by Julian Spivey *portions of this list have previously been published on The Word on Pop Culture. 50. Ashlee Simpson Is Busted It likely wasn’t the first time anyone had ever lip-synced on “Saturday Night Live.” There have probably been performances of lip-synched music on the show in the two decades since. Still, Ashlee Simpson’s malfunction on the Oct. 23, 2004, episode of “Saturday Night Live” remains one of the most jaw-dropping flubs in the show’s history and one of the few times the show’s ever had to cut abruptly to a commercial. According to Simpson, she was suffering from vocal cord inflammation caused by acid reflux on the day of the live broadcast, which caused her to lose her voice and unable to complete the final rehearsals for the show. Because of this she decided to use a pre-recorded vocal track as support for the show’s two scheduled performances. The first performance of the episode “Pieces of Me” went off without an issue. When it came time for the second performance, “Autobiography,” an incorrectly played vocal from the previously performed song was mistakenly used before Simpson reached the microphone. The vocal was immediately lowered, but in an attempt to mask the error, Simpson’s band began to synchronize with the notes of “Pieces of Me.” This caused even more confusion for Simpson, who reacted with an awkward, short jig on stage before leaving the stage in horror after about half a minute. The band continued to play, but without a singer on stage, the show was forced to cut to a commercial break. The performance of “Autobiography” on the show never occurred. During the goodnights portion of the episode, the night’s host, Jude Law, asked Simpson to explain the incident. She said: “My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d do a hoedown. I’m sorry. This is live TV. These things happen!” Simpson and the show faced criticism for lip-synching performance. Days after the episode, Simpson called into MTV’s “Total Request Live” to explain the mix-up. The CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” just so happened to be filming behind the scenes of the show on the same night of the Simpson performance, and their footage supported Simpson’s account of what happened. ‘SNL’ producer Lorne Michaels stated that he was unaware of Simpson’s plan to use lip-synching and that had he been aware, he wouldn’t have allowed it. He also said it was the only time in the show’s history that a musical guest walked off the stage during a live telecast. The incident would appear to leave an irreparable mark on Simpson’s career, which floundered afterward. Today, she’s arguably remembered for the ‘SNL’ mishap more than her music career. 49. Stunt Casting Gone Wild Stunt casting on “Saturday Night Live” is a relatively new phenomenon. Sure, there were moments in the past like John Goodman, a frequent host of the show, coming in to portray Linda Tripp during the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal and Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential election, when it was noticed the two resembled each other. But when Larry David really hit the mark as Sen. Bernie Sanders around 2012 the show realized it could make headlines and bring in viewers by getting celebrities outside of the cast to come in and portray famous people, usually politicians. There was some good early on with this: David as Sanders, Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer and the earliest moments of Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. However, the stunt casting quickly went awry, especially with more than four years of Baldwin portraying Trump and the worst of all stunt castings Jim Carrey as Joe Biden. It became something that many fans of the show grew tired of and began to severely eye roll. The show’s still doing it to this day with varied degrees of success. For instance, the 2024 Presidential Election having Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris and Dana Carvey as Biden worked for me. It’s always nice to see legends of the show return to their natural habitat, but when they rely on celebrity look-alikes like comedian Jim Gaffigan portraying Harris’ running mate Tim Walz it always comes off as poor utilization of the show’s cast and a ratings ploy on the part of the show. Hopefully the days of stunt casting will end soon, but it’s gone on for more than a decade now. 48. 'SNL' Bows to Trump for Ratings “Saturday Night Live” is in the television business, which means it’s in the ratings business. It hopes to entertain, but its priority is bringing in viewers. So, when the show can bring in an A-list superstar over a likely funnier host, it does so because the business demands it. But what about when some of the most famous people who might draw in significant numbers of viewers are despicable? The show came into this predicament in 2015 when it brought in Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump to host an episode (he had hosted previously in 2004 when he was merely a rich game show host). At the time, it may have felt like Trump wasn’t a real threat to win the White House, but he had begun his candidacy with thinly-veiled racist attacks against Mexicans by calling them rapists and murderers. Still, the show thought, “We should get this guy. He’ll bring in viewers.” Well, he did. And it didn’t matter to the show and NBC if it had to shed some moral high ground to get those viewers, even if the show’s cast wanted nothing to do with Trump as host. Cast member Taran Killam, who once impersonated Trump on the show, told NPR in 2017, “It was not enjoyable at the time and something that only grows more embarrassing and shameful as time goes on.” The show, which Trump now includes often among his hate-filled social media tirades, may not have done much to get Trump elected, but it certainly helped normalize him. The show would do something similar, though less controversial at the time, in 2021 when Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hosted the show. He wasn’t nearly as controversial then as now, but he made for an incredibly awkward host and was rude to cast members. He even made cast member Chloe Fineman cry due to his reaction to a sketch she had written. 