Saturday Night Live is both the platonic ideal of television — long-running to the tune of 50 years, rooted equally in old-fashioned traditions of the medium and upending them, live, difficult to reproduce, often disposable — and nearly impossible to process like normal TV.
Normal TV can be thought of in terms of episodes or seasons: the superiority of The Simpsons seasons 3-9, the cream-of-the-crop episodes extracted from the fullness of The X-Files or Lost, the jewel-like perfection of one-season wonders (Freaks and Geeks) and shorter-run cable shows (Mad Men) alike. It can also be thought of as a constant in the background; who plucks out particularly great or terrible eras of the NBC Nightly News or perfect episodes of The Tonight Show? (Probably someone, but no one I know.) For all of its permutations and ever-shifting casts, SNL resists both the exceptionalism and the wallpaper — and I’ll admit that I’ve scoffed when observing members of the show’s fandom refer to a particular episode as being akin to “something from Season 33” or having a “Season 16 feel.” Unless Dana Carvey was literally there (and sometimes, this year, he has been!), what does any of that even mean?
Throughout its half-century on the air, approaching 1,000 episodes, SNL has more or less been itself. Yes, there are some dramatic explorations and departures, especially in that wild first season, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. Forget season-to-season nuances — week to week, sometimes minute to minute, the show can be excellent or terrible. Part of the fun is that even the worst seasons have some good sketches, and even the best ones have some utter bombs.
And yet, I do love SNL as well as a challenge, so I’ve attempted to tame the untamable and rank the (first) 50 seasons of the show, sometimes challenging conventional wisdom about certain eras, cast members or even sketches — and sometimes hopelessly conforming to them. What contributes to a “good” SNL season is a little nebulous; it can be cast chemistry, particularly strong individual episodes, maybe even an unusually good musical-guest lineup. (Similarly, opportunities for demerits are legion, sometimes coming down to just how many times a particularly annoying recurring character came back.) As a tribute to the show’s consistent inconsistency, I’ve also selected a sketch from each season that I personally enjoy, doing my best to (mostly) avoid the greatest hits — and, whenever possible, conventional wisdom.
50. Season 6 (1980-81)
OK, so the conventional wisdom on this one is dead-on. Following the departure of Lorne Michaels and the remaining original cast members at the end of Season 5, the show experienced a disastrous reboot under new producer Jean Doumanian. Multiple cast members wouldn’t even make it to the end of season, as Dick Ebersol took over the show for the final episode (before a strike put the season out of its misery). That said, there are a few highlights, looking back: The hiring of Eddie Murphy (albeit as a little-used featured player) a few episodes in, and the first network TV appearance of a rap group on an episode hosted by Debbie Harry, who brought along the Funky Four Plus One for a performance recently spotlighted on the Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music documentary. So, it’s not all horrible sketches and awkward jokes about the lingering legend of the previous cast. But most of it is!
49. Season 11 (1985-86)
The season so strange they recently made a whole-ass documentary attempting to explain its existence, Season 11 saw the return of Lorne Michaels after five seasons away from the show — and nearly got his baby canceled. One of the stranger things about it is that while it discards any familiar faces from the all-star Season 10, Michaels did recruit several players who would have been already familiar to audiences, only they were folks without much sketch-comedy experience: Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr. and Joan Cusack seem like they could be starring in your favorite half-forgotten 1985 campus comedy, but they’re doing SNL instead! It was a trio of lesser-knowns of the cast — Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller — who survived into a mostly-rebooted Season 12, while several trailblazers like Terry Sweeney (the first openly gay cast member) and the late Danitra Vance (the first Black woman in the main SNL cast) didn’t get enough of a shot.
Weirdly, the writers’ room was also something of an all-star affair, with original-years mainstays Al Franken and Tom Davis joined by future clutch players Jack Handey and Robert Smigel, plus multiple folks who would become better-known for The Simpsons and The Kids in the Hall. The documentary essentially concludes that the problem was a group of writers failing to gel with the cast, and the cast failing to gel amongst themselves. Some of the sketches are super-silly and hammy; others are disturbingly dark; none of it feels internally reconciled. Yet there are inspired moments, including the first episode hosted by Tom Hanks, and a true oddity guest-directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It’s possible that this season “deserves” a higher spot than some more familiar coasting years, but it’s also more scattershot novelty than reliable entertainment.
