‘Saturday Night Live’: IndieWire’s Staff Picks Their Favorite Sketches of All Time
We’re celebrating 50 years of “Saturday Night Live“! All this week, we’re digging into the late-night comedy institution with new stories, including lists, essays, interviews, and more.
To name your favorite “SNL” sketch is to immediately date yourself. Whether it’s because you remember watching one of the first episodes in 1975, or devouring Spartan Cheerleaders sketches while mainlining “The Best of Will Ferrell” DVDs (guilty) or you recall taping on VHS 2004-era political cold opens so you could re-watch them (guilty again!), there are practically as many personal favorite “SNL” sketches as “SNL” sketches in total.
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In honor of the 50th anniversary, IndieWire put together our picks for the 50 greatest “Saturday Night Live” sketches of the 21st century. But that obviously wasn’t enough; that was a team effort that left out all the not-super-popular-but-quoted-weekly-in-your-group-chats moments.
For example, while I heartily endorse many of the picks on the best-of list, one of my personal favorites is “This Is Not A Feminist Song,” featuring first-time host Ariana Grande. Besides being hella catchy, any time someone is Mad Online that someone didn’t do something feminist ~in the right way~, I always think of this lyric from the 2016 anthem: “This is not a feminist song/ ‘Cause we were scared we would do it wrong.” An ode to exhausting discourses!
The tune is just one of the mid-2010s all-lady musical numbers that is bopping around in my head at any given time. “(Do It On My) Twin Bed” and “Back Home Ballers” are holiday classics, and “Welcome to Hell” perfectly captured many women’s feelings in the immediate aftermath of the #MeToo movement (but, you know, in a FUN way!). Taken together, the songs are a compelling point of view that likely wouldn’t have found air time in earlier versions of the show — so I’m all the more grateful they are easily accessible now, for any texting- or music-based needs.
Check out a few more of our staff favorite “Saturday Night Live” highlights below.
“Boy Dance Party”
If I’m being totally honest, “Darrell’s House” or “Dunkin Donuts” would be a more accurate (and more respectable) choice for my personal favorite sketch. They both stuck with me far longer than most “SNL” creations, and they both feel underappreciated, due to their general weirdness or problematic star. But having come from a town where the cool thing for guys to do at school dances was stand stoically on the edge of the gymnasium sipping your “punch” until a girl invited you out for one of the evening’s three slow songs, I have a soft spot for “Boy Dance Party.”
The premise is simple: Rather than go out with the ladies, these bro-coded fellas pretend to prefer watching sports… but they’re secretly plotting a dudes-only, disco-fueled, dick-swinging dance marathon. Why? Because boys need to cut loose (footloose), too! The song is catchy, the lyrics are clever, and Bruce Willis really embraces his goofy dad dance moves. By the time their party peaks with a “shake that SACK” montage (“Shake Shack!”), one or two of the lyrics has lodged itself in your brain, creating an earworm you’ll be humming for days (if not years) on end — that is, assuming your wife is out of earshot. —Ben Travers
“Bad Idea Jeans”
“I thought about it, and even though it’s over, I’m going to tell my wife about the affair.” BAD IDEA
“I don’t know the guy, but I’ve got two kidneys and he needs one, so I figured—” BAD IDEA
Most of my favorite “SNL” sketches fall into the fake commercial category – no idea why, maybe I was just a big fan of the pre-taped bits, even as a kid – including “Happy Fun Ball,” “The Adobe,” and “Shimmer,” but nothing lands for me still like “Bad Idea Jeans.” The premise itself is both deeply stupid and incredibly clever (the sweet spot, really). Imagine the sort of jeans you might wear while having bad ideas (tapered, stonewashed, with a little tag right on the butt seam). You’ve already cooked up and executed one bad idea, after all, if you’re wearing these guys (and to play sports, no less). Much of what lands about this bit is the editing and the absolutely minimum amount of information we’re given to work with, everything cut and trimmed for maximum humor and instant recognition. You don’t need to know how that kidney plan ends to know it’s a BAD IDEA, and the quicker we can get to the punchline, the punchier it is. —Kate Erbland
“Papyrus”
“SNL” was always at its funniest whenever you were in high school. So for me, that meant my formative teenage years was growing up with Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island, discovering what YouTube was and sharing classics like “Lazy Sunday” and “D*** in a Box” with all my friends. I truly could select a list of nothing but SNL Digital Shorts as my favorites and call it a day, and god knows I was seriously tempted to write 1,000 words about the Blizzard Man.
