just. I was going to say, this felt really honest. Like, they had pride therapeutic for them and like, hey, this job is fucking hard as hell. Like, you have no idea. And it's like, everybody who works at the show has anxiety. And so, yeah, having the cast members do it. And I will say one of the things that was quote unquote disappointing, even though it wasn't actively disappointing, is we knew Bill Hader wasn't going to be in this episode because he was said to quote unquote politely decline.

[00:46:46] And it's probably because he did have so much anxiety during his time on the show. Granted, everybody did. But for him, it seems like he, it's tough for him. I've read that he had a longstanding scheduling conflict. Yeah, that's. Oh, is that true? I mean, that's what him. That's a good. He might be shooting a movie too. Yeah. I mean, because you would think that he would politely decline being in a sketch and just be at the party, right? Maybe. The party looked great. So that very well could be the case. But even so, if there was going to be a surprise appearance, I was hoping it was going to be in this sketch. This would have been perfect for it, right? Yeah.

[00:47:15] They're also very good friends of Bill Hader. Exactly. Yeah, they love Bill Hader. But no, this was fantastic. It was another great song featuring so many cast members was good. I love the comparison to being a mine worker and then like reconsidering, well, you know. Yeah, exactly. But no, this was really, really good. I liked it a lot. Another one where, and again, he's been on the show so much this season, so you can't say he just kind of, he didn't have cowboys.

[00:47:45] But Andy Samberg just has it. I mean, he just. Just the talent on that guy. He's just so good. Yeah. He was so good. Love Andy Samberg so much. Yeah, I agree. I would kiss him on the mouth. Wow. Oh, okay. Not like in a subtle way. Not in a subtle way. All right. Moving on. Weekend update. Did you guys expect Colin Jost and Michael Che to host or did you expect some other people? I didn't have any expectations.

[00:48:14] I thought they might do the thing they did at the 40th where they had a mix of different people. But if you think about the 40th, they basically did have the current anchors and then brought in people like Jane Curtin and stuff like that. So that makes sense. But yeah, I mean, I think having Che and Chost be the hosts of Weekend Update makes perfect sense. Yes. I think it might have been fun if you were able to get everyone to do a bit at the desk.

[00:48:39] But I think I like what they did here, especially when it comes to the roster of people that they had at the desk with them. Let's go through some of those. All right. Let's go with. First, let's go with Bill Murray ranking his favorite weekend update anchors. This was fantastic. Perfect use of Bill Murray's dry, sarcastic, sardonic delivery. Michael Che. Yeah.

[00:49:05] The way he slightly smiles at the camera and just looks at everybody and he just knows what he's doing. It's perfect Bill Murray kind of stuff. The fact that he called Chevy Chase Connie. So, so funny. But yeah, it was a longer bit, but it didn't feel like it. Like it didn't feel like it was too long or anything like that. No, and you know where the jokes are going, right? Yeah. To a certain extent. You kind of know. You don't know where they're going to rank them, but you kind of get it. And I didn't care.

[00:49:35] Just take me through it. Take me down the stream. I'm good with it because it was so much fun. I mean, I obviously didn't know who he'd rank number one or two, but you know he's going to. He's going to. It's going to be unexpected. And he's going to have fun with Colin, right? The best part about this is we just talked about the fact that Bill Murray clearly knows what the fuck he's doing, right? The man's been doing it forever.

[00:50:02] There's a big difference between an aging comedian and Bill Murray. Bill Murray is very old, but he is absolutely still at the top of his game when it comes to things like this. Because you don't need to be a young, quick, sharp mind to do this kind of stuff. But what you do need to have is patience. And he's got more patience now than ever before. And he had patience even in the 70s doing this stuff. Which is ironic because he only has so much time left to live. Yeah. And he would probably say that, right? So the idea that he.

[00:50:31] The subtle jokes. Not even the bigger ones. Not even the Brian Doyle Murray is having sex with Scarlett Johansson. But like, you know, it's Seth and Tina and Tina and Amy. And I just, you know, just edged. But Tina, good for it. Yeah, congratulations. Like, that's just brilliant. Just right there. It's so subtle and it's brilliant. I just fucking love him so much. It was great. All right.

[00:50:58] Let's talk a little bit about Cecily Strong as the girl you wish who hadn't started a conversation with at a party. And we'll add Bobby Moynihan, his drunk uncle as well, in there. Two characters I know the three of us loved when they were live. Talk about not missing a beat. Yes. My God, Cecily. Congrats, by the way. Just not even an iota of you haven't been on the show. It's like she stepped in from the last episode.

[00:51:27] I mean, incredible. So fun. Yeah. So fun. She was fantastic. Nate said congratulations. Because she's pregnant. And she was also great during the SNL homecoming concert, too. Because she sang with Anna Gasteyer and Maya Rudolph. And they sang beautifully, too. Like, not even just for the comedic bit. They had beautiful harmonies. But yeah, she knows this character. It's so easy for her to just slip back into it. She was great. Fantastic.

[00:51:57] That's all I can say about it. Yeah. And then the reveal that it's John Cuckoo's baby. I mean, and Bobby Moynihan, man. I miss him. I miss him so much. And this just made me think, oh, gosh, Bobby. You're so funny. And we're so good at this character. If we ever did a list of underappreciated cast members, Bobby Moynihan would make that list. He'd be on that list for me, for sure. He just didn't get the... I mean, we took him for granted. Yeah. He watched it, and it was really funny. And then he left. You're like, oh, wait. No, he was way better than even I thought. Yeah.

[00:52:27] But his... The grab on Colin Jost, where he actually rips the coat of water. Like, that was... I haven't laughed that hard in years, I think. I mean, it was making me cry. I was laughing so hard. Yeah. It was so fucking funny. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger. Oh, yeah. No, I lost four cheeseburgers. Yeah. That's just perfect. And the turn of him crying, of course. I ripped your shirt. Yeah. And then the Captain America joke was so good. Oh, my God. I'm not Captain America. Yeah.

[00:52:57] The singing of the song. And then I love... They did this a couple times throughout the evening. They add just the slightest meta element. So I'm not Landshark, all right? I'm not Brian Fellowes, Safari Planet. And then a great Don Pardo. I'm not musical guest, Timothy Shalve. So good. He was just so on. And it was one of my favorite parts of the night, honestly. No, it was. It ranks up there in my... It might be... I actually wrote a top six moments of the SNL 50 on Slashfilm, if you want to go read it.

[00:53:27] Oh, Slashfilm likes SNL. And I will say, it ranked pretty high. Number two? What can I say? You got to go read it. Oh, boy. He's trying to get us back on Slashfilm. That's number two. He's telling people you got to go read it. The Scared Straight Sketch was number one. I'll tell you who number one was. I'm scared straight. Madam Curie. What? It's Anchorman 2 reference. All right. Finally, Seth Meyers introduces Lauren's best friends from growing up. Played by who? Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen.