48. Season 20 (1994-95)
Of the handful of SNL seasons that could be described as outright bad rather than frustratingly mixed, this is probably the one that’s still surprisingly bad in retrospect. The others catch the show in the middle of an obviously bumpy reset, with a new cast that didn’t gel and a producer learning (or re-learning) the ropes. But in a grotesque display of irony, Season 20 of SNL featured some of their most successful writers, toiling away in service of a cast that combined well-liked veterans (Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Tim Meadows), new-to-the-show but well-established faces (Janeane Garofalo, Michael McKean, Chris Elliott, Mark McKinney) and fresher talent (Norm Macdonald, Molly Shannon). The resulting pile-up is perhaps less absolutely painful than advertised at the time and since: There are some funny sketches here and there; more prominently, Macdonald’s takeover of Weekend Update makes that segment a show highlight again; and the 1994-ness of it all means the music lineup is a treasure trove of alt-rock pop (Green Day, the Cranberries, R.E.M., Hole, and the Tragically Hip all appear, albeit not typically available in the streaming reruns).
But given the sheer amount of talent in the room, the show became shockingly clunky and juvenile, with one-joke sketches that seemed to last forever and designated stars like Farley, Sandler and Spade to fall back on old routines: Farley screams, Sandler mewls, Spade sniffs and dismisses. You know how everyone’s favorite SNL cast is the one they watched as teenagers? I was 14 years old when this one aired, watched faithfully every week and already loved almost everyone in the cast, and I still walked away from most episodes feeling dispirited. Even more telling: One of the season’s best episodes is the finale, and one of its best sketches involves a bunch of cast members throwing themselves into a polar bear cage to be ripped apart and devoured. Their real-life fates had yet to be decided, but they’re clearly leaning into the disaster.
47. Season 9 (1983-84)
That last gasp of Season 20 runs contrary to the current SNL tradition of major cast members being aware of their own goodbyes, and treating the show as business as usual until they get some kind of farewell on their final episode. More often, superstar goodbyes looked more like Season 9, when Eddie Murphy had his foot out the door for a lot of the year, creating an oddly slow fade. It’s a particular testament to how much Murphy was carrying the show when the mere act of him preparing to leave nearly destabilized the whole franchise, half-convincing producer Dick Ebersol that maybe this “live” thing wasn’t all it was cut out to be. As such, Murphy “appeared” in the back half of Season 9 largely via pre-taped segments. It wasn’t enough. The show isn’t completely deadly, but when Murphy is offscreen, it feels skeletal. Joe Piscopo can’t do it on his own. But you can still find a live sketch, say, pairing Murphy with Robin Williams — two legends who never crossed paths in the movies — and despite it not being any kind of much-loved instant classic, it all flows perfectly with understated yet hilarious results.
46. Season 28 (2002-03)
The bottom chunk of this list mostly has to do with certain cast members leaving and the show’s wobbly first steps in that aftermath. For example: It’s probably not fair to say that just because Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer were no longer with the show in fall ‘02, Tracy Morgan, Chris Kattan and Horatio Sanz should have been booted out the door after them. But in the first post-Ferrell season, the lingering presence of guys from his last few seasons feels like it gets in the way of the show’s powerhouse women (Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey in the writers’ room and on Update) and the up-and-comers working as featured players (Seth Meyers, Will Forte and Fred Armisen, who stuck around a long time; Dean Edwards, who didn’t really get a fair shake; and Jeff Richards, who, well, that was fine, what happened there). This season was probably always going to be a comedown, and despite the wealth of talent, good sketches, and game hosts (Sarah Michelle Gellar! Christopher Walken! An endearingly silly Robert De Niro! The only time Aykroyd has ever hosted!), well, that’s exactly what it is.
45. Season 19 (1993-94)
In truth, there was only one season where younger ‘90s-identified players like Sandler, Farley, Spade and Rob Schneider really felt like the new guard at SNL rather than either supporting players, or slacking leads: Season 19, where Phil Hartman and Kevin Nealon are the only guys remaining from the late ‘80s, and the show hasn’t quite crashed into the Season 20 ditch yet. But you can see it start to veer perilously in that direction, both in terms of diminishing returns from familiar routines, and in the diffuseness of a cast that’s no longer working together so effortlessly. That is to say, sometimes you’ll get an inspired bit of Mike Myers character comedy in his final full season on the show; sometimes you’ll get an absolutely deadly Rob Schneider single-joke routine in his own last stand. Sometimes it seems like the show genuinely can’t tell the difference between the two, or is trying to split the difference between two distinct sophistication levels in the audience. Anyway, a season that can’t figure out what to do with Sarah Silverman, in her sole season as a writer and featured player, doesn’t augur well for the immediate future.
44. Season 29 (2003-04)
Further into the aftermath of Will Ferrell’s departure, there’s no shortage of talent in the SNL cast, and no shortage of funny sketches and characters from the likes of Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Seth Meyers, Will Forte and Rachel Dratch. But Season 29 is another case where Michaels’ more gradual cast changes continue to arguably hurt the show, with veterans Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz cracking each other up in an increasing (and increasingly dire) number of sketches. Yes, occasionally there’s a classic that emerges from all that giggling like “Debbie Downer,” and the Fallon/Fey Weekend Update is still fun, but it often feels the most established stars are standing in the way of newer faces like Kenan Thompson, who took a few years to make a real impression. (Turns out, he had plenty of time, so maybe that’s not the worst offense.) Part of the ongoing growing pains: The show seems decidedly confused about how to handle George W. Bush in the long wake of 9/11 and his various foreign-policy disasters. Late in the season, they eventually land on Will Forte, who handles the impression during the actual election season. For the record, he does an underrated version of W, playing him as whinier and more petulant than the Ferrell incarnation, matching Bush’s more defensive moves leading into his second term.
