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For a show like Saturday Night Live that's been around for a while and has gone through many changes (some good, some bad), your gauge of Awesome really depends on what era you watched and/or loved.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.


  • Probably the most awesome thing about SNL is the fact that the show has been on the air for decades and counting, survived many things that would have taken down lesser shows (Executive Meddling, Seasonal Rot, cast and crew changes, weak writing, controversial moments, criticism over racial and gender equality in the cast, fair-weather fans who will drop the show the minute it does something that misfires — even a global pandemic), and, for better or worse, is considered great entertainment, and has adapted to this current era, where people are finding their sketch show fix online and on cable rather than on free-to-air TV. On an E! special about the show's history, Lorne Michaels has stated that the show has lasted for as long as it has because it reinvents itself with talented cast members and writers and always finds a new audience after the ones who used to like the show brush it off.
  • May 16, 2009: Will Ferrell's character pretends to have a Vietnam flashback and ends up singing (and maraca-ing) the entirety of "Goodnight Saigon". Violinists come in from nowhere, Green Day casually steps into the background, and by the end of the sketch Ferrell's accompanied about fifty other people (celebrities, the whole cast [at the time], previous cast members, famous hosts, one of which was Artie Lange from the original cast of MADtv, which had reached the last episode at the time of the season 34 finale of SNL) singing with perfectly straight faces and doing various ridiculous things like playing along on unplugged Guitar Hero controllers. There's the sense that everyone turned out because Ferrell's a legend — they all walk offstage at the end one by one as the song tapers off. It's so overdramatic that it breaks the walls of Narmy and Silly entirely and loops back around to Epic. It's already listed on the main page as Awesome Music, but this is also what a Moment of Awesome looks like.
  • February 17, 1990: One famous episode had Aerosmith joining in on the Wayne's World sketch along with guest host Tom Hanks.
  • September 29, 2001: The first live show after the 9/11 attacks, with host Reese Witherspoon and musical guest Alicia Keys. After honestly paying tribute to the rescue people by bringing them on stage, Lorne Michaels talks with then-Mayor Rudy Guiliani. The following exchange may not seem like much now, but really went far in breaking the unease over the "Is it too soon to laugh while still remaining respectful for the lives lost?" feeling everyone was going through:
    Lorne Michaels: Can we be funny?
    Mayor Guiliani: Why start now?note 
    • What really makes this awesome is how Giuliani says the opening catchphrase: "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!".
  • September 25, 1999: Elvis Costello's appearance during the SNL 25th Anniversary special, consisted of sabotaging Beastie Boys' performance of "Sabotage" before they all played a rendition of Costello's "Radio Radio". note 
  • In one of Buck Henry's episodes, John Belushi accidentally cut his forehead with his very real samurai sword towards the end of the "Samurai Stockbroker" sketch. After the commercial break, Henry appeared with a bandage over the cut. The show lampshaded the incident by having all the other cast members wear identical bandages on the same spot for the remainder of the show, as well as writing up a quick "newsstory" for Weekend Update: "Buck Henry was attacked with a sword by a coked-out John Belushi on a late-night comedy sketch show."
    • Speaking of Belushi's samurai, in his parody of Saturday Night Fever, appropriately called Samurai Night Fever, Belushi does a perfect mix of Japanese and Brooklyn accents, at the same time.
  • December 14, 1991: Steve Martin begins with a Cold Open where he's apathetic about hosting again and intends on phoning it in. Then when Chris Farley shows him his old King Tut costume, Steve suddenly remembers how much passion he and the past cast members used to give and goes into a full musical number throughout Studio 8B where he declares that he's going to give a full effort. The entire cast gradually joins in, culminating in them doing a full chorus line on the stage.
  • February 6, 1993: This exchange by Chris Farley and Paul McCartney:
    Chris Farley: Uh... remember when you were in The Beatles? And, um, you did that album Abbey Road, and at the very end of the song, it would...the song goes "and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"? You... you remember that?
    Paul McCartney: Yes.
    Chris: Uh...is that true?
    Paul: Yes, Chris. In my experience, it is. I find, the more you give, the more you get.
    Chris (ecstatic, starts to point at Paul and mouth "AWESOME!"): Well, that's it for this week's show...
  • September 28, 1991. The Reverend Jesse Jackson (appearing as himself, as opposed to being impersonated by a cast member) reads Green Eggs and Ham in honor of Dr. Seuss, who had just passed away. He did it in the speaking manner he would have used were he speaking about racial injustice, or delivering a sermon.
  • Betty White hosting the Mother's Day episode on May 8, 2010 all thanks to a Facebook campaign. It's considered one of the best post-2000 episodes of the series.
  • May 14, 2011: The Ed Helms/Paul Simon episode — home to, not only the brief return of the TV Funhouse cartoon segments, but to the live-action version of The Ambiguously Gay Duo (featuring Jon Hamm as Ace, Jimmy Fallon as Gary, Steve Carell as Big Head, Stephen Colbert as Dr. Brainio, Ed Helms [the episode host] as a Two-Face-esque villain, and Fred Armisen as a lizard man). Also a Negated Moment of Awesome, as Robert Smigel confessed during an interview with AV Club in 2010 that this was supposed to be one of many feature films based on a recurring character from SNL.
