POP CULTURE CORNER: The SNL 50 Review nobody asked for by Craig Hammill

Review of Saturday Night Live’s 50th Anniversary Special which aired on the NBC and Peacock channels live Sunday, February 16, 2025 8p-11p EST.

Nobody asked this writer or the Secret Movie Club website their thoughts on the Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary show. We’re a movie culture community after all. So this is our dive into the pop culture pool unannounced. A big ol’ cannonball…

As a child of divorce, the 1980’s, baby boomers, it was probably inevitable that this writer, like so many other fellow Americans, would fall under SNL’s spell. The live comedy-variety show that has aired at 11:30pm on Saturday nights for 50 years, 45 of which have been produced/overseen by comedy impresario Lorne Michaels, is a juggernaut. The decades running political interview show Meet the Press, Saturday Night Live, and PBS’s Sesame Street all feel like ghostly calls across the semi-permeable membrane of time from another dimension, another universe we are moving away from.

By the way the show is produced weekly, Saturday Night Live or SNL as the world has short handed it, is the model of imperfection. There has probably never been a perfect or even flat out great show. Some weeks are stronger than others, some years rise, some years fall flat, stars are born, actors unfairly never break out. And yet, SNL manages to keep its finger on the pop culture pulse more often than not.

Meryl Streep got off one of the funniest lines of the night…

So here in 2025, we get the 50th anniversary special (as the first show debuted October 1975, two years before this writer’s birth). Most likely, the last big reunion show that Lorne Michaels will produce. And it felt like he knew it. The three hour (!!) show felt like Michaels’ message to the audience, comedians, entertainers, culture makers everywhere.

Interestingly, the show itself felt like a middle of the road SNL episode. Some sketches worked. Some felt wonky. Cuts to camera were botched, boom shadows were seen, dialogue from cue cards was misread, nerves were on display.

Keenan Thomsen, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell. . .Lorne Michaels’ coded nod to a cross-generational SNL Dream team?

But there were enough laughs, enough forward momentum, to keep the whole thing on the potter’s wheel. If SNL 50 wasn’t the top tier celebration we all hoped for, it wasn’t the irrelevant disaster it could have been either. It worked. For the most part.

What stood out to this writer immediately and then throughout the entire show was that Michaels and company were choosing the deep cut sketches to return to. The show felt like a nod by Michaels to the comedy nerds-both professional and amateur. The message from Michaels seemed to be “Yes, the strange off the wall sketches that become fans’ beloved special favorites, kept in their minds like beat up photos in tattered wallets, are key to the circulatory system of SNL”.

Jack!!!!!!

Sure we got some big obvious set-pieces (that mostly worked): 16 time host Steve Martin did the opening monologue. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did the tried and true audience Q&A. Weekend update felt like…a really great version of Weekend Update.

But the show was more populated by the deep cuts. Eddie Murphy showed up on Black Jeapordy (doing a hilarious Tracy Morgan impersonation next to Tracy Morgan) and next to Will Ferrell and Keenan Thomsen in a Scared Straight parody. In the latter both Murphy and Ferrell played new characters never before seen. The message was a funny one (if this writer got it right). It was almost as if Michaels was saying “What if Eddie Murphy, Keenan Thomsen, and Will Ferrell were in the same cast…” A comedy nerd’s dream.

The high wattage star cameos are always hit and miss. And in this age of MAGA ascendence, one worries the celebrity appearances almost backfire by reminding everyone struggling in the country just how far away they are from ever hosting or appearing on SNL in what more and more feels like a closed members only club.

And yet Meryl Streep had one of the best lines of the night (“A good mother can also be a bad girl…”). Jack Nicholson miraculously returned from seclusion to introduce Adam Sandler. It almost felt like Michaels trolled Mick Jagger (a lifelong Lorne Michaels friend and SNL fan) by having Keith Richards pop up to ask a funny question in the Q&A.

Bill Murray still has his SNL fastball…

There was also, blessedly, a fair amount of relevancy in the show. Though we were all looking back, the show kept its feet planted in the present. ICE officers “arrested” Canadian Martin Short. Little Wayne gave the best (in this writer’s opinion) musical performance of the night introduced by Dave Chapelle. Tom Hanks intro’d a very funny montage of all the SNL skits of eras past that definitely DO NOT work in today’s culture and climate.

One moment that was a sigh of relief for this writer was how great Bill Murray’s Top 10 Weekend Update Hosts bit on UPDATE worked. Murray seemed to realize the import of the moment, came prepared, rehearsed, and proved he still had his fastball.

It was also great to see an SNL Digital short with Andy Samberg, Bowen Yang, Chris Parnell, and Sarah Sherman acknowledge the overwhelming stress and anxiety almost all writers and performers feel when on the show. The short was also this writer’s 7 year old son’s favorite part because Sarah Sherman pulled down a chart that showed a “butt” (butts never fail to get a laugh from this writer’s and his wife’s 7 and younger family of four).

And it was probably no surprise that Paul McCartney still could bring down the house with the Beatles’ final medley of ABBEY ROAD that includes “The End”.

Even Sir Paul has still got it.

Was that Lorne Michaels saying this is “the end” for his near 50 year era? No. He’s been vocal that he’s still got some more left in him. But it does feel like Michaels, in the same way David Lynch did with Twin Peaks: The Return, offered a career summation statement while he’s still got the tools, the medium, and the audience.

At fifty years old, SNL does show its age (how could it not)? The white hot subversive teenage genius blast it was in the mid to late 1970’s is now a revered middle aged heading to senior citizen status legacy program that may be more concerned with reputation than taking wild swings at the fence. Maybe SNL never was that punk rock album we all wanted to think it was. Instead, maybe SNL is that surprisingly quality album a stadium rocker puts out once or twice in their career. The Exile on Main Street or Some Girls of commercial driven corporate television.

Lorne Michaels and his countless teams of performer/writer collaborators have always found ways to sneak in some subversive comedy that secretly delights the teens and young adults at home still congregating around a TV on a Saturday night.

And that’s enough. In fact, that’s plenty.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club