43. Season 46 (2020-21)
This is an insanely stacked cast — not in terms of abilities, though there is that, but in terms of sheer numbers. Fifteen people in the main cast is already large, and this season also has five featured players, and a 90-minute sketch show with time set aside for music and a seemingly endless tenure of Colin Jost and Michael Che at the Weekend Update desk simply isn’t designed to serve 20 different performers. The scariness of COVID interrupting Season 45, and the extended weirdness of SNL going back on the air pre-vaccine in fall 2020, understandably encouraged some longtime cast members to stick around longer than they might have; some have said as much in interviews — and pity the sketch performer who stays for another couple years, hoping to work their way back to one more normal season, and instead has to do the season where Elon Musk hosts in an all-timer of a horrible episode. Yet some comic talent is too undeniable; this is also the season where Ego Nwodim moves up to main-cast status, and she is an absolute marvel, able to go big and ridiculous or just spin seemingly joke-free dialogue in a way that creates punchlines. Sometimes, the modern Lorne Michaels plan of having an entire backup cast’s worth of comedians on the air at the same time as his crowd-pleasing veterans does actually pay off; it’s easy to imagine Nwodim getting lost in the shuffle in earlier eras of the show, but instead she’s brightened every season of her run.
42. Season 43 (2017-18)
Odd, in retrospect, that Season 43 has more and higher-profile celebrity guests in its stupid Trump-themed cold opens than any of the show’s actual anniversary seasons. In addition to Alec Baldwin’s Trump, recruited alumni-and-friends include Jason Sudeikis, Larry David, Bill Murray, Fred Armisen, Martin Short, Jimmy Fallon, Scarlett Johansson, John Goodman, Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro. Would that any of them had more than the spare funny line or novelty factor going for them! At the same time, it’s oddly heartening that the actual cast of SNL, save Kate McKinnon, would often sidestep these clunky recitations of topical absurdity entirely; every time, say, Aidy Bryant is made to do male drag for a weirdly toothless and not particularly accurate riff on Ted Cruz (the kind of impression that must always be introduced by someone saying the equivalent of “hey, it’s Ted Cruz!”), a bit of me dies inside. This alumni-heavy hosting group for this season (Tina Fey, Bill Hader, Will Ferrell, John Mulaney) has more to do, and the actual sketches and pre-tapes are largely pretty decent. There’s just a lot of excess crap to get through.
41. Season 37 (2011-2012)
As evidenced just above, SNL has often attracted plenty of odds-and-ends guest stars who aren’t the host or musical guest. Sometimes it seems like a service to the few hundred people who attend the live taping, letting them know that they really are an exclusive event where anything can happen. (The one time I saw the show live, indeed, Jon Hamm showed up for no real reason.) So the charitable way to read it is an admirable commitment to old-fashioned live-TV ethos, rather than trying to read its ebb and flow based on other trends. Still, even more than Lorne’s Trump-inspired addiction to stunt casting, Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg’s final season seemed to really bring people out of the woodwork. Here is a list of people who appear in Season 37 without ever hosting or serving as the official musical guest: Steve Martin (twice), Seth Rogen, Matt Damon, Hugh Jackman, Nicolas Cage, Liam Neeson, Tom Hanks, Kenny G, Nicki Minaj, Travie McCoy, Paul Rudd, Olivia Wilde, Val Kilmer, Justin Timberlake, Bill O’Reilly, Kate Upton, Jon Hamm (three times), John McEnroe, Steven Spielberg, Sacha Baron Cohen and Natalie Portman — among others. That’s basically an entire season’s roster of hosts, right there (well, not Bill O’Reilly, that would be gross). On top of that, former cast members Maya Rudolph, Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller all return to host, and there are further appearances from Rachel Dratch, Chris Kattan, Horatio Sanz, Amy Poehler (multiple times), Will Forte and Ana Gasteyer. It’s not the first or last time that SNL starts to seem like a really cool party that occasionally does new sketches, but it’s one of the more pronounced cases, especially outside of an anniversary year.