[00:53:57] Correct. As much as I love this, I wanted it to be two verses instead of three. Like, I was good. After the second, they did it three times. I could have just used the two. Oh, no. I thought it was funny. I thought it was great. Especially since it's about Lauren, you know. I'm just saying. No, this was a bit I wouldn't have expected them to bring back either, you know. And honestly, I probably had forgotten about these characters until they came back. I did forget about them. And then once they started whispering, I'm like, oh, that's right. It's so funny. This is a character.

[00:54:25] But no, it was really funny the way they did it. And so I was happy with it. I remembered the version where they did Kim Jong-un, was it? Kim Jong-un's childhood best friends. You know what the thing is about? Kim Jong-un. I will say. I will say. I will say. Kim Jong-un is like really selfish. That's, it's just a funny premise. Those two do it so well. I would love to hear them talk about how they came up with those two characters.

[00:54:54] Because you know they had to observe it somewhere in the wild. And then they brought it to the table. That's so good. I just love it. But as a whole, I don't know. Should we do a breadometer for this or no? No. You already know. I mean, it's a honey. It's a honey. Honey? Hundo. Honey? Hundo. Hundo. All right. Good. All right. All right. Good. Moving on. Moving on. A close encounter sketch. A parody of alien abduction stories where two abductees describe their enjoyable experiences

[00:55:23] while Colleen Rafferty, as you guys all know if you've watched SNL, share strange and inappropriate details. This had Aidy Bryant and Jon Hamm as the officials. Kate McKinnon was in this as well as Colleen Rafferty, Pedro Pascal, and Woody Harrelson as the other abductees. Meryl Streep came in as Colleen Sr., Rafferty's mother.

[00:55:50] Did you guys miss Ryan Gosling in this? Well, yeah. I mean, of course you do. This was another one where I was surprised they were doing it again so soon after having such a hit new version with Gosling again. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I guess if I had to say if there was one for me to pull, it would have been this one. I have to agree that this had the most – sorry. Maybe you know exactly what I'm going to say. This had the most least diminishing return.

[00:56:19] It was the biggest diminishing return. I don't know that I needed this. I didn't need it. It felt like not enough time had passed for it to feel like, oh, yes. But I will say – It was still good though. Yeah. It was still good. And what did, I think, push it back into, okay, I'm fine with this then, is Meryl Streep as Colleen's mom. That's really funny. Because as soon as they mentioned your mother was also – I was like, oh, shit. Who is going to play Rafferty's mom? And the fact that it's Meryl Streep is awesome. And why was Meryl Streep there? Well, because she's dating Martin Short. That's right.

[00:56:49] But also she's a legendary actress, so let's not reduce her value to who she's dating, Nate. But I don't think she's ever hosted. She's never been on SNL before. Is that true? Every article says her first appearance on the show Saturday Night Live was at this. I didn't read the articles. I just watched the show. Do better. I write articles. I create the content. So, again, going back to my point, the reason she was there was her connection to Martin Short.

[00:57:15] And because she's so connected to her dating, it was a great time to put her on the show. Right? In my mind's eye – So, Brad, shut your mouth. I can't believe she hasn't hosted, honestly. The best time would have been probably Sophie's Choice. My thought process is, oh, she gets to be around Martin Short a lot and actually see what SNL is really like. And goes, oh, I would love to do that. I could do that. I feel like that was probably a little bit more than just, like, them begging her to do it.

[00:57:44] Like, she's just exposed to it now, so she wants to be a part of it. I love that. Yeah. It was great. She was excellent, yeah. But, yeah, I thought this was just okay. Stop saying amen. Yeah, that was good. But it was a little bit of retread, too. Like, you know, Kate McKinnon is using – Some of the same lines. The hat. Yeah. You know, these have been done before. I get it. And maybe this is me just – I haven't fully made my piece with Woody Harrelson yet. But he was good in the sketch. He was. He was right.

[00:58:14] He was playing exactly himself. Yeah. Exactly. All right. The stagehand pre-taped sketch. This was with Lorraine Newman, Pete Davidson as Chad and Mikey Day. Lorraine Newman reflects on her time at Studio 8H, reminiscing about the early days. She encounters Chad. Do your best Chad impression. Okay. The apathetic stagehand, which leads to amusing interactions. Poor Lorraine Newman.

[00:58:43] But I loved that they brought Lorraine Newman in. She looks great. And this was fine. This is fun. This was – I think if I were to pick a sketch that was maybe disappointing, this would be it. And this was part of the reason why I said I felt like maybe season one, the original cast got shortchanged a bit. It's like you did have Lorraine Newman pop up in this. You did have Graham Morris, you know – Garrett Morris. Garrett Morris, sorry. Garrett Morris.

[00:59:12] Garrett Morris take the stage, you know, for a little bit for an intro. Who's 88 years old. By the way, talk about – again, sorry, Brad, I didn't interrupt, but Garrett Morris, and we'll talk about it maybe a little bit more, but didn't miss a beat. I wasn't nervous. He nailed it. His introduction was perfect. He didn't flood his lines. 88. Yeah. Crazy. And so they play, you know, the John Belushi, the classic pre-taped sketch. But otherwise, you don't get much except for passing mentions. You know, Chevy Chase didn't do anything. Jane Curtin didn't do anything. They were both there.

[00:59:39] And so, like, that's why I say it felt like the original cast kind of got shortchanged a little bit. It's because the people who were alive who were still there didn't really get to do much this time. Lorraine did, but that almost – because it's just her with Chad, it felt like, oh, we forgot to do something with the original cast besides play a pre-tape. So let's do this. I don't know. I didn't need – I would have loved to see Jane Curtin. I did not need to see Chevy Chase because we were very glad he was there. Oh, no. I mean, I'm not upset necessarily. I don't think he needed, you know, anymore. I mean, you're a pretty big defender of him.

[01:00:07] I do – there's a part of me that wonders if he has softened a little bit in the way that, like – we talked off-air about how Bill Murray has become a little less of a sarcastic dickhead, even though he's never been, like, a full-blown asshole. Did you see the interaction between, by the way, with Jimmy Fallon and Chevy Chase, the awkwardness? Yeah, that was at the concert. At the concert. Yeah, that was so awkward. It's because Fallon was killing time and Chevy Chase, like, came up, like, to, like, maybe try and, like, make it a little bit more of a moment and it didn't turn into anything.

[01:00:35] Yeah, but – and then Chevy Chase kind of turns around and he's like, I don't know. Because he got nothing out of the audience from it. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. No, but we talked about Bill Murray. I had mentioned that he was on Kimmel and they were talking about it and you could just see, like, the Bill Murray that is full of, like, reverence and now kind of understanding, like, I need to – I don't need to take this for granted. This is – these people, this audience has made me who I am.

[01:01:04] I feel earnestly like he's getting it a lot more these days. Chevy Chase is still a prick. Yeah. I mean, really, so you have – Dan Aykroyd wasn't there. John Belushi's obviously passed. Chevy Chase – For whatever. George Coe, is he still living? I'm not sure. Jane Curtin was there. I saw her in the audience. Garrett Morris, he made an appearance. Yeah.