47. Extremely Stupid Breaking character is always going to be an issue with live television, particularly live comedic television. Sometimes the jokes you say or the humorous antics you have to perform for a live audience and the millions watching instantaneously at home are just too funny not to laugh to or at yourself. ‘SNL’ fans have always had a love/hate relationship with performers breaking character on the show. Some are strict in their opinion that professionals should never break character while others love the fact that cast members occasionally crack themselves up and admit that at times breaking character actually makes a sketch much funnier than it would have been otherwise. There have been many memorable instances of breaking character on the show from the almost-never-to-crack Phil Hartman doing so in Frankenstein makeup to Bill Hader’s hilarious crack-ups at last second joke inserts by writer John Mulaney during Stefon bits on Weekend Update. The most famous “breaking character” cast members were Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz, whose frequent crack-ups were a common annoyance to those who hate seeing such things. Perhaps the best-timed flub in the 50 year history of “Saturday Night Live” came in its early years and started a crack-up so hilarious that it almost completely brought the entire sketch to a standstill … and in doing so turned what certainly would’ve been a long forgotten sketch into a classic. It happened on Dec. 11, 1976 during the show’s second season and the third episode of the series hosted by actress Candice Bergen in just a year-and-a-half span. It was a simple plot. Bergen was supposed to be the straight woman in the sketch about a message from the Right to Extreme Stupidity League about how all Americans deserve their right to extreme stupidity. Gilda Radner was to be the American diagnosed with “extreme stupidity.” Bergen’s character is named ‘Fern’ and Radner’s is named ‘Lisa,’ but at some point in the sketch Bergen mistakenly flip-flops the names and says, “You’re not too bright are you Fern [breaking character by laughing at her mistake] Whatever your name is! [continues laughing].” Radner interjects “Lisa!” to which Bergen continues with the sketch as written, “As a matter of fact you’re extremely stupid.” Radner says, “Well, you’re right Fern. And, you know I’m proud of it. [At this point she turns to the camera for emphasis] You know, we all can’t be brainy like Fern here … [the emphasis she puts on the name is something only a comedic genius like Radner could do].” At this point Bergen absolutely loses it to the point where she is in tears and can barely continue the sketch. I’m not sure whether the “we all can’t be brainy like Fern here” line was written as part of the sketch or improvised on the spot by Radner, but it feels totally improvised when you watch it, and it makes it seem all the more hilarious. I’m sure if you asked ‘SNL’ fans what their favorite memory of Radner is from her time on the show they’d probably name one of her memorable characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna or Emily Litella, but her quick wit and perfect timing upon Bergen’s misfortune in this sketch is my favorite memory of her. 46. Colonel Angus I have to admit that the first time I saw the Colonel Angus sketch live in February 2003 it wasn’t one of my favorite sketches. I laughed but never thought years later I’d look back on it with such fondness. In the sketch, the week’s host, Christopher Walken, a noted member of the Five-Timers Club, played a Civil War hero returning home from war. His name was Colonel Angus, and for some reason, the ladies around Shady Thicket absolutely loved him. When you hear the name Colonel Angus said with a Civil War-era Southern accent, you begin to realize why they’re so fond of him. I think I truly began to appreciate this sketch years after I saw it when I found out that it was written by Tina Fey and revisited it. Something about a sketch with such ribald, tawdry wordplay written by a woman piqued my interest, because such things in the past had typically been considered with a “boys club” mentality. Here was Fey, who thanks to her magnificent NBC comedy series “30 Rock,” I’d grown to absolutely love, respect and admire for her acerbic sense of humor, showing the world that women could be just as raunchy and dirty-minded as the men when it came to comedy. Some would say that the writer of a sketch shouldn’t matter all that much when it comes to the overall greatness of it, but if Adam Sandler had written the Colonel Angus sketch it just wouldn’t have felt the same. It would have been typical Sandler. From Fey the numerous double-entendres that make Colonel Angus so much fun weren’t as expected and it really adds to the humor and greatness of the entire bit. It’s nice knowing which writers have a hand in writing which sketches, but that’s something that unfortunately isn’t well-known or publicized throughout the great history of ‘SNL.’ We remember the cast members and lines that made us laugh, but rarely get a chance to know the genius behind the words or plots. Colonel Angus came at a particularly important time in ‘SNL’ history when female cast members like Fey, Amy Poehler and later on Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and more were about to steal a show that had always been dominated by men. 45. Uncle Jemima's Pure Mash Liquor Tracy Morgan had many memorable moments during his seven seasons on “Saturday Night Live” from recurring characters like Brian Fellow and Astronaut Jones to great one-off sketches like Big Bernard. I’d say he’s undoubtedly one of my favorite ‘SNL’ cast members of all time and I believe his most outstanding comedy achievement actually came shortly after his ‘SNL’ tenure when he joined the cast of Tina Fey’s incredible NBC comedy “30 Rock” as Tracy Jordan, essentially a more absurdist version of Morgan himself. Tracy Jordan is one of the greatest sitcom characters ever, in my opinion, but out of all of the things Morgan did on ‘SNL’ the most memorable for me remains Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mash Liquor, which might be the greatest fake commercial in the show’s 50-season history (and believe me that’s truly saying something). It’s also the only ‘SNL’ commercial parody to make this list. The idea behind Uncle Jemima, the husband of pancake maven Aunt Jemima, is simply genius. It also shows just how good racial humor can be when it’s done right. The Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mash Liquor commercial is set up perfectly as a parody to the long-forgotten and deeply buried Disney movie “Song of the South” with Uncle Jemima staring into the camera trying to sell his Pure Mash Liquor. The faux-commercial is perhaps one of the most quotable bits in ‘SNL’ history (again, that’s truly saying something) with memorably hilarious lines like “I’m Uncle Jemima. You probably know my wife, Aunt Jemima, the Pancake Lady. Now, she says that sellin’ booze is degradin’ to our people. I always say that black folk ain’t exactly swellin’ up with pride on account of you flippin’ flapjack!” and “Uncle Jemima's Pure Mash Liquor has a 95 percent alcohol content, and that's per volume. That means you get f***** up for less money!” Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mash Liquor is such a simple concept, but Morgan’s performance and reading of such truly funny lines make it one of the greatest of all time. 44. Robert Goulet's Coconut Banger's Ball: It's a Rap Will Ferrell will appear on this list an incredible number of times, which is a good reason why I believe he’s the greatest cast member in the 50-season history of “Saturday Night Live.” I believe many others think this too – after all Ferrell is the only cast member to ever have multiple ‘Best Of’ specials dedicated to his work on the show. The fact that Ferrell had an impersonation of lounge singer Robert Goulet in his bag of tricks was uniquely and hilariously absurd. That he portrayed Goulet as pompous ratcheted up the laughter even more. But Ferrell’s Goulet impression was at its peak when he paired the old-school crooner with some of the day’s biggest hip-hop songs. Listening to Ferrell as Goulet croon Sisqo’s “Thong Song” and The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Poppa” a capella is one of those ultimate ‘SNL’ moments I will never forget and constantly find myself thinking of whenever I hear any of those songs. The idea of Goulet singing songs with the content of those hip-hop hits is enough to make somebody almost bust a gut. Goulet claims in the sketch that he can do hip-hop better than the gangsta rappers selling millions saying, “You wouldn’t let a clown fix a leak in the john, so why let these hooligans tear down the biz?” I only wish Ferrell had been able to do more hip-hop classics as Goulet. Frankly, his other Goulet sketches never quite lived up to this one. However, the funniest part of the sketch isn’t even Goulet trying to pimp his record “Coconut Banger’s Ball: It’s a Rap” but toward the end of the sketch when the big horn mountain goat – the true reason he drives out to the middle of nowhere – comes wandering by and the two engage in an epic staring contest concluding in the hilarious “you win, you always do” line by Ferrell. Few cast members in this show’s history could pull off such a ridiculous sketch idea as Robert Goulet performing rap songs and then having a staring contest with a goat and make it work as hilariously and effortlessly as Ferrell. That’s one of the many reasons he was the best. 43. Tom Brokaw Pre-Tapes Dana Carvey is one of the all-time greatest cast members in “Saturday Night Live” history, but one of Carvey’s finest moments on the show came in a hosting stint on Oct. 25, 1996, his second hosting appearance after leaving the show in 1993. In the episode, Carvey impersonated then NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw who was about to go on a multi-week vacation and needed to pre-tape some breaking news bulletins in the off-chance that specific big news stories broke while he was away. The big news story the producer (never seen on camera but voiced by writer Robert Smigel) of the NBC Nightly News is anticipating as a possibility during the sketch is the death of former President Gerald Ford. Carvey as Brokaw does a straight take of himself breaking the fake news of President Ford’s death and thinks everything’s a wrap and he’s ready to embark on his much-needed vacation. Not just yet. The producer needs Brokaw to record specific takes for possibilities of how President Ford might die. This is where the sketch takes a turn for the utterly brilliant and hilarious, and even, at times, macabre. Carvey, one of the greatest