More weird trivia: Season 37 is also where, for a few weeks, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon are in the same cast on the show, making a smooth transition from one star with infinite leeway to another. This sounds, and will probably continue to sound in later entries, like I’m coming down hard on both of them, which isn’t my intention. Wiig is clearly a brilliantly funny performer, and apart from her SNL work, her movies Bridesmaids, Welcome to Me and Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar testify to this. McKinnon hasn’t shown that kind of range as a movie star, but she’s undeniably magnetic. But Wiig and Kate McKinnon having long runs on the show where they could seemingly get almost any sketch they wanted on the air did them no favors, as it provided an unusual amount of time for audiences (or at least comedy nerds; most audiences seemed to pretty much love them) to see the work, and a lot of their go-to moves (literally; how many different sketches feature McKinnon splaying her legs in weird directions or Wiig stiffening up her posture awkwardly). It sometimes feels like Michaels, eternally burned for not getting any credit on arguably the biggest post-SNL star ever, Eddie Murphy, was determined to have someone dominate the show to the same degree whenever possible, even though it was never actually necessary in Wiig or McKinnon’s eras, which this season bridges.
40. Season 8 (1982-83)
Speaking of Eddie Murphy domination: The dude hosted SNL while he was a cast member! (Granted, it made some sense for him to fill-in last-minute for an ill Nick Nolte, his co-star in 48 Hours, but still: Wild!) Before and after that one-of-a-kind event, Murphy continues his Herculean efforts to keep the show’s energy up; yes, Piscopo is clearly having a good time, and the addition of Julia Louis-Dreyfus is solid even though she never quite gets the showcase that she obviously warrants. But the show continues to live and die by how much Eddie Murphy it gets — unless you’re a big fan of fourth-tier recurring characters like The Whiners. (Can you guess what their shtick is? If somehow not, you have multiple chances!)
39. Season 35 (2009-10)
Everyone loves “What Up with That?” but they do that damn sketch four times the season it debuts! Season 35 also includes two installments of the quickly tedious “Secret Word,” three go-rounds of the insipid “talk show but people dance” “Manuel Ortiz Show,” and, combining the later-period self-indulgences of Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen into one self-amused package, three appearances from Weekend Update characters Garth and Kat. Those are just the recurring bits that were new for Season 35; these episodes also have sketches featuring Wiig’s Gilly, Shana and Penelope. To be clear, the show makes time for plenty of actually-funny recurring characters during this season, too, including Bedelia (Nasim Pedrad), a precocious kid who identifies more with parents than her peers; and Tina Tina Cheneuse (Jenny Slate), a doorbell pitchwoman. Pedrad and Slate were both new to the cast, and Slate didn’t last the season; that their more nuanced (and still silly!) character work often feels elbowed aside by longer-tenured cast members. Add in Fred Armisen as the show’s resident Obama and you can see how one of the most likable and talented casts on TV could still provoke a lot of irritation in 90 minutes. But it can still spring surprises, too, like how the Blake Lively-hosted episode randomly has several of the funniest sketches they’ve ever done.
38. Season 23 (1997-98)
This really should be a firing-on-all-cylinders season: the cast and writers are established, Tina Fey joins the show as a writer and marquee hosts and musicians abound. That said, there’s something half-cursed about Season 23: It’s the season where Norm Macdonald is removed from Weekend Update mid-season by network bosses, causing him to leave the show before season’s end and introducing a perpetually stumbling Colin Quinn into the segment; it’s also part of the period where the show experiments with some musical guests only doing one song, resulting in some bizarre inconsistencies (Hanson gets two songs, but Bjork only gets one?!); the recurring-character overload from the previous season remains in full swing (Roxbury Guys! Delicious Dish! Spartan Cheerleaders! Mango! Ladies Man! Mary Katherine Gallagher! All that one-note stuff Cheri Oteri does!); and it’s home to an infamous episode hosted by an addiction-wrecked Chris Farley not long before he tragically died of an overdose. None of that torpedoes the season; you still get plenty of Will Ferrell, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Tim Meadows and a pre-departure Norm killing it. But disappointment lurks around a lot of corners here.
37. Season 50 (2024-25)
Obviously, this one isn’t finished yet, but it’s more than halfway, and its golden-anniversary status feels sort of catch-as-catch-can. The guest-star parade of previous politics-heavy seasons is, if anything, scaled back, focusing on a central cross-era group of Dana Carvey, Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg, who at least show up in other contexts for much of the fall. (Spade and Sandler show up briefly, too.) More interesting are the tonal throwbacks, sometimes to the sensibility of that first watershed season: Timothée Chalamet covers some obscure Bob Dylan songs serving as his own musical guest, Dave Chappelle does an uneven 16-minute host monologue that sets a record for that segment and new cast member Jane Wickline does weird little song pieces on Weekend Update. The cast is still too big, which seems likely to perpetuate a cycle of cast members then staying too long in order to get their due, but the halftime report on Season 50 is that it’s successful more often than not.