[01:01:35] But I don't know if you saw at the end, they were holding him up. Yeah. And he was sitting in the chair on the – Yeah, he was standing at the end, but – He's 88, man. That's what I'm saying. I don't think he could have done a sketch. Oh, I gotcha. Sure, sure. And even Chevy, honestly, like, if you've heard him do interviews and stuff like that, he's got dentures now and he doesn't sound like Chevy anymore. Even community Chevy, right? Yeah, exactly. So then you got Lorraine Newman who did, right? She did this. Michael O'Donohue?

[01:02:05] He was a writer. He appeared every now and then. Yeah, so he really wasn't much. He was the guy that did the – And then Gilda Ratter's dead. Michael O'Donohue passed as well. Okay, so you don't have a – I mean, other than Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd wasn't there, Jane Curtin really is the one that – I could have – it would have been nice to see her do something. Yep. And she did do something at the 40th. They did have her at the – Oh, no, no, I get it. There's no bad plot or anything. It's just like – also, there's a lot of show. For sure. So what are you going to do? I wish they would have maybe done something with Jane Curtin and Lorraine Newman and not Chad.

[01:02:36] Because Lorraine Newman was great. Yeah. She's still got it, man. I mean, like, why isn't she doing some stuff still, right? She's older, but she's great. Like Bonnie Raitt, man. Her comedic chops are great. Like, it was just wonderful. So I really liked – Do you know who Lorraine Newman's daughter is? She was on an episode of SNL. I don't remember. Who is it? It's Hannah Einbinder from Hacks.

[01:03:06] That's right. That's right. Yeah. Lorraine Newman's daughter. Yeah. Crazy. All right. Next. Moving to New York. Musical sketch. This is an homage to the city of New York through musical theater. They do these every time John Mulaney is on the show. Let me go through the cast of this. This is just a ton. Jesus. I mean, when I go through this – Why don't you just say who's not?

[01:03:33] I hope listeners understand how hard this had to have been to pull off. So they've got John Mulaney, Pete Davidson, David Spade, Adam Driver, Maya Rudolph, Emile Wachim, Alex Moffitt, Nathan Lane, Chloe Fineman, Jason Shudakis, Will Forte, Kristen Wig, Paul Schaefer, G.E. Smith. Welcome back, G.E. Smith. Yeah. Yeah. Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, Nick Jonas, Bad Bunny, Taron Killam, Ana Gosteier, Kate McKinnon, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

[01:04:01] By the way, second episode ever, and it's all within like two episodes. Right. Sarah Sherman, Devin Walker, and – I'm going to throw Jenna Ortega and Kevin Costner in there. Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett were in it too. Yes, they were in there as well. He said Alex Moffitt, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And by the way – Who played – Yeah. So we talked about this when we were watching and you didn't love us. We were wondering who played Robert De Niro's character from Taxi Driver because you couldn't tell who it was.

[01:04:29] Because right in the sketch, right, it's a walk-by, which could be an extra. But then that person comes back and sings at the end, oh, that's a person. So we were like, ooh, I don't know who that is. And I did frame by frame on YouTube, and it's definitely Emile Walken. Okay, cool. Yeah. That's – because when I read that, because I got this list from the internet, but I was wondering where Emile Walken was. Yeah. He's playing Travis Bickle from Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

[01:04:57] And also, for those who maybe didn't know, if you didn't understand right away, Jason Zudeckis is playing Harvey Keitel's pimp character from Taxi Driver in this sketch. So there's a lot of Taxi Driver in here for the 1975 New York crowd. There was so much I loved about this. Obviously, I love musical theater, so it's just a lot of fun whenever they do that. Kristen Wiig was fantastic in this. I loved –

[01:05:26] Let's be clear. Everyone's fantastic in this. Well, that's what I'm saying. But I'm just saying there were some scene-stealers, right, that I think of. I loved Jason Zudeckis and Will Forte in this. Yes. And again, I don't know. They had to have told Jenna Ortega and Kevin Costner to do what they were doing, right? Or was that just – No, I mean, well, because if you're doing rehearsal, you don't have the audience in there for that, and it's not – because it's the most famous people. But don't you think they could say, hey, you're going to be on camera.

[01:05:56] It's okay to kind of play – I really don't think so. Yeah. The way that Kevin Costner was acting specifically. It was just so funny. Yeah, Kevin Costner felt slightly inconvenienced. Yeah, but that's what I wanted to put him off his glasses. He took off his glasses to protect them. Yeah. He just didn't know what was going on. Not that he was good or bad, but he's like, I don't know what this is. No, but it made it funnier to me. Yeah. Oh, that's why it was great. I think everyone in the audience knows that they probably told you might end up being in a bit, like – Have fun with it. Yeah, just whatever happens, happens.

[01:06:23] The Nathan Lane Hakuna Matata stuff is incredible. I love Nathan Lane. I get so excited to see him and stuff. And he's aging great, by the way. He is. He's awesome. But just full-on doing Blow and then doing a Disney song. I love it when you're not too big for the role, right? That's something he's clearly very famous for. He can be like, I don't want to do that. But this is him playing. And he hasn't even been on SNL in who knows how long. But with Only Murders and all that.

[01:06:53] And also, I'm sure he's with Lauren. Because Lauren is – Of course. I think – Spade sitting down, like, I get it. I got the vibe of this one. This is awesome. Perfectly David Spade. That was perfect for Spade. Because, again, he was in it and it felt a little bit like, let's put David Spade somewhere, right? Especially because he hosts a very successful SNL podcast, these kind of things. And I'm like, oh, it's fine. Him and Pete are doing kind of a little bit of side work there. But then that was so good.

[01:07:23] It reminded me of why David Spade got into SNL, right? His sarcasm. But, yeah, this was just a huge musical number. There were so many great moving pieces. You do a thing that's spanning 50 years of New York along with the history of SNL. It's great that you get to see different eras. Bringing Scarlett Johansson in for a little shop of horrors, along with Paul Rudd. She has some serious talent, I will say. Yeah, of course. Like, she's so talented.

[01:07:51] The joke about Colin Jost. Yeah. Not this time. But, yeah, jumping into the different eras, bringing Kate McKinnon back as Rudy Giuliani. Oh, yeah. With the vampire hands. Yeah, exactly. Adam Driver in this as well. It's a hot dog. That man can do no wrong. Oh, he's so good. Like, he's so good. But, yeah, and then, of course, just the big finish with everybody on stage in costume. I mean, it's just incredible. That's what I'm saying.

[01:08:19] To pull this off, not just to write it, but to pull the whole thing off. The sets. The choreography. The set making. Just the fucking logistics of anything. Let me say this. I loved it. I had a lot of fun. But I really appreciated it. Yeah, I appreciate it's good work. There was a lot to do. Yeah, 100%. And I don't really remember anybody not being well heard, right? Like, the audio was fine. It went off, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And using Les Mis in such a fashion like that, too.

