Saturday night. The TV is on. That familiar theme music is kicking in. If you watched Saturday Night Live back in the day, you know exactly what that feeling was like.
The show has been making people laugh since 1975. And somewhere along the way, it stopped being just a TV program and became part of the soundtrack of our lives. Some of those sketches have never really left us. We still quote them. We still laugh at them. We still remember exactly where we were when we first saw them.
Here are 17 of the best SNL sketches, from the early days all the way to more recent years.
The Early Classics (1976–1981)
The Blues Brothers (1976) — Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi put on their fedoras and Wayfarers and debuted what started as a personal passion project. That sketch eventually grew into a No. 1 album and a full feature film.
Roseanne Roseannadanna (1977) — Gilda Radner brought her geometric wig and her gloriously gross Weekend Update reporter to life, regularly leaving co-anchor Jane Curtin somewhere between horrified and helpless with laughter.
2 Wild and Crazy Guys (1977) — Steve Martin and Aykroyd played the Festrunk brothers, two Czech immigrants with an eye for the ladies, specifically for their American neighbors, played by Radner and Laraine Newman. Their proud declaration, “We are two wild and crazy guys!” got repeated in living rooms across the country.
Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood (1981) — Eddie Murphy took the gentle world of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and turned it on its head. His version of the friendly neighbor was dealing with police and eviction notices, and it was brilliant.
The Quotable ’80s and ’90s
Wayne’s World (1989) — Mike Myers as Wayne and Dana Carvey as Garth hosted their own public access TV show from Wayne’s basement. The sketch became two movies and gave us more catchphrases than we can count.
Van Down by the River (1993) — Chris Farley played motivational speaker Matt Foley, brought in by parents Phil Hartman and Julia Sweeney to scare teenagers David Spade and Christina Applegate straight. It didn’t go well for Matt Foley, anyway. For us, it was perfect.
The Hanukkah Song (1994) — Adam Sandler stepped up to the Weekend Update desk in December of 1994 and performed his original holiday tune. He celebrated the season by listing his favorite Jewish stars, and the crowd absolutely loved it.
The Spartans (1995) — Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri played Craig and Arianna, two deeply enthusiastic wannabe cheerleaders. Their spirit fingers and boundless energy made this one of the most beloved recurring characters the show ever produced.
Delicious Dish (1998) — Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon hosted a deadpan spoof of public radio cooking programs. When host Alec Baldwin came on as Pete Schweddy to discuss his holiday treats, the result was one of the most quoted sketches in the show’s history.
Sally O’Malley (1999) — Molly Shannon introduced a character who would return for years: Sally O’Malley, a proud 50-year-old in a red onesie who loved nothing more than to “kick and stretch and kick!”
The 2000s and Beyond
Dick in a Box (2006) — Lorne Michaels asked Andy Samberg for a holiday musical sketch. What he got was Samberg and Justin Timberlake as a ’90s R&B duo delivering a gift that, as they say, keeps on giving.
Bill Hader as Stefon (2008) — Hader introduced his New York City nightlife guru Stefon on Weekend Update in 2008. The character, created with writer John Mulaney, became a regular fixture from 2010 to 2013, and Hader’s attempts not to laugh were half the fun.
The Californians (2013) — Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, and Hader played soap opera characters with exaggerated Valley accents whose conversations inevitably dissolved into impossibly complicated Los Angeles freeway directions.
David S. Pumpkins (2016) — Tom Hanks played a haunted elevator attraction character with a love of butt-slapping and absolutely no backstory anyone could explain. The sketch became so beloved that Hanks reprised it multiple times and even starred in his own NBC Halloween special in 2017.
Hot Ones with Beyoncé (2021) — Maya Rudolph has played Beyoncé more than ten times on the show. But her 2021 appearance (facing down increasingly spicy chicken wings as Mikey Day played the show’s host and Kenan Thompson played her hairdresser) was something special.
The Iceberg That Hit the Titanic (2021) — Bowen Yang appeared on Weekend Update as the iceberg responsible for sinking the Titanic. It sounds absurd. It was absolutely absurd. That was the point.
Close Encounters (2022) — Kate McKinnon’s Colleen Rafferty kept finding herself in alien abduction support groups where her experiences were always dramatically different (and far more eventful) than everyone else’s.
Fifty years of late-night laughs. Some of those moments feel like yesterday, don’t they?