  • From the May 14, 2005 show hosted by Will Ferrell, Queens of the Stone Age performing "Little Sister" with backup from Gene Frenkle, Will Ferrell's character from the legendary Cowbell skit.
  • January 10, 1998: Colin Quinn's opening speech from his first time hosting Weekend Update After Norm Macdonald was fired, comparing himself to a new bartender who was hired in place of an old favorite who was recently terminated.
  • October 23, 1999: Norm Macdonald's monologue when he came back to host the show a year and a half after being fired. He reminds the audience what happened and talks about how he thought it was weird that NBC would bring him in to host:
    Norm: How did I go from being not funny enough to be even allowed in the building, to being so funny that I’m now hosting the show? How did I suddenly get so goddamn funny?! It was inexplicable to me, because, let’s face it, a year and a half is not enough time for a dude to learn how to be funny! Then it occurred to me, I haven’t gotten funnier, the show has gotten really bad!
  • March 1, 2003: Horatio Sanz' tribute to Fred Rogers after he passed away. It doubles as a Tear Jerker and Heartwarming Moment as well.
  • The musical performance from December 12, 1998. Vanessa Williams, Luciano Pavorotti, and the Harlem Boys Choir delivering a GLORIOUS rendition of "O, Come, All Ye Faithful", sung in Latin and English.
  • The hiring of Kenan Thompson, the first SNL cast member to be born after SNL premiered and the first one to have gotten his start on a kids' show (specifically, a Nickelodeon one).
  • November 7, 2009: Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed an homage to Donald O'Connor's performance in Singin' in the Rain, pulling off an energetic performance of "Make 'Em Laugh" — complete with the two backflips off the walls. Also, the second time he hosted, when he recreated the "It's Raining Men" sequence from the movie Magic Mike.
  • The entire 1992 Presidential campaign, with Dana Carvey pulling double duty as both Bush Senior and Ross Perot. The high water mark of political satire the show ever pulled off.
  • October 6, 2012: Big Bird's appearance on the Daniel Craig/Muse episode. Made more awesome by the fact that they didn't have to write anything dirty or outrageous for him to be funny; they just let him be his childlike self.
  • October 13, 2012: Nasim Pedraf as Arianna Huffington picks at the hypocrisy of bringing up the subject of birth control at the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate:
    "If men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be like Starbucks, two in every block and four in every airport; and birth control pills would come in flavors like Black Sea Salt and Cool Ranch!" (audience applauds)
  • October 20, 2012: Bruno Mars pulling off a decent SNL episode, despite the fact that he admitted in the monologue that he's never done comedy or acting of any kind.
    • Special mention has to go to the Merryville Brothers sketch, since it can't be that easy to nail the Uncanny Valley effect intended. Actually this can apply to all the times they did it - you probably expect Jim Carrey to pull it off, but Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars?
  • December 17, 2011: Jimmy Fallon's musical performance at the beginning of his episode. The entire cast of SNL dancing stands out in particular.
    • Fallon admitting that his Corpsing ruined a lot of sketches. If admitting AND embracing a fault he made that caused a lot of people to hate him when he was on the show isn’t this, then I don’t know what is.
    • From the same episode, the Weekend Update where Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers all go against each other in the Joke-Off. Poehler's entrance in particular generated much applause. So much so that when Fey enters immediately after her, even though she can be seen mouthing phrases like "It's on!", it's nearly impossible to hear her because the applause was so loud.
    • Really, Fallon's performance all throughout the episode can be considered its own Moment of Awesome. After so many years of people deriding him for his Corpsing, he ended up returning to participate in one of Season 37's most-acclaimed episodes. In his A.V. Club review, David Sims comments that Fallon's infectious energy that annoyed people during his tenure on the show actually served him well as a host, as it helped to spread an atmosphere of fun and excitement. It's as though Fallon's hosting allowed him to come full circle with SNL, especially when one recalls the Call-Forward Alec Baldwin made in 1998 (he accurately predicted (as a joke) that Fallon would host the Christmas episode of 2011). To cap it all off? Fallon won an Emmy for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series" in 2012 thanks to the episode.
  • Season 38's season finale on May 18, 2013 has one in saying goodbye to Stefon, Bill Hader's burnt-out Club Kid character and Weekend Update's city correspondent (and, by extension, Bill Hader, as he announced earlier in the week that season 38 was his last season on the show). In it, he grows tired of Seth Meyers' dismissive attitude toward his club recommendations and announces that he's getting married to "someone who loves him for him". Seth, realizing that he truly loves Stefon, sprints to the church where the wedding is taking place (a Shout-Out to The Graduate), and calls out Stefon's name. At this point, we see that Stefon's fiance is Anderson Cooper (who gets hit in the face like he did in the Digital Short where Andy Samberg and Pee-Wee Herman have a drunken night out) and that all of Stefon's guests are the weirdos and freaks he mentioned in the past. Seth and Stefon proceed to escape from the wedding, with Ben Affleck (that night's host, and who previously hosted the first episode Stefon ever appeared in, playing his brother) seen in the crowd cheering Hader's character on to "follow his heart". It ends with Seth and Stefon returning before the Weekend Update audience to massive cheers, embracing as Seth signs them off, while several recurring characters from the last few years (like Bobby Moynihan's Drunk Uncle, Kenan Thompson's Jean K. Jean, Fred Armisen as David Paterson, Cecily Strong's Girl You Wish You Hadn't Talked To At a Party, and Jason Sudeikis' Devil) shower them with rice. Truly a fine farewell to Bill Hader and his most iconic character.