[01:08:48] Like, especially with that big finale for, you know, One Day More is just, it works so well. And I don't know about you, but because, again, on the Seth Meyers podcast with The Lonely Island, they talk a lot about Will Forte. He's a great friend of theirs. And he was obviously in a lot of digital shorts. But they talk about him singing. And so now whenever I see Will Forte singing and how loud he can be when he sings, I can't not laugh even extra hard.

[01:09:17] Because I'm thinking of them hearing Will Forte singing. So, oh, speaking of singing, you probably have to go back to see if you think the same thing that I do. I think, though, for the moment at the very end where Pete Davidson gets a small brief solo that somebody else is singing for him and he's lip-syncing. At least somebody else. It's absolutely somebody else. But I couldn't figure out who it was. He's lip-syncing. Yeah, because he starts singing with the group after that and you can hear him among the crowd. It's like, that's not Pete Davidson. I thought it was odd, honestly. That was the one thing. It was a little weird.

[01:09:44] But it was funny, though, because I think that they knew that it wasn't going to sound like Pete Davidson. But it wasn't different enough, though. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's true. I would have made it funny then. You're going to lean into that and have it be honestly, have it be Keenan. So it's really off-putting. Wait, what? Keenan in the lobster costume. Luciano Pavarotti. There's a part of me that wonders if he did pre-record it and they auto-tuned it to make it sound. That's kind of what I felt like. Oh, that's fair. Because I felt like it could be his voice. Yeah, it was close enough.

[01:10:13] But it was too perfect. Exactly. He's like, you know I can't fucking sing, right? And they're like, ah, we got it. We got to work on that. But also, so what? Like, have fun with it, right? But maybe he just... It's a new Pete. He lives up... No tattoos and fake singing voice. And lives up upstate New York now. I don't know if you saw that. He moved down to New York City. He did. Good for him. Yeah. He's really... Change your life. All right. Moving on. Commercial parody clip montage introduced by Alec Baldwin.

[01:10:42] This was a compilation of SNL's most memorable commercial parodies over the years. Let's talk a little bit about... Did you like Alec Baldwin doing the introduction to it? Did you like kind of how he introduced it? One of the best one-liners of the night. Where he's like, it's actually Alex and I really should have corrected you guys a long time ago about that. It's a great fucking joke. That's actually one of my favorite things done during any comedic bit.

[01:11:10] Is if it's like just a quick throw-aside joke referencing something that is like a long-standing thing and just like making a little tiny joke about it. It's such a... Yeah. It's just cute. Honestly. It was fun. And it was the sponsors before the commercials were funny too, especially third year veneers. Oh God, that was good. Yeah. So obviously these are the famous commercials that have defined SNL.

[01:11:38] Commercials are a part of SNL that I dearly love. I love it when they do commercials. All my favorites were here. They did Colon Blow, Mom Jeans, Schmitz Gay Beer. Oops, I Crap My Pants. Oops, I Crap My Pants. Old Glory, Robot Attack Insurance. So I will say this. It wasn't... Almost Pizza. This wasn't for me... Taco Town. One that I just laughed because I knew all of these commercials. This was a nostalgic moment for me because it was going through all of these commercials

[01:12:07] that have given me so much enjoyment, right? It was less about some of the other montages that took a creative view of the montage, as we'll get to later, about the sketches that didn't make it kind of thing or that should get canceled. This was more just to really show the commercials. So it didn't add more comedy to me. It just made me appreciate SNL for all they've done over the years for this kind of subgenre.

[01:12:35] And specific to the montage, I actually like the way that they cut it together where they gave you a lot and then they did a quick hit, a bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. They fit so many of them that I'd forgotten about. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, 100%. All right. Moving on. Bronx Beat with Betty and Jody. This, if you know, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph created Bronx Beat. They bring on Miles Teller. That was interesting to bring on Miles Teller.

[01:13:03] Did he feel nervous to you guys, by the way? No. I think he played the role. Yeah. I think he was just being himself, especially because he's supposed to be suddenly brought on to the stage. And just the top gun too. No, it's top gun. I'm never calling it. I'm never going to call it that. That's amazing. And then they surprised with Mike Myers as Linda Richmond. The progressive era was neither progressive nor an era. Discuss. I will say this. His Linda Richmond seemed older as well. Of course.

[01:13:33] Oh, I didn't think so. I didn't think he sounded as good as Linda Richmond. I thought he sounded just exactly as Linda Richmond has always sounded. I did not think it was a big enough departure to say that. Yeah, Nate. Rewatch it. I think you're going to agree. Rewatch it. This was another instance where if you would have asked me which characters did they bring back, I never would have said, oh, they're definitely going to do a Bronx beat. But having Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph back, it felt great. It felt homey. Homey the Clown was on the show. Having Miles Teller was fun.

[01:14:03] The conversation they had with him was great. Especially when they started talking about tussling with Tom Cruise. A little tussle? And the fact that they're just like, okay, you can go. But yeah, the Linda Richmond, it's the kind of crossover I never would have thought of. And it kind of surprises me that they never did it before. Yeah, exactly. I agree. I agree. After watching it, oh, that makes perfect fucking sense. So it was just so much fun. And the documentary, one of them, right? They did the Linda Richmond coffee talk and then when Barbra Streisand came on.

[01:14:31] And that was an actual surprise to them. And I didn't know that. I didn't know that those people, Madonna and Mike Myers and Roseanne, did not know that Barbra Streisand was going to be on the show. So here's what's interesting about my evolution as far as thinking about that sketch. When I saw it when I was younger, I was like, oh, they're obviously surprised that Barbra Streisand is there because their reaction is like, they're like, oh, they actually freak out as themselves, not just the characters. Because Madonna gets up and hugs her.

[01:15:01] And then as it went on, I was like, and I understood more about SNL. And I was like, oh, well, they had to have known and just played that up. So hearing the story again and finding out that they had no idea and it was such a big secret and they had to sneak her in and everything. The back door and all that stuff. Because she's like one of the biggest people in the world. But also in, she does not do live TV. Right. Exactly. That's just so cool. A great story. And just so fun to learn that. It's like the lore of SNL grows with stories like that. And that's why we love the show so much. All right. Moving on. In memoriam to canceled sketches.

[01:15:31] Oh, man. So this had me going. Presented by Tom Hanks. This was a satirical segment celebrating sketches, characters, and jokes considered outdated or inappropriate. Now, for a second, I thought they were legitimately going to do a reel in memoriam. And that's why it got me. Yeah. Because I'm like, oh, well, this is the 40th. I'll say this. There were some people upset that they didn't do a reel in memoriam. I mean. We talked about this after the show was done. It's been 10 years and not a lot of people have died tied to SNL.