impressionists to ever grace ‘SNL,’ is supremely hilarious doing a spot-on Brokaw announcing President Ford being eaten by a pack of wolves, overdosing on crack cocaine, being chopped into tiny bits by an airplane propeller and being strangled to death by the corpse of Richard Nixon. The absolute funniest bit of the sketch is toward the beginning when Brokaw is pre-taping news of President Ford being assassinated by gunshot, and the producer wants him to insert the word “senseless” into the take. Brokaw snidely replies with: “Gerald Ford shot dead today, at the senseless age of 83.” Interestingly this sketch didn’t actually have its origins on ‘SNL,’ but Carvey’s very short-lived sketch comedy series “The Dana Carvey Show” on ABC in 1996. That series only aired seven episodes but featured many of today’s biggest comics on its staff. Now disgraced Louis C.K. was the show’s head writer and Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell were a part of its cast. The Tom Brokaw Pre-tapes sketch was written for the eighth episode of “The Dana Carvey Show,” which never aired. Its loss was a massive gain for ‘SNL.’ 42. 'SNL' Does Frank Sinatra “Saturday Night Live” has had the great luxury of having two incredible Frank Sinatra impressions over its legendary 50-season run on television. Joe Piscopo was the first, as he essentially owned the impression of “Ol’ Blue Eyes” in the early ’80s on the show. It was his greatest achievement during his ‘SNL’ tenure and the thing he’s most known for more than 40 years after leaving the show (he appeared on the ‘SNL’ 40th anniversary special as Sinatra rather than himself). Piscopo’s Sinatra may be the ultimate – or greatest – Sinatra impression there’s ever been. But it’s something the ‘SNL’ higher-ups actually had to talk Piscopo into doing. Piscopo said in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller: “The Sinatra stuff was early on, and they had to talk me into that too, because I didn’t want to disrespect my hero. When I first started doing him, I wrote him a letter and I sent him an album through his attorney – we put out this ‘I Love Rock and Roll, Sinatra Sings the Rock Tunes’ kind of thing. I was a North Jersey Italian American just like the Old Man, as we affectionately referred to Mr. S., and he couldn’t have been nicer. Matter of fact, he sent out cease-and-desist letters to anybody who’d even think of doing him and he never sent me a letter.” Piscopo’s greatest moment as Sinatra was probably when he teamed up with Eddie Murphy’s spot-on Stevie Wonder to do a play on the hit Wonder had with Paul McCartney in the early ’80s called “Ebony and Ivory.” The parody version had Sinatra singing hilarious lines like: “You are blind as a bat and I have sight/Side by side, you are my amigo, Negro, let’s not fight.” The other legendary ‘SNL’ cast member with an iconic impression of “The Chairman of the Board” was Phil Hartman. Hartman’s Sinatra was more mean-spirited than Piscopo’s, probably meaning Hartman didn’t have the same closeness to the source. According to Piscopo the Sinatra family wasn’t happy at all by Hartman’s impression. “The Sinatra family was not happy with the impression Phil was doing at all, again rest his soul. There was a meanness there to the Hartman thing. That was Lorne [Michaels] too, man. And I think there’s some kind of law: Don’t even attempt to do Sinatra unless you’re Italian.” The greatest Sinatra sketch in the show’s history, in my opinion, was a Hartman one and came during the Jan. 19, 1991 episode hosted by musician Sting. It was a unique idea to take The McLaughlin Group news show, which the show frequently parodied, and have it hosted by Sinatra with a panel of the day’s biggest recording artists like Sinead O’Connor (Jan Hooks), Billy Idol (Sting) and 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell (Chris Rock). Watching Hartman’s jerk of a Sinatra grill and make fun of these younger stars was an absolute blast, especially when he’d taunt or throw insults at them. Hartman could own a sketch with the best of them in the history of ‘SNL’ and this is, without a doubt, one of his ultimate highlights. 41. 'SNL' At Home One of the most admirable things “Saturday Night Live” has ever done was finish out its season in 2020 when the Covid-19 outbreak took over America and the rest of the world forcing the abrupt end of many TV seasons and changing the way late-night television was made in the U.S. Thanks to modern day technology that allowed for things to be done via phones, laptops, etc. over things like Zoom the show was able to re-tool itself to provide 90 minutes of laughs in one of the scariest times in modern history. The final three episodes of season 45, referred to as “Saturday Night Live at Home,” saw the show’s cast members doing comedy sketches from the safety of their homes during the pandemic. Sure, the show’s weren’t live, but they were still prepared weekly and gave the show a DIY feel like you would see if the show were done on a social media app like TikTok. The ‘SNL at Home’ period was weird but it certainly beat not having new material to finish out the season. I’m not sure there was anything on the three episodes that will stand the test of time as iconic ‘SNL’ moments, but the fact that the show just didn’t pack it in and call it a season is something I’ll never forget. 40. Patriotic Shorts Patriotic Shorts was a very important sketch at the time for “Saturday Night Live” as it came less than a month after the tragic terrorist attacks of 9/11 had caused so much pain to not only New York, where the show is, of course, performed but the entire nation. It was important, I think, for two reasons. 