  • April 22, 1978: Steve Martin sings "King Tut". In fact, that episode - which had the Blues Brothers performing as musical guest, Martin wordlessly dancing terribly with Gilda Radner, and classic appearances of Theodoric of York and the Wild And Crazy Guys - was considered and probably still is one of the best nights the show ever produced.
  • December 17, 2005: "Lazy Sunday". The day after it aired, it blew up the Internet, made YouTube the must-visit video site (before NBC made their deal with Hulu) with thousands scurrying to watch what everyone else was hailing as "awesome," got SNL out of the slump it was in from 2002 (when Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer left) to late 2005 (when Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, and Kristen Wiig were brought in and when Jason Sudeikis went from being a writer to being a cast member) and pushed Lorne Michaels to look to Internet-based sketch troupes and humor site owners and contributors for new talent along with finding talent at The Groundlings, Second City, Upright Citizens' Brigade, and the world of stand-up.
  • October 27, 1990: The "Chippendales Auditions" sketch with Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley was most likely Farley's crowd-winning moment on SNL.
  • January 20, 2001: The final Janet Reno Dance Party sketch, with the real Janet Reno making a surprise appearance. Janet Reno actually flew out on her last day in office to specifically appear in the bit. The best thing about the appearance, and the sketch as a whole, is that Janet Reno loved the entire sketch, as she said that it caused young people to approach her and ask her about it, giving her a brand new audience.
  • December 20, 1986:
  • November 21, 2015: Matthew McConaughey does his opening monologue all by himself, with zero support from the SNL cast, a feat once thought to be possible only by the best standup comedians...just by retelling the story of where the "alright alright alright" came from.
  • October 25, 2014: A sketch from the Jim Carrey-hosted episode in season 40 where Vanessa Bayer hosts a costume contest. Carrey and Kate McKinnon must settle their differences with a "Chandelier" dance-off, which extends right into the crowd. The audience goes wild as Carrey and McKinnon dance around the studio, past Lorne Michaels, Iggy Azalea (also dressed accordingly), and finally right back into the sketch.
  • A sketch in which a group of internet commentors played by Bobby Moynihan, Taren Killam, and Melissa McCarthy get embarrassed by a TV host played by Jason Sudeikis and punched by Bill Hader.
  • December 20, 2014: Mike Myers returning as Dr. Evil interrupting the Cold Open (which was supposed to be "A Very Somber Christmas with Sam Smith"), so he could personally deliver "The Reason You Suck" Speech to North Korea, The Sony Hackers and Sony for the fiasco surrounding the movie The Interview.
  • February 15, 2015: The 40th Anniversary special. Just... all of it. The celebrities, the sketches, the fact that the show was able to go on for forty years, the way that it honors the history of the show and how much effort was into it, it's all awesome.
  • October 17, 2015: Staging a 30 Rock reunion when Tracy Morgan hosted.
  • Kate McKinnon winning the 2016 Emmy award for "Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series". She is the first SNL cast member to win in the supporting category and only the fourth person to win an Emmy while still a series regular. The others were Chevy Chase (in 1976), Gilda Radner (in 1978), and Dana Carvey (in 1993), each of them having won in the now-retired "Best Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program" category.
  • October 1, 2016: In the season 42 premiere's "Celebrity Family Feud: Political Edition", Bernie Sanders (Larry David) is leading Team Hillary Clinton after having conceded the race over the summer and insisting his supporters get behind her. He makes a pretty effective analogy to both his most ardent supporters, independent voters, and undecided voters.
    Bernie: Hillary is the prune juice of this election: she may not seem that appetizing, but if you don't take her now, you're gonna be clogged with crap for a very long time!
  • October 8, 2016:
    • The fact that they were able to dedicate nearly an entire sketch to Donald Trump's Access Hollywood tape only a day after it occurred. Considering how much time goes into writing and rehearsing for a sketch before its performance, the execution of this last-minute addition is surprisingly well done.
    • The episode with Lin-Manuel Miranda has a different take on the opening monologue by having Manuel-Miranda rap it to the music of "My Shot", one of the Signature Songs of his masterpiece Hamilton.
  • November 5, 2016: When the Cubs won the World Series, three of them (Anthony Rizzo, Dexter Fowler, and David Ross) and Bill Murray showed up on the Weekend Report and sang "Go, Cubs, Go!"
  • November 12, 2016:
    • Dave Chappelle resurrecting several of his Chappelle's Show characters after 11 years to spoof Negan's big entrance scene in The Walking Dead. And when Tyrone Biggums is the one who gets beheaded, the head keeps taunting him and dodging his swings, before the body picks it up and we get a heartfelt plea to carry on in the wake of the 2016 election. Chappelle's monologue in the same episode was itself awesome: it was his first time hosting the show and it was the first show after the 2016 election, and he took the opportunity to calm everyone down, without downplaying what had just happened, and reminding everyone that for some people, this was just confirmation of what they already suspected.