[01:16:00] I think that if you saw what that would have been, you would have had like four or five pretty Norm Macdonald, Gilbert, Godfrey's. But then you just have to dig through the producers. You know? And the thing is, is like when someone does die who has ties to SNL and even sometimes when they don't, if they're just well known. They show it. Yeah. They show one of the bumpers if they've hosted or they show like an image of them to like pay tribute. So the first one in 40 years at the 40th, I'm just sorry. There's not enough that's happened in 10 years. That's all it was.

[01:16:30] And I do feel like those cast members that are no longer here, Gilda and Chris Farley and Norm Macdonald were mentioned and appreciated. Yeah. They've done that so many times. They pay tribute to them. So like, yeah, you didn't need to. It would have been maybe like 15, 20 people probably. And again, three or four pretty big names outside of that. But this was creative. This is a great creative transfer. Again, great way to do a montage, right? Where they're bringing in all these things.

[01:16:56] They're pointing out the ridiculousness of it and like, nope, couldn't get away with that anymore. Yeah. Tom Hanks perfectly. Well, you laughed at it. So honestly, a little bit on you. Yeah. I will say the one thing that annoyed me about this and I felt like they didn't go hard enough on. Well, two things actually. The first one is there were no clips of Donald Trump hosting, which is that the exact thing that you should be like, well, we fucked up here, didn't we? Well, because he was invited. No, he invited to my fucking asshole. Whoa.

[01:17:27] But the other thing is I was very frustrated that for all the clips they showed of people who were in various states of ethnic makeup, such as blackface and brownface and whatnot, that they blurred all the faces. If you're going to do the bit, commit to the bit and show the people who did it. No one's going to get canceled at this point. It exists in the history. You're aware of it. Just show it. That's the whole point of the bit. It's either you show it or you don't show it. Yeah.

[01:17:56] But showing it with blurred, it takes all the poison out. It felt weird. And it especially feels like a cop out because the first one they showed for questionable makeup was Christina Applegate doing an Asian woman. You show that just fine, but then you don't do any of the blackface. And Rob Schneider doing a Mexican. Right. Now, granted, Christina Applegate at least had makeup on a little bit to make her in a black wig or whatever. They didn't do anything with eyes or anything like that. And so I get that you weren't actually full on makeup. But then make it about something else. There's enough controversial shit.

[01:18:26] You don't need the blurred faces. Cut it out completely. Actually, what I hope is I hope someone goes through and matches all the clips to point out what they all are. I'll do it tonight. I have all those clips saved on my hard drive. I'll throw one out there that I was surprised by that was kind of weird. And it's not as full blackface as you might expect. Adrian Brody? No. Everyone knows that. By the way, for those listeners to our podcast, guys that might not know this, Adrian Brody,

[01:18:54] that wasn't a thing that was supposed to happen. He put on that wig and introduced Shaggy, I believe. Oh, yeah. And he was banned. On his own. Yeah. That wasn't something that was planned. A lot of those sketches we saw in that clip were like, oh, time has told us we weren't right here. Fred Armisen doing Barack Obama. Even that, though, I don't know. What? I'm not mad at that. What? I'm really not. They put some of the little brown faces. Did they? Yeah. They did brown him up a little bit.

[01:19:21] But no, Adam Sandler did blackface once as Bill Cosby for a Bill Cosby mystery impersonation. And the whole bit is Adam Sandler basically doing the gibberish Bill Cosby. But I had never seen the sketch. I saw on TikTok and I was like, oh my God. Adam Sandler. And it wasn't full on blackface. They just did a little bit of brown. But it's like, ooh. I mean, they did full on black character work on, not on SNL, but on the man show with Adam Oh, yeah.

[01:19:51] I mean, Jimmy Kimmel, full on black person as Shaquille O'Neal. But I mean, as recent as Jimmy Fallon's era, he did Chris Rock in Blackface, which if you got permission, maybe it's okay. I don't know, though. Because Chris Rock doesn't get to say it's okay for everybody to do. But again, though, don't. And maybe that was some of the cast members saying, I'm really embarrassed that I did this. Oh, no.

[01:20:17] I mean, they probably just don't want anyone to face any guff if no one knew about it. It's hard, right? Why poke that bear? But again, don't fucking show that. Just don't do the bit, yeah. But I did like the bit, though. Honky honky. All right. Moving on. Debbie Downer sketch. This is Debbie Downer is a bartender who brings down patrons with her pessimistic comments.

[01:20:41] This had Rachel Dratch as Debbie Downer, Jimmy Fallon, Ayo Edaberry, Drew Barrymore, and Robert De Niro. Old Bobby De Niro is in this. Ayo Edaberry. I think I did it well enough. You didn't. I know. I know I didn't. Respect. But anyway, so this is Debbie Downer, which was one of the quintessential Rachel Dratch

[01:21:08] characters that she did back in 2004-ish, maybe? Mm-hmm. And what did you think? Was this one that you thought they'd bring back? No. And it was solid. You know, it kind of felt like a little... I felt it went a little long. Yeah, a little long. I think the one thing that I was frustrated by is they did too much of the direct line callbacks. Because several times she's done the, it's official, I can't have kids, and the feline aids is the number one killer of domestic cats.

[01:21:37] So I'm okay with one of them. Right. I'm okay with the, I can't get pregnant, because she goes, and I think I've told you that before. Yeah. That's enough new information that makes it funny. The feline aids thing, again, you can't come up with anything else. Right, exactly. Especially since there's so much new stuff that you could easily be downed about. Yeah. But De Niro was great in this sketch. No, surprisingly, because I was off air, I was telling Brad, the last couple times he was on, it felt very stilted. He's not a great live actor, obviously. He was reading from the two guards' heart. Oh, I don't think he's a good actor. Live actor.

[01:22:07] He's not. And in this, though, it felt very natural. And him trying to choke her was pretty great. I felt like Ayo and Drew were in this sketch, because they... Wanted to be in this sketch. Yeah. It's like, hey, let's put some more people in this sketch, but they didn't really have anything to add to it. No. And that happened a couple times where a few people were in things that were like, oh,

[01:22:32] well, again, for example, this sketch didn't do it as well as Mulaney's sketch, where they had... Because I was just like, oh, David Spade's in this institute. It feels like a little bit too many people. And then he went and sat down. Like, oh, what a great move. That's the joke. This would have been something where I was like, well, they could leave now. And it's a little better, maybe. All right. Moving on. Scared Straight Sketch. Yeah.

[01:23:24] Yeah. The start of this sketch is so good. We all know that this is kind of an all-timer premise sketch for SNL. This is also kind of... This is where Kenan, I think, really shines. Yes. Yeah. But I'm going to sound like a broken record when I say this. Didn't expect them to do a Scared Straight at all. Because Kenan hasn't done it in forever. Yep. So it hits the ground running because what is Eddie Murphy's name?

[01:23:54] All the way Ray. With his hair half cut. Because I don't do anything halfway. It was the way that Kenan looks at him. I'm like, I'm going to laugh so hard at this sketch for the rest of... And it worked. Yeah. I was so excited as soon as I saw it with Scared Straight. I never thought Eddie Murphy would be the one that would be paired with Kenan Thompson. And it was just as good as you would want it to be. It starts off strong already with the many Harry Potter double entendres, which were funny unto themselves.