36. Season 36 (2010-11)
Another season of Kristen Wiig dominance with a side of Fred Armisen indulgence is livened up by veterans like Bobby Moynihan and Jason Sudeikis, and even more so by the featured-player up-and-comers like Nasim Pedrad, Vanessa Bayer and the short-lived but often delightful Paul Brittain. There are also standout episodes from several multiple-time hosts: Emma Stone, Jon Hamm and Jim Carrey bring enough to the proceedings to overcome yet another transitional era.
35. Season 38 (2012-13)
If nothing else, Season 38 is a busy one for personnel changes: Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg are gone (well, except, of course, for the fact that Wiig returns to host by the end of the season and Samberg pops up twice bearing new Lonely Island music videos), as is perpetual in-betweener Abby Elliott; Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong come in as featured players; Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave has his single season on air as a featured player before heading to the writers’ room for the remainder of his multi-year stint on the show; and a newly promoted Jay Pharoah finally, finally takes over Obama-impression duties in time for the 2012 election. It’s very much a modern transitional SNL season with a kind of half-and-half approach; the older cast members are dominant enough to force a nothing sketch The Californians into an annoyingly outsized role (in terms of sheer screen time, it has to be one of the most unwieldy recurring sketches of the 21st century), but the newer cast members are undeniable enough to bring on strong newer material like Bryant and Strong’s Girlfriends Talk Show. No wonder Tim Robinson gets lost in the shuffle.
34. Season 39 (2013-14)
By the spring of 2014, the last few months of Season 39, SNL was operating with an astonishing eight different featured players, and this has to be considered one of the patchiest success rates of any such group. John Milhiser, Brooks Wheelan and Noël Wells are all gone after this single season. Mike O’Brien performs a Reverse Tim Robinson: After writing on the show for a bunch of years, he gets on the air as a featured player… and still only lasts a single season. Sasheer Zamata does four seasons on the show and seems like a good fit but never really finds her breakout character or moment. Colin Jost arguably never escapes the Featured Player title; yes, he’s quickly promoted to the main cast, but he only ever does Weekend Update, by design. That just leaves Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett as featured players who settled in for nice long runs as actual sketch-comedy ensemble members. On top of that, Cecily Strong is sent to co-anchor Weekend Update with a departing Seth Meyers and then an incoming Colin Jost, which makes that whole transition seem both overthought and undercooked. Throughout it all, there are plenty of decent one-off sketches, an unusual number of indie-friendly musical guests (Beck, HAIM, The National, St. Vincent), a classic WTF in the form of a Josh Hutcherson-hosted episode being kinda great, some terrific music videos and a surprise return of the Bill Brasky sketch. It’s just a messy affair, even by SNL standards.
33. Season 44 (2018-19)
A lot of seasons in the 40-something range have more memorable individual sketches than uniformly strong episodes, even by SNL’s gold standard of unevenness, and while that’s certainly true of Season 44, the Adam Sandler-hosted episode stands out as one that’s arguably better than many episodes Sandler performed in as a cast member, not least because of the “Romano Tours” sketch, which is perfect and I think about all the time.
32. Season 48 (2022-23)
Eight cast members departed at the end of Season 47 — the biggest exodus the show had seen in years. But four more featured players were hired in short order, so Season 48 still feels overcrowded despite easing a little bit from the show’s record-busting casts of previous seasons. This is also another strike-shortened season, and while it’s rarely a good time to have multiple episodes slashed out, it probably especially wounded some of the new featured players. Still: Lots of good stuff here as Fineman/Dismukes/Gardner/Nwodim/Yang emerge as the most consistent voices, with Sarah Sherman coming up fast behind them.
31. Season 7 (1981-82)
Eddie Murphy hit SNL like a bolt of lightning. Specifically, a bolt of lighting in an otherwise empty plain. At the time, Joe Piscopo looked to some — especially to Piscopo himself — like a worthy scene partner to Murphy, and he’s serviceable in plenty of sketches. But this is Murphy’s show, save perhaps for the episode where John Belushi does a little cameo and strong-arms the punk band Fear into the musical guest slot. Apart from those one-off moments of oddball inspiration or novelty, a lot of the Eddie Murphy years feature the bizarre spectacle of the show kinda-sorta trying to make an effort to do ensemble sketch comedy in the face of one guy being funnier than anyone else on the show put together and, frankly, more musical in his confident delivery than some of the actual musical guests. It’s like the Blues Brothers have control of the show, and they’re not white guys. As such, there are classic Murphy sketches throughout his three-and-change seasons on the air, but Season 7 is where it feels like you can see him taking over in real time, an exciting spectacle even (or maybe especially) in gutted-streaming-rerun form.