    Dave Chappelle: "Blue Lives Matter." What, was you born a police? That is not a blue life. That’s a blue suit. You don’t like it, take the suit off, find a new job. ‘Cause I tell you, if I could quit being black today, I’d be out the game.
  • December 10, 2016: Bryan Cranston making an appearance as Walter White, having just been appointed by Trump as the head of the DEA.
  • January 21, 2017: Aziz Ansari becoming the first person of South Asian descent to host the show. Not to mention his opening monologue, where he talks for nine minutes about the aftermath of Trump's inauguration, among other issues.
  • Anytime a non-actor (athlete, politician, musician) hosts the show (or appears in a sketch like Weekend Update) and reveals themselves to be a pretty gifted comedic actor after all. Particular stand-outs include John Cena, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (which is funny considering he became one of the show's favorite whipping boys during the 2016 election), and John McCain.
  • After the show got a lot of flack for letting Trump host in the middle of his presidential campaign, which is often accused of getting many people more accepting of it, after the election it's proven especially brutal in its parodies of him, to the point where it genuinely gets under his skin and he feels the need to insult the show almost every week.
  • Not quite Trump, exactly, but Melissa McCarthy's surprise cameo as White House press secretary Sean Spicer, parodying his extremely combative relations with the press and his bordering on Insane Troll Logic embracing of "alternative facts" in pursuit of the administration's agenda, was widely embraced as a particularly effective satire of the administration. And once again, it apparently got under Trump's skin to the point where for a time, several commentators openly wondered about the chances of Spicer keeping his job. Spicer himself thought it was funny, although he pointed out that they got the amount of gum (and brand) he chews wrong. Cue a follow up sketch where McCarthy "cuts down" on the Gum and gets the brand right. Spicer generally took it in stride, though the recurring skits got more and more under his skin as time went on. During the show's off-season, Spicer did ultimately leave the White House, but SNL did enough damage to where he will never be taken seriously again, let alone not be associated with Melissa McCarthy.
  • The public ended up so impressed with the show during the Trump era that the show got its highest ratings in more than twenty years. The rating for Alec Baldwin's hosting for 2/11/17 was higher than Trump's controversial hosting back in 11/7/15.
  • On the 2/11/17 airing, the show (through Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren on Weekend Update) finally acknowledging that letting Trump host was a bad idea.
  • After a week of Jeff Sessions getting nailed for lying about his own discussions with a Russian ambassador, he talks to a bunch of people about it on a bus bench Forrest Gump style. The last to arrive is host Octavia Spencer as Minnie, who has a special pie for him...
  • A pre-recorded sketch, "Girl At A Bar", is a terrific takedown of shallow guys who are creeps to women. A woman (Cecily) is waiting at a bar for her friend (Aidy), and a man (Beck) takes the seat next to her. The two make friendly small-talk, with Beck basically announcing he's a devout liberal and feminist. However, when Beck asks to hang out with Cecily some time, she turns him down, and he angrily rants about how she's supposed to say yes since he apparently did everything right. Beck is chased off by a succession of guys who also try to pander to Cecily's liberal and feminist viewpoints, only for them to be enraged that she's still turning them down despite meeting her apparent bare minimum in terms of beliefs. The sketch is an excellent skewering of "nice guys" who think they deserve something from women just for being a nice human being. It's also a takedown, by extension, of the concept of the friend-zone which the show had taken some flack for joking about a few weeks beforehand.
  • In just a few days after the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, they put together a great-looking spoof of it with costumes that are a perfect match for the real thing. The show was also quickly able to incorporate some recent developments during the preceding week, such as Trump's missile launch at Syria and Bill O'Reilly's sexual harassment scandal. The cold open where Trump basically brags to his most loyal supporters about how he's taking away their healthcare and removing several vital protections for miners was so effective, it pissed off Trump's loyal voter base enough to the point many claimed the show had gone too far. In other words, the satire succeeded because it struck home.
  • The actual Trump was really pissed at the "President Bannon" meme that didn't seem so far-fetched, since it looked like Bannon was really the one pulling the strings in the Trump administration. Trump was pissed that the memes and SNL in particular portrayed him this way, and it's speculated that the show was eventually a major impetus in Bannon being fired from the National Security Council and losing his position as de facto president to Jared Kushner. On the show, Trump sends Steve Bannon back to Hell, courtesy of a bigger and scarier Grim Reaper. The show admittedly jumped the gun a bit, as Bannon remained Trump's chief strategist until August of that year (and still has plenty of sway even if he's not in the White House anymore). The actual Bannon grew irritated when asked about the show's portrayal of him, insisting that he didn't care about it.
  • Alec Baldwin flexes his range a little as a General Ripper type and not Trump for once. What could have been a horrendous flub when his line "smells worse than the outhouse at a chili cookout" ends instead with "cookie chillout", forcing him to backtrack verbally and physically, yelling "CHILI COOKOUT I SAID" at Alex Moffat's head for effect. It's awesome because nobody cracks.
  • The May 13, 2017 episode's Trump sketches go for the throat even more than before, outright portraying him as a horrible racist who can say any stupid thing he wants (like essentially confessing to having the Russia investigation in mind when he decided to fire FBI Director James Comey), because the rest of the Republican party are his eager lapdogs ready to mindlessly serve his every beck and call. After the show got some criticism for playing up Trump's buffoonish side at the expense of truly hard-hitting material, seeing the crew unmistakably out for blood is well worth the wait.