[01:24:21] But then the fact that you have Eddie Murphy get meta with Nutty Professor references. And I was not expecting a third person to enter the fray. And I definitely was not expecting that person to be Will Ferrell in a short, short, jumpsuit, and a goofy red wig. And his character was so fun. The fact that he's chewing tobacco the whole time just adds a whole other dynamic to it. Big red. Why? Because I'm well read. I've read a lot of books.

[01:24:47] The fact that he is constantly thrusting towards all three of the cast members with his short jumpsuit. Kenan, when he sees Will Ferrell come in, you see him putting his hand in front of his mouth because he just can't even believe. It's so good. I wish that Will Ferrell would have been a little more smooth when he did his lines about Elf because it was like, ah, because there's good stuff there. But it was still so funny just to watch them do this. I mean, man.

[01:25:16] You think the writers ever go, do you think Will Ferrell will do this? Or do you just know we can do whatever we want with Will and he'll say yes to it? I mean, I also wonder too, how many iterations do they go through? Do they think of like, okay, well, who could do this? What if they don't do it? Should we do this? Then when you've got locked in, which buddy-of-the-year fucking parody joke do we do? Yeah. It's just like, hey, buddy, hope you fuck your dad. You can do whatever you want there. Yeah.

[01:25:46] There's so much opportunity. And Eddie Murphy has a treasure trove of a comedic history. I mean, there's so many movies you could do. And so Flubber, or it's not Flubber, or no, that's Robin Williams. Nutty Professor, obviously, but Daddy Daycare. Like all the kids movies. Oh, everyone loves Daddy Daycare. But you could do anything that you want with anything. And so like just you've got the world at your feet here. Yeah. It must be hard, honestly.

[01:26:11] By the way, for those wondering, Scared Straight has been on eight times on SNL. And this is according to SNLarchives.net, starting in 2008. And the last time it was on was 2012. Betty White? Yeah. Lindsay Lohan. Oh. So. I don't even remember that one. Get on your feet. Now sit down. Now sit down.

[01:26:39] Then Zach Galifianakis was the one right before that with the mask. Do you remember that one? No. The mask? Like Hannibal Lecter? Yeah, Hannibal Lecter mask. That's right. Yeah. I need to watch that one. I haven't seen that one in a while. Betty White was the third before the last. That was in 2010. Charles Barkley did it. The one with Tracy Morgan. Charles Barkley was right before that. And then before that was Taylor Swift. Oh, wow. In 2009. And then.

[01:27:08] Tracy Morgan did one. Tracy Morgan. So he came back to host. Is that right? I think so. And then before that, Paul Rudd. I don't remember the Paul Rudd one. Wow. The one that I remember the most. Would have been role models. The first one. Who was the first one? Shia LaBeouf. Shia LaBeouf. That's the one that lives rent free in my head. Yeah, I stole some stuff. Newspapers. Hats. Cookies. Baby food. Newspapers. Hats. So, yeah.

[01:27:38] Great, great. What did I say right at the end of that sketch? Right before it ends? I was, oh man, you better do the jump. Yeah, the jump. Sadegas plops down on that. And that, if you watch the sketches, he obviously doesn't do it at all on the first one. He just sits there. And it just gets increasingly more. By like the fourth one, he's definitely jumping. And then man, towards the end, he's flopping on it, you know? They actually just mentioned that recently on an episode of Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast about the jumping he would do on the desk. Oh, so good.

[01:28:06] I love the line they gave him too when they stopped after the night questioning. He was like, all right, all right. I let that go on too long because I'm a fan of the film. Again, talk about like you're not the star of that sketch. You're just there to like kind of break it up. But it's like Aidy Bryant and Jon Hamm, you know, enough with the amen stuff, right? It's there's everybody's got something to do in the sketch.

[01:28:31] And I thought that Mikey Day was going to have his neck broken, which was hilarious in and of itself. All right, moving on. Imagine being someone like Marcelo Hernandez too in the sketch who has his hair held by Eddie Murphy. It's just like I don't even know like what you do. In my head, if that's happening, I'm going, you do whatever you need to do for the last. I will keep the tears inside. Hurt me if you need to. I'm just glad I'm in this room right now. Yeah, I'm just happy to be here. Oh, my God.

[01:29:01] All right, moving on. Don't look back in anger short. This was introduced by Garrett Morris, again, first season cast member. But if you watch Saturday Night the Film, you know he was older than most of the other cast members that first year. He had a career on Broadway, I think. He's a trained Shakespearean actor. Yeah, and so I think he was in his mid or younger 30s when he got the job.

[01:29:28] So he is older than Jane Curtin and older than Chevy Chase even. So I think he's 88 now. So he got to introduce it, which was a lot of fun. I'm glad they did that. But Don't Look Back in Anger is a short film from 1978 showing an aged John Belushi visiting the graves of his fellow cast members. Had you guys seen this before? Yeah, it's actually one of the more famous pre-recorded sketches from the early years of SNL.

[01:29:54] And it's known for the sheer irony that Belushi is the one who outlived everybody and then unfortunately ended up not. But yeah, it's one of those things where it's funny to a point, but it's also kind of touching and bittersweet. Yeah, I was kind of sad. I was like, oh, particularly because there are so many that have passed, right? So I'd imagine it'd be really funny in 1978.

[01:30:23] It's kind of a little more sad now. Yeah. I'm sure that's part of the reason why they played it, though, too. Yeah. I do want to talk about, because we're at the end, and we're at the good nights, but can we talk a little bit, even though this is a musical performance? Oh, now we want to talk about the musical performance. What, the guy from Wings? I want to talk about Adam Sandler, who wrote with Dan Bola. Oh, well, this is more than just a musical performance. Yeah, I guess we can talk about that. It is a musical performance. Yeah, but we have to talk about this one. I mean, if you didn't talk about this, I would have kicked you in your nuts. All right.

[01:30:52] So the guy who forgot it. 50 years. You were going to let him finish, and you would not have brought it. No, that's not true. Nah, he would have. You're so ugly. This is a song called 50 Years, and this is a tribute to Lorne and the show. About 50 Years of History. And this is Adam Sandler doing Adam Sandler, right? Finding a way to be funny, but also sincere. Yeah. This follows the suit of the songs that he'd done in his stand-up comedy specials that have hit Netflix over the past few years.

[01:31:20] He did a song specifically honoring Chris Farley, and his most recent one he did, like a tribute to just comedy in general. Did you notice at the end there, he was getting a little emotional at the end? I was getting a little emotional at the end. I wasn't. I'm cool. This was the closest I came to crying, getting a little bit clumped. Not me. You're a little baby. You're a little baby boy. A little baby boy. Nate, you cry weakly. I got man tears inside me that don't go nowhere. That's an eye condition. You have conjunctivitis. Yeah, no.