1) Because people really could use a good laugh after so much tragedy and 2) Because the nation had already been taken over by over-patriotic symptoms (that frankly, it hasn’t gotten over in the decades since), and that’s something that needed to be poked fun of to some extent. Will Ferrell is arguably the most outstanding cast member in the 50 seasons of ‘SNL,’ and this is probably one of his greatest hits on the show. The sketch, which appeared in just the second episode of ‘SNL’ after 9/11, features the week’s host Seann William Scott as a boss of an office who, wanting to show his American pride, allows his employees to wear patriotic attire like ties adorned with the flag or flag pins. One employee, Ferrell’s Dale McGrew, takes things just a little bit too far when he shows up for a company meeting wearing a half shirt that says ‘USA’ that completely bares his midsection and flag shorts that have been cut into a thong. The sketch's punchline is Ferrell’s wacky attire that shows off a sense of over-patriotism. Things get uncomfortably hilarious when McGrew wanting to pour himself a cup of coffee turns his back to the camera showing off both of Ferrell’s butt cheeks. Ferrell was known to be the one cast member to go above and beyond for laughs, and this was a clear sign of his willingness to make people laugh. A great aspect of the Patriotic Shorts sketch is how the rest of the cast members (Horatio Sanz, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers) struggle to keep their giggles under wraps throughout the six-plus-minutes, often failing to do so. Things get particularly hilarious when Ferrell leans back in his chair and places his feet upon the meeting room’s table, completely exposing his red, white and blue crotch. Patriotic Shorts was the perfect sketch for “Saturday Night Live” to air less than a month after our nation’s worst tragedy. It was probably the first time some people had laughed since before 9/11. 39. Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey Few writers in the history of “Saturday Night Live” have ever become widely known in the pop culture lexicon. Many of those who did actually became popular well after their tenures as a ‘SNL’ writer like Conan O’Brien who became popular for his late night talk show gigs. Jack Handey is one of the very few, along with Robert Smigel and some others, that became not quite household names, but at least known to many. Handey became known for his “Deep Thoughts” which are merely one-liner jokes, usually leaning toward the surrealistic or absurd. This was a very unique and unusual thing to see on a sketch comedy show, but the quick segments were so uproariously funny that they’ve always stuck with me. Handey initially had his “Deep Thoughts” published in National Lampoon magazine in 1984 and in various publications in the years before his stint at ‘SNL.’ In Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s compilation “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” Handey said that his “Deep Thoughts” were unforeseenly important to the show. “They proved to be pretty popular. And also they have a utilitarian purpose on the show, which I didn’t foresee, which was that a lot of times they need, you know, 30 seconds to move cameras from one set to another, so they can just drop in something like that, and so it was helpful in that regard. I probably did more than 200 of them,” Handey said. After Handey left the show in the late ’90s, he would occasionally do guest writing, including the less popular but still hilarious “Fuzzy Memories” and “My Big Thick Novel” segments. Handey was also the creative genius behind two of the more wacky characters in ‘SNL’ history: Phil Hartman’s Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and Toonces the Driving Cat. 38. Get Off the Shed Will Ferrell is the greatest cast member in the 50-season history of “Saturday Night Live,” in my opinion. I know that’s going to be controversial for some, and I agree that legends like Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Chris Farley, and others are right up there with him, but for me, it’s Ferrell. Nobody has made me bust out into uproarious laughter more on ‘SNL’ than Ferrell and it all started on his very first episode on the show. How many other cast members can you think of having an all-time classic sketch on their very first episode? It’s one of the most simplistic sketches in the show’s history, with essentially only one repeated punchline, and honestly, it shouldn’t even be all that funny, but in the hands of Ferrell, it turns into a masterpiece. Ferrell plays Frank Henderson who’s having a backyard grill party with his wife, played by the week’s host Mariel Hemingway, when two new neighbors drop by (David Koechner and Nancy Walls). Frank is having a nice, typical conversation with the neighbors while flipping burgers on the grill when he notices his kids (whom you never see onscreen) playing on top of the shed. Frank politely asks his kids to get off of the shed and continues on his previous conversation. Throughout the entire sketch those blasted kids of his return to playing atop the shed and Frank admonishes them for it, but with each admonishment getting louder and angrier as he goes until he’s finally screaming full throttle at them to “GET OFF THE DAMN SHED!” It’s one of the great up-the-ante sketches that Ferrell was so fantastic at where he’d start out mild-mannered and end up almost psychotic by the sketch’s end, and every single time, have you in stitches. Interestingly, the ‘Get Off the Shed’ bit was one of the pieces that Ferrell auditioned for the show with, and you know Lorne Michaels and crew must have really enjoyed it if it ended up as a centerpiece of his very first episode. 