  • The political turmoil of early 2017 was enough that SNL started making a Weekend Update Summer Edition, essentially taking one part of their show and turning it into its own thing, something that's been derided before. Some would also call it Tempting Fate, and were proven right as the first episode came out just before the Charlottesville riots. SNL's response? Roll right along with the next episode on schedule. Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers guest star as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in direct response to Donald Trump lumping them together with Confederate slave owners, and Tina Fey returns as herself to deliver a heartfelt but no less hilarious message - ordering a stars-and-stripes cake from a bakery run by minorities (and a real cake is used here), just to tear into it Heartbreak and Ice Cream style.
    "Trump says we should defend our proud Confederate heritage, but he'd tear down those statues himself if he could build a condo over it!"
    • Even better - the episode ends with Colin and Michael deliberately trying to finish that cake.
  • Also from Weekend Update Summer Edition, Leslie Jones flips two big ones to the online haters by acknowledging her age and then doing something about it, by taking up an exercise routine during the offseason. The end result is what she calls "Michelle Obama arms".
    Leslie: (while flexing) Kiss it, Colin. KISS IT! [...] This is what it's gonna be like when you go to prison.
    Colin: "When"?!
  • And when the show came back on September 30, 2017, Che takes the gloves off perhaps more than ever before after Trump insulting Puerto Rico for its horrific damage from Hurricane Maria.
    Michael: Oh really, Donald, you bitch? Was she nasty to you? How nasty? Are you shaking? You want to go shake a Virginia Slim until your hand stops moving? This isn't that complicated, man. It's hurricane relief. These people need help. You just did this for white people twice! Do the same thing. Go tell Melania to put on her flood heels, get some bottled water, some food, pack up some extra Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl t-shirts, and write them a check with our money, you cheap cracker! You know, in one month you've mishandled Puerto Rico, DACA, the NFL, it's like whenever anybody darker than your golf pants has a problem, you're thinking, how can I make this worse?"
  • October 7, 2017: The week of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, the show dropped its planned opening sketch in favor of Jason Aldean (who was in the middle of his act when the shooting started) making a plea for unity and performing the recently deceased Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down."
  • Che's third-degree burn on anyone upset at people saying "Happy Holidays": Just think of it as saying "All holidays matter."
  • Brand new World Series champions Jose Altuve, George Springer, and Alex Bregman making a surprise appearance after Leslie Jones had been insulting them.
  • The show having no hesitation at all in going after its own former writer and cast member Al Franken over his sexual harassment allegations.
  • December 16, 2017: Trump goes through Yet Another Christmas Carol after Mueller's investigation really starts heating up, with the Ghost of Christmas Future being Hilary Clinton. "You've given me the greatest Christmas gift of all: sexual gratification from your slow demise. You have no idea how long I've been waiting to say this: LOCK HIM UP!"
  • Unusually for this show, they do another Christmas Carol thing the week after that last one, but what saves it is the deliberately modern take on Scrooge (ignoring the completely traditional appearance). Thanks to social media, the woman he spurned is still able to stay in touch, making his rejections even more jerkish than before, not to mention the rest of his updated Jerkass behavior. Instead of the Ghost of Christmas Present, it's a stoner on the roof played by Special Guest James Franco, who shows him via a well-placed skylight what the people around him really think of him. Then the stoner is revealed to be a genuine Ghost of Christmas Present the whole time.
  • After more than a year, the show finally reveals who's playing Steve Bannon: BILL FUCKING MURRAY!
  • After Trump's "shithole countries" statement, Weekend Upstate pays lip service to NBC asking everyone to just say "s-hole" before gleefully defying it.
    • Aidy Bryant discusses the All the Money in the World pay gap, and refuses to let Mark Wahlberg off the hook for donating his extra payment to Time's Up, as it shouldn't have taken a week of public shaming to get him to do it.
  • Rather than going the obvious "dumb porn star" route, the show portrays Stormy Daniels as a smart, savvy businesswoman who gleefully lectures the country that she's exactly the hero they deserve for letting the whole Trump situation happen, plus a dig at the porn industry actually having its fair share of female directors.
  • New gold medal winner Hilary Knight defending her new friend Leslie Jones from Colin Jost's attempts to patronizingly offer to teach her some hockey moves.
  • March 17, 2018: John Goodman makes a surprise appearance as Rex Tillerson after he was fired, where after a brief attempt to hide his rage he breaks his water glass, and then interrupts another interview to shout "Trump is a moron!"
  • April 14, 2018: They truly bring out the big acting guns after the raid on Michael Cohen's office, with Ben Stiller as Cohen and ROBERT DE NIRO as Mueller (to which the audience goes fucking nuts and forces him to stand there for about a whole minute until they can hear him). This also leads to a slew of "code names" that make clear just how much no one on the show gives a crap about offending Republicans anymore: Trump's used to be "Putin's Little Bitch" and is now "Stormy's Little Bitch," Ivanka's is "Girlfriend," and Jared Kushner's is "Other Girlfriend."