[01:31:50] I'm thick. That's true. Yep, got a lot of chutzpah. No, but at the end, obviously, he brings in Norm MacDonald and Chris Farley in this. And it's a sign, too, that you hear some of the cast members. I've listened to a lot of David Spade's podcast. They talk about it. I've listened to Adam Sandler talk about it. Chris Farley's death still lives within them. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[01:32:20] And it is a death that I think will forever impact them in more ways than just I lost a friend. It's like there was something going on in that era of their life. And it just lives within them. I mean, this show especially, when you're on it four or five years, and the way the show works, because they're making new episodes every week and you're spending each week doing overnights.

[01:32:49] You know, Tuesday night is writing night. You're living with people for five years. Yeah. It's like you're living in a dorm. And some of these guys, Sandler, I think, was what, 22? Yeah. They're college kids, essentially. Those are their formative years. You know, it's like being in comedy college and you make friends for life. You're spending so much time together. You have all these memories. A lot of them are meeting their spouses. Like you said, it is the most formative experiences of their life. Yeah. And the other thing that I loved about this, aside from the genuine heartfelt emotion

[01:33:18] that came towards the end, was how much of a tribute it was to the little nuance behind the scenes details of SNL that a lot of people don't even know about. And I even think general audiences didn't appreciate as much as people like us. You know, the references to Spielberg actually visiting the show a lot because he's friends with Lorne Michaels and watching sketches and having to deal with the fact that you just finished dress and like, oh great, Spielberg's watching my fucking sketch that is going to get knocked out of dress rehearsal. And then having the audacity where like Jaws was overrated. Yeah. Right?

[01:33:48] And you know that they- That absolutely happened. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And like the little cute references too to like Nurse Teresa, a real person who's the medic on the SNL staff. Whoever one cheered a lot for. Yeah. Because- Wally, the cue cards guy. Drunk Wally. And then Speedy, who has been a person in the music department for so long and making that the person who inherits Lorne Michaels' role. It's funny stuff like that. But he also mentions, doesn't it again, I want to shout out to Dan Bulla because Dan Bulla helped write this as well. He's playing piano with him. Yeah.

[01:34:21] He mentions, I think, I can't remember if it's the depression or the anxiety that comes the day after. Oh, yeah. Right? Which I really appreciated that as well because I think that's a, for the cast members, that's a universal experience. Yeah. Right? You know, and what's really interesting about this is they have a lot of highs. I mean, in many ways. But after the show, they go, they party. Right? That's part of the history. Right? They go and party after the show. They have their post-show.

[01:34:49] And then this idea that the next day, you just feel like crap. Right? Because. It's over. And you have to start again. Yeah. And it's like, I don't know how to be funny anymore. Sisyphus. What is that? Sisyphus? Yeah. The guy that pushed the rock up the hill. It's a Sisyphean task. Yeah. To start all over again. Oh, my God. No matter what you do, you're anxious. And then you perform. And it feels great for 30 seconds. And then you're depressed the next day. Yep.

[01:35:17] What a weird life to live. But I liked all the little subtle things about just the saga that is SNL. I liked the little run he did of mentioning all the various cast members and how long they were on the show. Yeah. Even some of the lesser celebrated ones, he gave them a nice little shout out. It was. Michael McKeon in his two years. Yeah. Melanie Hutzel. Yeah. Victoria Jackson. Some of the people you don't think about. Victoria Jackson, I think, was like six years, wasn't she? Yeah.

[01:35:45] But yeah, this was just a lovely, heartfelt tribute from Adam Sandler. Nice love letter. Yeah. It made me feel very warm feelings. I'll talk real briefly about this as well. Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard is saying nothing compares to you, which is one of the most, they talk about this in the documentary, one of the most probably formative experiences that

[01:36:08] have ever been on SNL because this defined the show in that era and Sinead O'Connor's career. Mm-hmm. Did you expect them to do any more there? No. And also, Prince wrote this song. So it has more of a legacy beyond Sinead O'Connor. Yeah, but Sinead O'Connor made this famous. That song on SNL, ripping up a picture of the podcast. Oh, of course. That's what I'm saying. That's why it's. Yeah, yeah.

[01:36:38] That's why they chose it to, you know. Unfortunately, this rendition, I didn't think, was that good of an arrangement. Not that Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard weren't good because she has a great voice and Brittany Howard does too. But this particular version of the song, I was just like, oh, okay. Well, that's why I thought it was weird because it was a very different version. But I thought, are they going to do something? You can't maybe rip up a picture of the Pope, but maybe there's a Sinead O'Connor. A picture of Elon. Something. I don't know.

[01:37:07] I thought there'd be something because it was such an interesting choice to pick, right? Clearly, they're playing homage to this song. For a reason. In the history. But then they didn't do the song, I didn't think, Terrible Justice. I think the original song is much better than the cover they did. And secondly, they didn't really mention anything that went along with it. Maybe because the documentaries are so fresh in my mind and they specifically talk about

[01:37:36] that and what a big deal that was to the show. Also, a nice nod to Aubrey Plaza making an appearance to introduce this song since she recently lost her husband. Yeah. Her first appearance after that. All right. That's it, I think. Do you guys have anything else? Man. I want to watch it again. Yeah. I definitely want to watch it again. It was so great to see everyone at the good nights. Even people who weren't in sketches and stuff like that.

[01:38:03] It was funny that Martin Short didn't realize Lorne Michaels was on stage. He's looking for him. Where's Lorne? He's like, right there. He's literally right next to you, Marty. Because it's so funny because we can see it. It's like, he's right there. He's right there. He's right there. In that moment, I've been Martin Short in that moment, looking for my friend. He's like, where is he? I mean, guys, he's around here somewhere. Fuck my life. Yeah. It's just, I love this. It's just like, it's for fans. I'm sure general audiences, people who don't watch SNL the way that we do, still appreciated

[01:38:32] it and liked seeing all the stars and cast members they loved from previous years. But for me, we talked about how this was a little less celebratory and self-congratulatory than the SNL 40th. And I think that that's why I maybe liked this more than the 40th because it just feels like a big episode that is for people who like SNL and not just a glad-handing. Like, isn't SNL great? It's like, yeah, it is. But it's great when you do this. Right.

[01:39:00] And, you know, so this doesn't solve some of the dilemmas we have, right? What is the future of the show, right? What happens with Lorne? You know, there's a lot of rumors that, you know, throughout the last years, we started the 10-1 in the 47th season. And since then, we've been talking about what happens after the 50th. My prediction is that he will retire at the end of the season and TNFA will take over. That's just my prediction. I don't think he's going to retire that soon. I don't think he's ready to retire.

[01:39:29] But I do think when he retires, I do think Tina Fey probably will take the job. But I think that he's going to stick around for at least a few more years, especially because Tina has a show coming to Netflix very soon. I said what I said. And I think she'll be busy for a little bit longer. But I bet you she's probably preparing for whenever that moment happens that I think that she would like to do it. And we'll talk about this more when we talk about the documentaries. But there's one particular moment where I was like, yeah, she's got to be the one to do it.