30. Season 18 (1992-93)
Midway through Season 18, Entertainment Weekly named the cast of SNL its collective Entertainers of the Year, which in retrospect probably should have been a sign that a crash was coming. The cast is pared down slightly from the previous seasons, which streamline things, but instead there’s a lot of cross-traffic in and out of the doors: Mike Myers misses the first few months of the season, Jan Hooks re-appears periodically, Dana Carvey leaves in February, Chris Rock is on his way out, and Melanie Hutsell inexplicably sticks around to do the same weird sneer-face thing whether playing Jan Brady, Tori Spelling or her sorority-girl character. There’s still plenty to like in all the hustle and bustle, especially from Myers, Chris Farley and Phil Hartman, but the show’s second renaissance is clearly winding down.
29. Season 34 (2008-09)
Also known as the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin season, this is maybe the last time the presidential election inspired unambiguous SNL highlights, and probably also the attention-getting season that locked the show into dopey guest spots and repeating-the-headlines humor for the next, what, four election cycles? Once Obama wins, this strategy loses its mojo and never really comes back, with Fred Armisen tastelessly retaining the job for way too long, and then other, more horrible things happening to sour the experience. That’s even visible in the back half of Season 34; post-election, the political cold opens become dreadful chores. To that must-skip status, add a number of Kristen Wiig recurring characters; this is also the season where it starts to feel like there’s one of those ready to pop out at any moment of any episode. Cast-wise, this season is also in the odd position of having Casey Wilson and Michaela Watkins on hand as a positive, because they are both funny all season, and also sort of counting as a negative, because they were somewhat inexplicably let go from the show anyway. (Watkins seemed to do particularly well with screentime and, as such, was a particularly baffling firing.) Still, for all those complaints, those famous fall-2008 political sketches have Fey’s electricity, and the core cast still provides plenty of big laughs throughout — even as figurative and literal anchor Amy Poehler departs mid-season.
28. Season 22 (1996-97)
With a few one-season cast members cleared out, the core ensemble of this era settles in: Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Darrell Hammond, Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, Chris Kattan, plus clutch holdover players Tim Meadows and Norm Macdonald. (Jim Breuer is also there.) Just two years out from the Season 20 disaster, the show has quickly become a well-oiled machine again, sometimes to its detriment. The highlights are very high: Macdonald is in the middle of an all-timer Weekend Update run. Ferrell is well on his way to becoming one of the show’s biggest MVPs ever. And it’s difficult to overstate just how big a deal it was that Shannon, Oteri and Gasteyer represent the most powerful bloc of lady cast members ever to this point; in terms of outsized character work, it’s like the show suddenly has three Gilda Radners after years of getting by with one or fewer. That also points to this season’s big drawback: recurring-character saturation, not just in the number of repeated characters but the number of times they’d appear. In Season 22 alone, there were six Mary Katherine Gallagher sketches, five Spartan Cheerleaders sketches, four Goat Boy sketches and three appearances apiece for the Roxbury Guys, Mr. Peepers, the Culps, the Joe Pesci Show and Suel Forrester — that last one is Kattan’s bit where he talks in gibberish. So yeah, they weren’t all Gallagher-level superstars.
27. Season 21 (1995-96)
It’s funny: for a full-reboot, do-or-die savior season, coming off a time where the show got perilously close to genuine cancellation, Season 21 isn’t quite as hard a reset as its reputation suggests. First of all, a whopping six cast members actually returned from the much-maligned Season 20: Norm Macdonald remains on Weekend Update, a testament to his sterling debut season; late-in-the-game addition Molly Shannon is luckily recognized as a blooming talent; Tim Meadows and Mark McKinney remain as utility ringers; and David Spade was even coaxed back for a sort of part-time role, appearing primarily in his own segment “Spade in America.” At the same time, several new players won’t last: David Koecher and Nancy Walls only stick around for a single season; Jim Breuer only manages three (and how he got three compared to Keochner and Walls’ one is an ongoing mystery). Chris Kattan and Colin Quinn don’t show up until late in the season. Really, the big lasting reset here amounts to the hiring of just three players: Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri and Will Ferrell. Culturally, however, these three made a massive difference — none more than Ferrell, who would become an anchor with the popularity of Dana Carvey crossed with the plug-anywhere versatility of Phil Hartman. It’s difficult to overstate how vastly and immediately more fresh the show felt at this time — and that sense of discovery leads to both genuinely classic one-offs (like “Wake Up and Smile”) and character experiments that haven’t yet outstayed their welcome.
26. Season 30 (2004-2005)
So, to revisit an implication from earlier in this list, why are Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon potentially annoying geniuses, while Amy Poehler is a just plain genius? I think there’s something about Poehler that seems laser-focused on the sketch at hand, rather than mastering a particular shtick, even when her character is pretty outlandish — say, when she’s playing a hyperactive tween hanging out with her stepdad Rick (Horatio Sanz). Wiig and McKinnon are performing more self-consciously, where part of the joke — at their best, part of the fun — is their own outre goofiness, the mannerisms that distort beyond caricature into a kind of performance art. Poehler can be just as ridiculous, but take a look at her as Kaitlin, or the one-legged game show contestant Amber, or half of the Needlers, the furious “couple that should be divorced”: She inhabits these characters in a way that holds equal space for Gilda Radner-style sweetness and Jane Curtin’s straight-shot mercilessness. I admit that I’m a little biased by having seen Poehler do a lot of live improv, at which she is absolutely stunning in her quick thinking and smart instincts — but even that oft-invisible work contributes to her SNL success; she’s an improviser who doesn’t lose her fastball when she’s working off a script. She does funny, detailed character work throughout Season 30, all while co-anchoring Weekend Update as a version of herself; really, she’s as strong an MVP as the show has ever had, particularly as it starts to find its footing in the post-Ferrell era.