  • A panoply of past guest stars shows up as Cohen desperately calls a bunch of his pals, adding yet another role for Kate McKinnon as Rudy Guiliani, and topped off with a surprise appearance from Stormy Daniels as herself, outright calling for Trump to resign.
    "I know you don't believe in climate change, but a storm's a-comin', baby!"
  • September 29, 2018: Abraham H. Parnassus, a badass oil baron who appears at his teenage son's career day to rant about how he's spent his whole life crushing all who opposed him, and greatly impressing all the other kids. Then comes the final twist that his son's mother is the granddaughter of his greatest rival, as a final revenge. Helped immensely along the way by Adam Driver's entirely committed (he actually gets Pete Davidson Corpsing immediately upon appearing) and genuinely intimidating performance.
    • Of particular note is when he uses a dead crow as a parable for how he destroyed every enemy and doubter he ever had; clearly Driver wasn't meant to hit the crow very hard, but either by accident or as a sudden ad-lib, he stabs the thing fiercely and precisely enough with his cane to impale it, causing a little cloud of feathers to explode off the prop and prompting Aidy, Pete and Melissa to all begin Corpsing in shock. And Adam never once laughs or even breaks his stride as he keeps screaming in guttural fury.
    (While he's almost drowned out by laughter) "I OUTLIVED YOU, H.R. PICKENS! I CRUSHED YOU INTO THE GROUND... AND NOW YOUR BONES TURN TO OIL BENEATH MY LIVING FEET! I MARRIED YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER, FILLED HER BELLY WITH MY FESTERING SEED, AND SIRED A BOY! HEEEEE IS MY FINAL REVENGE, H.R.!!"
  • Pete Davidson giving a Take That! to Kanye West after he went into an impromptu pro-Trump speech to the captive audience the previous week, uniquely qualified to rebut anyone trying to excuse West's mental issues thanks to his own struggles with mental illness.
    Pete: Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you can be a jackass.
  • After Kenan was forced to put his legendary Bill Cosby impression on hold for years due to his sexual assault charges, Cosby's actually suffering real consequences for it made the crew comfortable enough to bring it back, with an amazing pop from the audience.
  • Michael Che makes an important point about the midterm elections:
    Basically it all comes down to people who don't normally vote. People like me. (sassy voice) Personally I'm saving myself for someone special. [...] I know a lot of white liberals are watching and blaming me for this, but it's not my fault. It's the people wasting their vote in places like New York. They ain't even from here! You want your vote to count, why don't you go back to Ohio, Megan, or wherever your parents are paying your rent from and vote there! There's where your vote counts! You know why these red states stay so red? By sending their liberal kids to coastal cities to learn improv!
  • Robert De Niro makes another appearance as Robert Mueller, after he'd been one of the targets of the same pipe bombs that threatened known Democrats like Obama and the Clintons, as a pretty huge show of defiance.
  • Newly elected Congressman Dan Crenshaw appearing on the show to personally accept Pete Davidson's apology for mocking his eye patch, due to losing an eye as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan, the previous week. He then got some of his own shots in at Davidson's appearance, before they teamed up to urge everyone to tell a veteran you appreciate their service.
  • In something of a follow-up to the legendarily cathartic alternate ending to It's a Wonderful Life, Rudolph instantly turns the tables on his former bullies once he's appointed the head of the team, pulling several Wounded Gazelle Gambits and even getting Comet shot for having rabies.
  • Speaking of It's a Wonderful Life, they pull a It's a Wonderful Plot on the ep before Christmas, bringing back Alec Baldwin as Trump yet again for It's a Wonderful Trump, which is a great big What If? about Trump never winning the election - and proved hard-hitting enough to get under the real Trump's skin for the first time in a fairly long time. Apparently this was enough impetus for the producers to rerun this episode for one off-week in March, roughly 3 months later - and somehow triggering a fresh tirade from Trump, as if the previous one had fallen out of his short-term memory.
  • They do it again on February 16, 2019, when their version of Trump's "national emergency" speech is scathing enough for Trump to demand that NBC be "investigated." Not only that, Trump wondered why there wasn't any "retribution" for the act, proving that the President was quite upset with the satirical look at his press conference.
  • On a more positive subject, Melissa Villasenor has been making good use of her first year bumped up to regular player - while getting the role of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez automatically guarantees some attention on its own, it's her Lady Gaga moments where she truly comes into her own. The first one was her Weekend Update commentary as a massive Lady Gaga fangirl, basically Melissa-as-Lady-Gaga, while the second was a straight impression for Celebrity Family Feud, or pure Lady Gaga, which simply required Melissa to ramp up the ridiculousness even more.
  • What at first seems to be an extremely hackneyed setup with John Mulaney as a square white guy being dragged to an all-black wedding with his black girlfriend subverts expectations beautifully as he turns out to know several of the attendees and is able to perfectly follow their complicated dance routine, and his girlfriend isn't even surprised at any of this. More so when you realize that this was after a new "What's That Name" sketch, where the game show contestants are being publicly shamed for not being familiar with the people around them every day - this sketch shows what can happen if you try.
  • Mikey Day plays a Deadline News reporter trapped in war torn Tripoli, and the only way left for him to get word out is Snapchat, which is a genius move that real reporters could learn from. Then he unwittingly activates the Snapchat filters...