[01:39:58] Where she talks about the competitiveness that used to be in the writer's room where the writers were much more competitive with each other. And she said that she wishes they need to bring back that a little bit more. And so she's got that mentality that Lorne Michaels does and how to push greatness out of them, even if it means making them a little more cutthroat when they, you know, instead of being so nice to each other. Because if it's in the service of comedy for real, you want the best sketch on the show no matter what.

[01:40:26] I think my biggest takeaway from this entire experience and watching all the documentaries and watching the 50th is I will no longer, I'll probably, it's going to be very hard for me to complain about a sketch because I have now seen so much more about what goes into it and like the audacity of me to sit here and be like, well, they just should have done this. It would have been so much better. Go fuck yourself. There are so many moving parts. Yeah.

[01:40:52] That sketch didn't do well, but at a certain point in the show that week, it was killing somewhere. Yeah. There's a reason it didn't work. And putting such a fine brush on it that I have previously, I'm like, well, I mean, how hard is it to do your job? Fuck you, Ben. I know nothing. These guys are, it's so fucking hard. Yeah. And I think that it's like when we, when you do criticize and you point out things that went wrong, it's with like, you know, still a bit of humility, understanding how hard SNL is, you know?

[01:41:22] I say that to say though, that I am going to take that to the next level and I need to make sure that I'm saying it every time that I have a complaint. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Because it's insane to put on a show like this. Well, because it's, and I'm really, when you think about it too, it's, it's the same thing with movies and TV shows. Like you have hundreds of people working on a movie and TV show. Like they're all miracles in their own way. Whether, whether they turn out bad or phenomenal, become masterpieces. Like you can criticize aspects of it because especially someone like me, like it's part of my job, but like there's still a sense of respect there.

[01:41:51] Like, like sure, Madam Webb sucks, but like, you know, good on you for trying. And you know, like at every stage of media production, you have at least some people that are trying. Yeah. On SNL, everyone is trying and they're trying at their highest level, the hardest they can. Yeah. And you know that. And so I give them so much more grace than somebody like Madam Webb where clearly some people are just there for the paycheck, whatever. Yeah. But on SNL, 540 people give a shit at a high level.

[01:42:21] I don't know if we've ever said there's a cast member that's just phoning it in. No. Never. They're trying. Everybody's trying and the props department. Exactly. My God. They're all trying. They're brilliant. It just did not work. Yeah. So I would like to apologize to anybody that's even tangentially related to the 540 people that work on SNL. I, Ben Connois, sincerely apologize. I don't apologize. I'm so sorry. You guys are rock stars. My opinions are always right. Rock stars. I don't think we'll talk about this specifically when we do our episode about the documentaries

[01:42:50] that are available on Peacock and whatnot. But I want to do a shout out to the Architectural Digest video on YouTube where Ego Wodham and Chloe Fineman and Heidi Gardner give a tour of Studio 8H. I watched it, yeah. And they talk to the different departments and you get so much more of an idea of just how difficult what they do in a given week is. I think that's the one I saw that I went, I'm a fucking asshole. Well, and it's also, it is hard. I don't know if you guys think this too.

[01:43:16] It's hard to find content that you and I, that we haven't taken into some level. Oh yeah, I've seen already. Yeah. Like that, that one taught me some things. Yeah. I did not know. And so it's about a half hour. It's on YouTube. So well at work. So really well done. Yeah. And look at, if you, if you love SNL as much as we do and you haven't paid a lot of attention to like late night TV or like things like that, go around YouTube and look up some of like, there's, there's been a lot of great clips from people and variety talking to various

[01:43:44] cast members, like fun things, like just with very, very, all the different eras doing interviews. There's so much good SNL stuff out there from the past couple of weeks. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm a little sad about is that stuff. Like, cause I've, I've enjoyed every bit of it and it's going away. There's a part of me that wishes the, the anniversary wasn't coming until later this year. So that like we got like a full year to celebrate basically. Cause technically the anniversary isn't until October this year, you know? Hey, but we got a new episode coming up March 1st. With true.

[01:44:13] That's when SNL is going to be coming back. We'll be back in my church. We don't know who's hosting yet, but they're going to be back on March 1st. It's probably Meryl Streep. I would, I would love that. That would be, that would be amazing. Yeah. It'll be interesting. All right. Do we have anything else to add before we go? It's been a long episode. It's been a long episode. It's been, it's been a long day. Oh wow. No. Without you, my friend. I'm saying, sing a song to SNL. Jesus Christ. This is not a wonderful show. Montage, montage, montage. Go ahead. This was wonderful. I love the show.

[01:44:42] I love you guys. I love that we get to sit around and talk about SNL just because. It's my favorite night in a long time. We made food. Oh yeah. When we watched it. So I went and designed some, I designed John Ham's John Ham. And I actually wrapped ham around a toilet paper roll type thing. And I had sweaty balls and meatballs. But you have sweaty balls most days. It's true.

[01:45:09] I made buffalo chicken dip, put it in a blender and slapped the Bas-o-matic on it. You made a brownie husband? I did. I made a brownie husband. Just the face because it's a huge thing. Had a bowl of little chocolate donuts. Yeah. And candy cigarettes a la John. Well, pretzel cigarettes. Pretzel cigarettes. Yeah. Candy cigarettes. Pretzel cigarettes. And designed that box myself. That's a good candy cigarettes from the 80s and 90s. And Totino's pizza rolls. Yep. And Activia yogurt. Yep. So it was a good SNL themed smorgasbord. Yeah. We had a lot of fun there.

[01:45:38] I wish you loved us enough to come hang out with us. Yeah. Maybe on the 60th, he'll be there with us. That's what I was going to say. I doubt we'll be friends then. But oh my God. What's going to happen in 10 years? I'm going to die. At this point. By the way, you both have been sick this last week. My voice is shot right now. I'm so tired. I'm sorry for my voice, everyone. I'm alive. I'm alive and well. All right. Well, we will be back in a couple weeks. Maybe even next week. Are we going to do an episode? I don't know. Yeah.

[01:46:07] I think we're going to try and do the documentary episode here pretty soon. And so we'll get another episode in. Let us know what you thought about the 50th anniversary special. What were the highs? Was there any lows for you? What was some of your favorite moments? Was there anything that you really expected or thought they should have brought in? Or a cast member, maybe you wish they would have featured a little more that they didn't. And let us know in the comments. Do visit us on the 10 to 1 dot com.

[01:46:37] And we are on X and Facebook as well. So we'll be back in a couple weeks. Do listen to our other podcast. Go Flicks Yourself. You can find that. We talk about movies and sometimes a TV show. We just have a lot of fun doing that and trailers, all kinds of different things. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so we'll be doing new episodes of that as well if you ever miss our sweet voices. We'll be back real soon here. Be good to yourself.

[01:47:07] Be good to others. Bye-bye.