37. Fan Campaign Leads to Betty White Hosting For as long as TV stars had been such a thing, Betty White had been one. From the earliest days of television when she starred on the sitcom “Life with Elizabeth,” to her turns on numerous game shows, roles in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Golden Girls” and later “Hot in Cleveland,” she had been one of television’s icons. But White had never hosted ‘SNL,’ despite ‘Golden Girls’ being an NBC show. Supposedly, according to ‘SNL’ producer Lorne Michaels, the show had asked White to host on three separate occasions between the ‘70s and ‘90s and was turned down each time. Then something remarkable happened in early 2010, when a campaign, which began on the social media site Facebook titled “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!”, started to become noticed, receiving almost 190,000 people urging the show to have White as host, Michaels asked White, who was 88 at the time, again. This time White relented and gave the fans what they wanted. To my knowledge, it’s the only time in the show’s 50 seasons in which it listened to the petitions of fans to have a host without it being the show’s idea. White’s hosting stint would be one of the most memorable in the show’s history, not simply for having the TV legend host, but also for bringing back some of the great female cast members of the show, like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer to appear alongside side her in sketch, leading to memorable moments like talking about her dusty muffins on Delicious Dish with Gasteyer and Shannon and playing opposite Shannon’s Sally O’Malley. White also appeared in some of the show’s best sketches of that era, as in MacGruber alongside Will Forte and in Scared Straight alongside Kenan Thompson. It was a unique moment in the show’s history in which the show’s viewers desperately wanted something, the show listened and magic happened. 36. Fear Punks 'SNL' One of the most infamous, unpredictable and likely wildest musical performances in the 50 seasons of ‘SNL’ came when the Los Angeles punk band Fear, unknown to the masses, made its national television debut on “Saturday Night Live” on October 31, 1981. Former ‘SNL’ cast member John Belushi had become a fan of the band after seeing them on an episode of the L.A. based “New Wave Theatre” and wanted to get the band on the soundtrack for his film “Neighbors.” When the band didn’t make the cut for the soundtrack, Belushi asked ‘SNL’ producer Dick Ebersol for a favor in booking the band as an apology. The band's performance was to include slam dancing (with Belushi as one of the dancers), popular in the punk music community, which scared the show’s director. The show relented to the dancing when Belushi offered to appear in the episode it would. Belushi’s appearance would be a wordless cameo in the show’s cold opening. Fear performed “I Don’t Care About You,” “Beef Bologna” and then its frontman Lee Ving stated: “It’s great to be here in New Jersey,” members of the punk mob could be heard saying “fuck” on the air and the band began playing “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones.” Following the rowdy performance, the band dedicated it’s next song, “for all of you who voted – Republicans and Democrats alike” and began “Let’s Have a War,” before the live feed was cut off. A previously aired, filmed piece was shown in its place. Fear would never appear on ‘SNL’ again, and Belushi would be dead from a drug overdose less than half a year later. 35. Season 11's Cliffhanger The eleventh season of “Saturday Night Live” has been dubbed the “weird year” as the show was hanging by a thread after 10 seasons of ups and downs, mostly downs in the last half decade. The show had undergone something of a resurgence in its 10th season with an all-star cast that included Billy Crystal, Martin Short and Christopher Guest, but when Dick Ebersol left as executive producer after four seasons and Lorne Michaels returned to take over the show he created and ran for its first five seasons he decided a complete overhaul was necessary. This overhaul resulted in an odd cast that included veteran actors like previously Oscar-nominated Randy Quaid, along with youngsters like Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. The cast never really gelled and the now overly-used “Saturday Night Dead” tag was given to the show. The eleventh season really only had one standout, Jon Lovitz, who debuted his Pathological Liar and Master Thespian characters that immediately caught on with the audience. NBC president Brandon Tartikoff was likely going to cancel the show when Michaels came up with a unique cliffhanger idea that remains one of the most controversial sketches in the show’s 50 years. He was going to have that week’s co-host Billy Martin, the often fired manager of the New York Yankees set fire to the set with the entire cast locked inside – except for at the last minute, Michaels saves Lovitz from the blaze. At that point, the rest of the cast knew who the golden god was, and they were almost certainly about to lose their jobs. The story of this season is told in the brilliant documentary, “Season 11: The Weird Year,” as part of the series of ‘SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night’ on Peacock. 