25. Season 27 (2001-02)
The season that kicks off with the aftermath of 9/11 and ends with an extended tribute to a departing Will Ferrell finds SNL feeling particularly self-conscious about its place in the culture, whether it’s seeking permission to be funny just a few weeks after a horrific terrorist attack or seeking permission to be sincere about what a loss Ferrell will be for the show.
24. Season 40 (2014-15)
Season 40 feels pivotal in retrospect because its two new cast members are Pete Davidson and Leslie Jones, who come from a stand-up background reminiscent of early-’90s hires, rather than the sketch/improv background that dominated for much of the 20 years in between. Jones even stayed for an old-fashioned five seasons, rather than the standard seven-to-nine (Davidson did eight). It feels like Michaels has been chasing this high since then, favoring stand-ups in many of his most recent hires, and seemingly operating under a greater expectation that new cast members will appear as themselves on Weekend Update to show off their deal (though supposedly the excess of stand-ups has also been due to a pandemic-era pull-back in improv institutions like UCB; Michaels has said far fewer sketch-based comedians have auditioned in recent years). As for Season 40 itself, this is prime time for Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant and Vanessa Bayer, one of the strongest-ever crew of SNL ladies not just for their comic chops but the sense that they’re imbuing characters and sketches with their personal tastes and sensibilities.
23. Season 10 (1984-85)
A truly bizarre one-off that also happens to feature a wealth of super-famous and often very funny material spread over just 17 budget-limited, strike-cut episodes, Season 10 saw producer Dick Ebersol taking a different tack following the departure of Eddie Murphy and Joe Pispoco. For the first time, he endeavored to hire comedians that already had some degree of audience familiarity, resulting in sort of an all-star season where Billy Crystal, Martin Short and Christopher Guest took center stage. Add in half a season of former cast member Harry Shearer, Rich Hall from Not Necessarily the News, the Other Belushi and a returning Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and suddenly there’s a mid-’80s season of SNL where almost everyone in the cast is relatively recognizable, instead of vaguely familiar future character actors sharing the screen with one megastar. Crystal, Short and Guest all came into the job with distinctive characters, often established elsewhere (Ed Grimley; Fernando) — and in Short’s telling, their showcase pieces often left them more or less done by Weekend Update, after which the B-squad could take over. At times, it feels a bit like an alt-universe SNL, where Crystal and Short are already three or four seasons deep into their run on the show and getting ready to leave. Indeed, they did; though Crystal was game to stick around, Short and Guest were fine with a one-and-done, and a returning Lorne Michaels wanted to start fresh again.
22. Season 49 (2023-24)
A big, but not unmanageable cast, with only a few members at or exceeding the decade mark. No election in the fall. No strike halts or COVID interruptions. No big anniversaries, even with one looming. A couple of huge viral sketches (“Washington’s Dream”; the Beavis and Butt-Head thing), which is the current way of saying “instant classics.” Plenty of decent episodes, plenty of middling ones, too. This might be the closest thing to a “normal” SNL season of the past… decade?
21. Season 16 (1990-91)
Structurally, this was an important season for the show. The rebooted Season 12 cast could claim, handily, the strongest chemistry since the original five seasons — and going by the tenure of cast members from that era, it was about time for them to move on. Indeed, Nora Dunn and Jon Lovitz both departed at the end of Season 15, and Phil Hartman was apparently considering doing the same. Dennis Miller and Jan Hooks would be out by the end of Season 16 — leaving only Carvey, Nealon, Hartman and Jackson from the Season 12 all-stars. To avoid a sudden, full-cast replacement, Michaels added what was, at that point, essentially an entire second cast’s worth of new featured players: Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, Julia Sweeney, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and David Spade, joining newly promoted latecomer Mike Myers. This foreshadows Michaels’ approach to casting the show in the 21st century — and also creates something of a traffic jam for the next few years. But in the season itself, there’s plenty of fun, victory-lap energy as Carvey, Hartman and Myers formed a new three-man core and a bunch of younger guys bounce off of them in turn.