  • Adam Sandler returned as host for the first time since he was fired as a cast member in 1995, and the last part of his monologue is a song about his termination and triumphant return:
    I was fired, I was fired
    NBC said I was done
    But then I went and made $4 billion at the box office
    So I guess you could say I won.
    Yeah, I was FIRED!
    But tonight I’m REHIRED!
    And I’m the happiest man alive
    Because tonight I’m back where it all started for me
    Here on Saturdaaaaaaay Niiiiiiight Liiiiiiiive!
  • On Weekend Update, Colin Jost once turned a news report into a joke by adding one word:
    The state of Vermont has officially recognized Ultimate Frisbee as a high school varsity sport... dad.
  • The parody of Joker (2019) is incredibly well done thanks to a combination of its production value, the music, and David Harbour's turn as the Darker and Edgier version of Oscar the Grouch. When he paints himself green and growls out an angry line about becoming trash, the audience bursts into early applause.
  • Eddie Murphy makes his grand return in the 2019 Christmas episode and reminds everyone just why he was able to single-handedly save the show after its most tumultuous period. Mr. Robinson, Buckwheat, Gumby, and Velvet Jones are all brought back, and he caps things off with an original sketch playing an "Angry Black Man" Stereotype elf with just as much energy as at the peak of his career.
    • During his monologue, Murphy makes an epic Take That! at Bill Cosby following their decades long feud:
      Murphy: If you told me 30 years ago that I’d be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail... even I would have took that bet! (imitates Cosby) Who's America's dad now?!
  • After racking up a bunch of criticism for their political sketches not being nearly as hard-hitting as they could be and banking more on just goofy performances, the show finally just says "Fuck it" as Alan Dershowitz proudly still calls people like Jeffrey Epstein and OJ Simpson friends, and then goes to Hell where he meets Epstein, who says he's "just hanging" and his version of Satan is "a woman my own age."
  • Due to social distancing laws shutting down 30 Rock and other television studios because of the coronavirus, the cast of SNL (after taking a hiatus following the second time Daniel Craig hosted) still found a way to create new episodes by filming sketches at their homes and via phone conferencing. Even though the lack of budget shows in many cases, it's still impressive to see the cast edit together enough sketches to fill the runtime with such limited resources, and, once again, shows that Saturday Night Live, for all its flaws (both real and perceived), can survive anything, including a global pandemic.
  • In its Season 46 premiere, musical guest Megan Thee Stallion centers her performance on the need for Black women to be protected from police violence, racism, and misogyny.
  • A week later, Jack White was immediately cheered for a fantastic Eddie Van Halen tribute (he'd passed away a few days prior) and stepping into the breach days before taping when the originally-booked Morgan Wallen was dropped for not following COVID-19 protocols.
    • During his monologue, Bill Burr makes a poignant point when he mocks white liberal women who hijack protests by people of color and make conversations about diversity about themselves, even though they have historically benefitted from institutional racism and were often complicit in historical transgressions against minorities (such as Carolyn Bryant's false accusations against Emmett Till leading to the latter's lynching).
    • In the same episode, Pete Davidson's "Weekend Update" monologue hilariously tore into J. K. Rowling for her recent comments that many interpreted as transphobic and hypocritical.
  • The last episode before the 2020 United States presidential election is hosted by John Mulaney, and he decided to take his usual recurring "convenience store musical" sketch and end it on a positive note - the real reason everyone is talking Pete out of buying the "I Heart NY" underwear is because it wasn't really meant for sale, it hung on the same wall in the store everyday as a reminder to all New Yorkers, or at least the Times Square mascots, the real reason they had to keep moving forward with the daily grind during a Trump presidency. The use of a Les Misérables tune to close off the sketch really seals the deal.
  • The Cold Opening of the Dave Chappelle/Foo Fighters episode, the first episode after the 2020 United States presidential election. You really got the sense that the actors weren't acting at all and were displaying their genuine joy and relief at the election results.
    Wolf Blitzer: I know I'm supposed to be a neutral news anchor, but goddammit, that feels good! WHOOO!"
    • There's also Biden's acceptance speech where, for one glorious moment, Jim Carrey channels Ace Ventura while also sticking it to Trump.
      Biden: Unfortunately, there are situations in life, and this is one of them, where there must be a winner and... Aaaaaaaaaa loooooooseeeeeeeeeerrrrrr!note  (beat) LOO-HUUUU...ZUH-HERRRR!! (he and Harris hold up an L on their foreheads)
  • On a talk show about rap, Queen Latifah (played by new cast member Punkie Johnson) and Questlove (playing himself) are forced to suffer through a stereotypical hack white rap duo from TikTok (played by Pete Davidson and Timothee Chamalet). Questlove finally has enough and bitchslaps both of them, and when he apologizes, the host just says it's what everyone wanted to do.
  • Kamala Harris slaps Mike Pence when he tries to keep up Trump's increasingly absurd pretense that he somehow won the election.
    Pence: How did you get in the White House?
    Harris: I got more votes.
  • Dan Levy and Kate play a horribly passive-aggressive couple who refuse to just come out and say why they're objecting to the guy their friend is marrying, until finally he just calls them out, which immediately wins them over.