34. John Belushi's Feelin' Alright John Belushi is among the most beloved cast members in the illustrious 50-year history of “Saturday Night Live,” known for many great characters and impressions. Perhaps his best impression was that of English singer Joe Cocker. Cocker is considered by many to be one of the best vocalists of all-time thanks to his gritty, bluesy voice that led Rolling Stone magazine to name him the 97th greatest singer of all time, but it was for his incredibly spastic body movements while performing in concert that he’s perhaps most known. These body movements mimicked by Belushi that truly made his impression of Cocker one of the most iconic in ‘SNL’ history. Belushi impersonated Cocker five times on the program. Some might choose his first appearance doing Cocker’s cover of The Beatles’ classic “With a Little Help From My Friends” in October of 1975 to be his finest Cocker turn, but my favorite was his final appearance as the singing legend in October of 1976 when Belushi got a chance to out-Cocker the real Cocker when the performer happened to be the night’s musical guest. It’s the only time I can remember in ‘SNL’ history where an actual musical performance is turned into a fantastically funny comedy bit thanks to a cast member’s impression. The musical performance starts with just Cocker performing his hit “Feelin’ Alright” dressed in white pants, a white sports coat and a black T-shirt underneath that had ‘Stuff,’ the name of his band, written in pink lettering. After Cocker finishes the first chorus, Belushi comes out onto the stage dressed identically to Cocker and performs the second verse of the song. Seeing Belushi’s impression right next to Cocker proves just how brilliant it was. Belushi, of course, takes it a little bit further by drinking a beer and wildly pulling at his frizzy white boy afro during the song. 33. Brasky Buddies Bill Brasky is a son of a bitch. He’s a larger-than-life man who makes the Most Interesting Man in the World from those Dos Equis commercials look like a little boy and his buddies, who like to get hammered and talk of Brasky’s epic feats at the bar, are among the funniest characters to ever appear in the grand 40-year history of “Saturday Night Live.” The Brasky buddies were always led by the hilarious Will Ferrell in the mid-to-late ’90s, typically with cast members of that era, David Koechner and Mark McKinney, by his side and one of the week’s hosts (usually Alec Baldwin or John Goodman). They would drink together at a bar or occasionally another venue, like their son’s little league baseball game, and get to bragging about their experiences with their shared friend Bill Brasky. The group’s descriptions of Brasky always started out relatively normal with things like “I know Bill Brasky. He’s a big fella, goes about 6’4’’, 280. He loves his Scotch.” However, the descriptions of Brasky get more and more Paul Bunyan-esque as the sketch goes on, and the drunk buddies try to one-up each other until the sketches reach absolute hilarity. By the end of the sketch, Brasky would go from 6’4”, 280 to “a ten-foot-tall, two-ton son of a bitch who could eat a hammer and take a shotgun blast standing!” The sketches would always end with the shadowy figure of Bill Brasky showing up and offering to buy a round for the buddies. The sketches appeared five times from 1996 through 1998, and then in late 2013, after 15 years, a miracle happened – in an episode hosted by actor Paul Rudd, the Brasky Buddies returned. Rudd was supporting the movie “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” which co-starred former Brasky buddies Ferrell and Koechner. The three were joined by then ‘SNL’ cast member Taran Killam to recreate the sketch, which would probably become the funniest sketch of that season on the show. 32. King Tut Does anybody remember that comedian Steve Martin actually had a top 20 Billboard hit in 1978 with his comedy song “King Tut”? True story. The novelty song released by Martin and the Toot Uncommons (members of the popular group Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) from Martin’s comedy album A Wild and Crazy Guy became a massive hit, selling over a million copies. It debuted on an episode of ‘SNL,’ hosted by Martin, on April 22, 1978, widely regarded as the greatest single episode in ‘SNL’ history. According to authors Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, in their book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, Martin came to the show that week and asked producer Lorne Michaels if he could perform it live on the air. Michaels put everything he had into the performance, and as a result, it became one of the most expensive productions to appear on the show to that point. “King Tut” is a satirical novelty song about the Treasures of Tutankhamun traveling exhibit, which was popular in the United States at the time and celebrated the life of the Egyptian pharaoh. Watching Martin perform “King Tut” dressed in Egyptian pharaoh garb while doing crazy Egyptian dances that wouldn’t be made famous for almost another decade when The Bangles had a hit with “Walk Like an Egyptian” is a blast. Among my favorite lines of this zany tune are: “Buried with a donkey/he’s my favorite honkey” and “Dancin’ by the Nile/The ladies love his style/Rockin’ for a mile/he ate a crocodile.” The fact that “King Tut” was a satire of the disco fad at the time also adds significantly to the piece's humor, which might be lost on many hearing it for the first time today. Among the highlights of the ‘SNL’ performance is saxophonist Lou Marini, part of the first ‘SNL’ house band led by Howard Shore and a member of the Blues Brothers backing band, stepping out from a golden sarcophagus to play a blazing sax solo. Martin, who has become quite the banjo virtuoso over the years, would revisit “King Tut” in 2011 as a bluegrass song on his album Rare Bird Alert with the Steep Canyon Rangers. Interestingly enough, both albums featuring this song were nominated for Grammy Awards. 