But I can’t deny that the favorite I’ve returned to over and over was well past that Aughts era and well into my twenties. It is emblematic of the kind of impressively mounted, carefully constructed pre-tapes that The Lonely Island helped enable: “Papyrus.” The sleepless obsession, the nightmares over minutiae, the impassioned comic rage that Ryan Gosling has over this simplest of concepts speaks to so much of who I am…or at the very least have been over stupid bullshit before I started going to therapy.
God knows how many times I’ve jokingly wanted to flip over the table after a board game gone wrong, only to realize that I’m probably doing that because Gosling did it here first. I certainly can’t drink off-brand teas without thinking of this sketch, and I know I preferred the “Papyrus 2” follow-up from last year more than most. This is one of the all-time classics, but it’s also my white whale, the oddball sketch that I never grow tired of showing to first-timers and the type of Post-Simpsons, Post-Seinfeld comedy that I can point to about what defines my humor and say, “Yup, that about sums it up.” —Brian Welk
“Brunch”
Picture this: you’re enjoying a lovely Sunday brunch with your besties and then one of them asks a seemingly innocuous question — but wait, that’s not your friend, it’s Chris Hemsworth in a dress and wig! Hemsworth infiltrates the friend group of Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, and Vanessa Bayer in this almost obscenely simple but skillful sketch, which at the time showcased his comedic talent more than anything in the MCU (turns out we didneed that third “Thor” movie). From the early and unbelievable discovery of “Claire”s identity (“Come to think of it, I’ve never met Claire before today!”) to her insistence on Hemsworth’s hotness (and dunking on Liam) to little old C-Hemmy finally coming clean, it’s a wild ride where Hemsworth is always game to be the big butt of the joke. It even has a neat little ending that you can quote in perpetuity. Thanks, C-Hemmy! —Proma Khosla
“MacGruber”
What can I say about Will Forte? Much like MacGruber, “The guys’s a friggin’ genius!” (As is Jorma Taccone, who conceived the character and directed most of the sketches and its subsequent feature film.)
“MacGruber,” a parody of the “MacGyver” series (1985-1992) starring Richard Dean Anderson, first appeared on “SNL” in 2007. And then it appeared again, and again. I’m not necessarily referring to just how many episodesfeatured MacGruber so much as how often MacGruber appeared in each episode. “MacGruber” is a departure from the usual “SNL” pre-tape in that it usually ran one (relatively short) scene and then returned later in the episode with additional chapters, despite the catastrophic failure of the previous installment(s). As the “SNL” episode progressed, each “MacGruber” was heightened via a custom theme song and MacGruber’s advanced unhinged appearance and antics. When one saw a “MacGruber,” they knew more were coming — I was personally delighted by that.
How enamored was I with “MacGruber”? I’m not one of these adults who go all out for Halloween, but the one time I did, it was circa 2010-ish as MacGruber. I can still remember how frustrating it was to find an appropriate mullet wig (all “Joe Dirt,” no “MacGruber”). I can still remember relaying that to Forte a few years later, when he very earnestly replied, “I wish I knew, I’d have given you mine.” That story is a testament to Forte’s genuine kindness, and in no way a humblebrag about our relationship, which is nonexistent minus guy-who-interviewed-guy-a-few-times.
It’s hard to select the best “MacGruber,” but for the sake of the list, let’s go with “Sensitivity Training.” He makes his jokes in private now, MacGruber! —Tony Maglio
“Close Encounter”
At the very end of Season 41’s “Close Encounter,” the alien-themed sketch starring Kate McKinnon fades into an aerial view of the Pentagon. Loud applause, for a scene so outrageously funny it made three of its five actors break, almost drowns out my favorite part. But if you listen carefully, you can hear someone (I think it’s Aidy Bryant?) giggle into their mic with pure joy as they exit. It’s a wildly endearing button on a sensational piece of writing that to this day has me saying, “I was full Porky Piggin’ it in a drafty dome.”
A classic “one of these things is not like the other” set-up casts host Ryan Gosling, Cecily Strong, and McKinnon as recently returned victims in an alien abduction. Bobby Moynihan and Bryant play government officials debriefing the three citizens, but a troubling pattern soon emerges in their answers. Strong’s hippy chick and Gosling’s hometown hero had an enlightening meeting with God… but McKinnon’s affable chain-smoker character, Ms. Rafferty, describes a bizarre, “off the books,” sexual experience with some Martians.
The performances are unforgettable and Gosling cracks early. Bryant starts to lose it not long after (she’s fully crying by the end), but McKinnon chuckles at just the right time while Strong and Moynihan barely keep it together. The best character breaks feel like more like punctuation than unprofessionalism, and this 2015 sketch ended up being so popular the format has been repeated several times. Still, the original is the original — and even against Bill Hader’s Stefon, Ms. Rafferty will always be my go-to proof for just how fun it can be to watch the “SNL” cast get carried away by a joke. —Ali Foreman
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