    "Okay, I know you don't like me. Carrie is amazing, and yeah, she's probably too good for me. But at least I tell her how I feel and I say what I mean. And maybe that's what she likes about me. You guys all talk in mean little riddles."
  • Britney Spears calling out Ted Cruz for using his ten and twelve year old daughters as scapegoats for his infamous trip to Cancun during a horrific winter storm that plagued Texas.
  • In a fictional Star Trek prequel series on Paramount+, the Starfleet crew has to deal with a trio of obnoxious, spoiled Gen Z new hires (host Carey Mulligan, Mikey Day, and Chloe Fineman) who continually interrupt the crew's attempts to deal with an approaching black hole with their self-centered dramatics. The captain (Beck Bennett) finally gets fed up with their behavior when they try to frame his corporal (Kate McKinnon) for a non-existent assault and he orders them to be blown out of the ship's air lock.
  • Jeannine Pirro's appearance in the Season 46 finale, with Cecily Strong managing to perfectly nail Colin Jost in the face with a glass of wine behind her back, several feet away, and while struggling to balance in a tank full of the stuff.
    • In the same Weekend Update, Colin finally gets Michael back for all the racist stuff he's had to say in their annual sendoff of writing jokes for each other, as Michael has to give fawning praise to police that ends with "Blue lives matter more." The look on his face at the end is the deepest respect for how badly he just got nailed.
  • In the Season 47 premiere, James Austin Johnson has one of the greatest first outings for a new cast member in the show's history, nailing three very different prominent roles. Special mention to his Joe Biden, as the show's portrayal of Biden the past couple years had been notoriously hampered by their inability to hold onto a regular actor for the role, while Johnson's was instantly hailed by many fans as one of the show's all-time best Presidents, up there with Dana Carvey and Will Ferrell as the Bushes. It's even more impressive when you consider he got on the show in the first place largely due to his incredibly popular Trump impression.
    • Weekend Update ends with a tribute to the recently deceased Norm Macdonald where they play a mini clip show of some of his best Update jokes. The final one is his famous O.J. Simpson "lucky stabbing hat" joke, which comes across as a symbolic "fuck you" by the show to NBC for having to deal with the numerous complaints former executive Don Ohlmeyer had about Norm and his O.J. jokes.
  • After a few years of Ego Nwodim playing Dionne Warwick as a Scatterbrained Senior who's completely clueless about modern society, she's actually joined by the real Warwick, and they spend some time gushing about how awesome they are before a rousing rendition of "What the World Needs Now is Love."
  • Cecily Strong's bit as "Goober the Clown, who had an abortion when she was 23." Cecily uses the clown persona to try and mitigate the traumatic experience of abortion, in the process getting extremely personal and bold. Through her balloon-animal making, Helium Speech, and other clown antics, calls out the misogyny she faced when seeking medical attention, rallies for other "clowns" to stop being ashamed to talk about their abortions, and boasts that she wouldn't be the clown she is today had she not gotten hers. On her Instagram story the next day, Cecily confirmed this was her going public about her real-life abortion story.
  • Weekend Update tackles the highly controversial decision of acquitting Kyle Rittenhouse of shooting protesters and killing 2, by working in 2 cutting punchlines and then giving him no more attention.
  • During his monologue, Simu Liu talks about his past job as a children's party performer, where he would dress as Spider-Man. He references one party in particular, where a little boy kicked him in the shins and yelled "You're not Spider-Man!!", which he credits with "lighting a fire under him" and gives a shout-out to the boy, wherever he is now:
    "Trevor, if you're watching, I just want to say....You're right. I'm not Spider-Man. I'm Shang-Chi, bitch!!
  • The maligned and betrayed Monica Lewinsky gets one in her cameo appearance on the May 8, 1999 episode of the 18th Season in the show's opener. The opener shows then-President Bill Clinton dreaming of his post D.C. life where he lives in Malibu where he hangs out with advisor Vernon Jordan and blonde sex workers, while his secretary Betty Currie covers for him to his latest young mistress (Britney Spears); he is then revealed to have had divorced Hillary Clinton and is married to his last mistress, Monica, who gets off from work as a game show hostess and calls him out on giving her a 3rd edition of Leaves of Grass (he gave her a couple of times and this was a title he gave to Hillary in college) and sneaking out to hang out with Vernon Jordan.
    Bill Clinton: I'm going to have lunch with Vernon Jordan.
    Monica Lewinsky: Lunch? It's 6 O'Clock.
    Bill Clinton: Lunch, Dinner. C'mon baby, can't you trust me?
    Monica Lewinsky: Yeah, in your dreams you Big Creep!
  • After previously doing a dead on impersonation of Joe Cocker, on SNL and elsewhere, John Belushi comes out and does a duet with Joe Cocker, and nails it.
  • In her final episode as a cast member, Kate McKinnon reprises her unlucky alien abductee Mrs. Rafferty. This time, the aliens want to bring her home, and she goes along, walking into a bright spaceship in an homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, giving Kate a beautiful exit from the show.
  • On April Fool's Day 2023, Michael Che pulls off an epic prank on Colin Jost by secretly instructing the audience not to laugh during Jost's Weekend Update jokes. After several minutes of Jost getting a tepid reception, an audience member yells out "You stink!" which causes Che to break down laughing as he finally reveals the prank.

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