31. The Abduction of Colleen Rafferty “Saturday Night Live” doesn’t seem to do recurring characters as often in the last decade-plus of the show, but one of the show’s all-time great characters, and one that never failed to provide laughs for both the audiences and those within the live sketch, was Collen Rafferty, Kate McKinnon’s alien abductee with wildly vivid remembrances of being probed and prodded by her celestial captors. The character has appeared eight times on the show, with its debut coming on December 5, 2015, in an episode hosted by Ryan Gosling. In the debut sketch, Gosling infamously couldn’t keep from consistently breaking character at the outrageous things McKinnon says as Rafferty about her encounters with the beings from beyond. Gosling has appeared in three of the eight Colleen Rafferty sketches, including one in April of this year in an episode in which Gosling hosted, and McKinnon returned to the show in a cameo to perform. McKinnon was the M.V.P. of her era on ‘SNL’; this is most likely the character she’ll most be remembered for playing. 30. The Return of Eddie Murphy Eddie Murphy might not be the greatest cast member in the history of “Saturday Night Live” – though if you argue he is, I wouldn’t put up a fight – but I don’t think there’s any argument that he isn’t the most important cast member in the show’s history. If it weren’t for Eddie Murphy in the early ‘80s, this show likely wouldn’t make it to its 10th anniversary, let alone its 50th. But there was a large swath of time in which Murphy wouldn’t return to ‘SNL.’ Many attribute the reason why to being offended by a joke David Spade made on his Hollywood Minute segment of Weekend Update in the mid-‘90s, in which Spade referred to Murphy as a “falling star” in reaction to the box office failure of Murphy’s film “Vampire in Brooklyn.” In 2024, Murphy told the New York Times: “It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house!” I’m one of the family, and you’re fucking with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that.” He also called it a “cheap shot.” Murphy notably didn’t attend the show’s 25th anniversary special. He would make a brief appearance during the show’s 40th anniversary special in which he appeared at the center of Studio 8H and equated it to being like “returning to high school.” But the moment was awkward because he didn’t appear in any bits during the three-hour event. This moment may have piqued his interest in returning to host an episode, though, which he would do in season 45, hosting the Christmas episode on December 21, 2019. During the episode (his first ‘SNL’ appearance in more than 35 years, not counting the 40th-anniversary special cameo), Murphy reprised some of his greatest recurring characters like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, and Velvet Jones, and it was one of the most watched and talked about episodes of the show’s modern era. It's the highest-rated episode by fan rankings on IMDb. It was a legend coming home where he belonged and it’ll never be forgotten. 29. Lorne Michaels Tries to Reunite The Beatles One of the most memorable moments of the debut season of “Saturday Night Live” was producer Lorne Michaels’s attempt at reuniting The Beatles. On the April 26, 1976, episode, Michaels appeared in a bit facing the camera, in which he held a $3,000 check and offered it to the four members of The Beatles, which had been broken up for nearly seven years at that point, to perform three Beatles songs on the show. The bit was a mixture of tongue-in-cheek humor and a bit of hope that it might entice the members to take the gig. Michaels joked: “$1,000 for ‘She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ You know the words – it’ll be easy.” John Lennon happened to be watching the episode live. A week later, Paul McCartney was visiting Lennon in New York City, and Lennon explained the bit to him and suggested they should play along, show up to the studio, and attempt to claim half the cash. They ultimately decided against it. However, a similar joke would be made in the second season of the show, when on the November 20, 1976, episode, George Harrison appeared (in previously recorded bits) as musical guest with host Paul Simon, and a cold opening in which he attempted to claim the money or at least negotiate a price for one Beatle. 28. David S. Pumpkins, Any Questions? Every now and then throughout the half-century run of “Saturday Night Live,” there has been a sketch or character that broke out of the show’s little fan community and gone into the pop culture lexicon almost instantaneously. Usually, it’s a moment from a cast member debuting a new character, but sometimes, it’s a performance given by one of the show’s hosts. Such a moment occurred on the October 22, 2016 episode hosted by Tom Hanks, when a strange Halloween character named David S. Pumpkins (Hanks) was born. The brainchild of Mikey Day, Bobby Moynihan, and Streeter Seidell, David S. Pumpkins is essentially the Santa Claus of Halloween, but when he pops up to spectators at a Haunted Mansion-type ride, he is more confusing than scary. The character wears a suit and tie covered in pumpkins and has the catchphrase “Any Questions?,” to which the people on the ride have plenty. David S. Pumpkins is also accompanied by two skeletons (Day and Moynihan) who dance awkwardly during the bit. The sketch immediately became an instant classic for ‘SNL’ and led to an animated special the following year. Hanks reprised David S. Pumpkins in an episode he hosted in season 48.
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