20. Season 14 (1988-89)
This wasn’t the first time cast members had ever been introduced midseason, and in fact it may have been one of the single most successful instances of this happening, at least until Molly Shannon and Kristen Wiig. But adding Mike Myers to the now-well-established core late-’80s group does foretell the ‘90s Lorne Michaels policy of continually adding people — arguably, even, over-tinkering with a cast that already works, preparing for inevitable departures that haven’t happened yet. (And for the flipside of this policy, barely-witness Ben Stiller, who only sticks around for about a month before quitting.) Anyway, in the moment, Myers is a great addition to one of the show’s best casts ever, and though this isn’t the most exciting group of hosts ever, it is bookended by Tom Hanks and Steve Martin episodes.
19. Season 5 (1979-80)
There’s a scene in The Limey where Peter Fonda’s character describes a vibe that he characterizes as the ‘60s, then corrects himself: “That was just ‘66, and early ’67. That’s all it was.” It’s arguable that something similar could be said about the early, classic years of SNL. When people think about them, they’re mainly picturing maybe Seasons 2-4, with a bit of Chevy Chase from Season 1 thrown in. By Season 5, not only is Chase gone, Aykroyd and Belushi have ditched out, too, leaving an astonishingly small core cast: Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and, for much of the season, the perpetually dissatisfied Harry Shearer. The show, then, stumbles into progress: Suddenly half of the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players are women, and only a third are white men! (This ratio is actually maintained in the dire Season 6; otherwise, it would be literally decades before it was replicated again, circa the mid-2010s.) On the other hand, Michaels promoted a bunch of white-dude writers to rotating featured-player status, so there are appearances from Al Franken, Tom Davis, Jim Downey, Don Novello and other folks from SNL backstage lore. Having literal siblings of famous SNL guys (Peter Aykroyd and Brian Doyle-Murray) didn’t help the perception that maybe the show was past its peak. Still: This is a bunch of sketch comedy heavily featuring Bill Murray and the Gilda Radner/Jane Curtin/Laraine Newman trio, all seasoned TV pros at this point, and hosts like Buck Henry, Steve Martin and Chevy Chase make the whole thing blend in fine with the earlier seasons even as some weariness sets in. It’s both pretty damn good and also an understandable fade out on those first five years.
18. Season 47 (2021-22)
This is a good season for the show’s weirdo bona fides, with standout oddball-heavy episodes hosted by Kieren Culkin, alum Will Forte, Willem Dafoe and Zoe Kravitz, and a rise to prominence from Andrew Dismukes, carrying the torch of parodic, weak-willed masculinity once held by Forte and Will Ferrell. That Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang start to feel like the Main Guys is especially impressive given that this season has more cast members than ever before; it’s the final curtain for Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon, with Cecily Strong soon to follow.
17. Season 25 (1999-00)
What one might broadly call the Will Ferrell era of SNL really has two parts: the late-’90s half where the other major players are Hammond, Shannon, Oteri and Kattan; and the post-2000 half, where it’s more about Tracy Morgan, Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch. Season 25 — the first really successful anniversary season in a decade, given that Season 20 was such a shitshow — is appropriately a crossroads of those overlapping casts, which is to say, it has access to the fantastic Dratch and Rudolph, two of the funniest and most versatile players the show has ever seen, but is also the season where Cheri Oteri does her character where she screams “simma down now!” over and over. So, you know, a mixed blessing. But all in all, a more solid transitional year than many like it, especially with Ferrell as the anchor. This is also unavoidably the season where “More Cowbell” first aired, which feels symbolic of Peak Ferrell no matter how sick of the clips you might be by now.
16. Season 17 (1991-92)
I can’t front that this was the first full season I really watched Saturday Night Live on a weekly basis, and as such, it’s always going to feel pivotal in my mind, probably moreso than it actually was in reality. (Wait, was there not days’ worth of news coverage when they had Wayne’s World, Toonces and Pat sketches on a single episode?!) On the other hand, this is the last full Dana Carvey season, while at the same time, younger cast members like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and Chris Rock more established than ever, and Mike Myers glowing off of that Wayne’s World success. So it’s likely I made my way to the show because it was so ubiquitous in cultural conversation without any complaints about how bad it had gotten. As a collection of episodes, it really is pretty strong, with the show leaning into some of its sillier, more conceptual ideas after several years of well-established Dana Carvey recurring bits. They even stop doing Church Chat and Hans & Franz around this time, as if politely making room for new Mike Myers characters and, of course, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. (Also, bless Jack Handey, whose “Deep Thoughts” segments could significantly lift the laugh quantity on just about any episode.)
15. Season 33 (2007-08)
Because of the WGA strike that took out the middle of the season, Season 33 plays like a concise continuation of the lean-and-mean Season 32 (see further up this list), much as Season 13 did for Season 12, two decades earlier. As such, it shares similar strengths of a pared-down, all-killer cast; wonderfully odd recurring characters (Will Forte’s Lyle Kane! Will Forte’s MacGruber! Will Forte’s Clancy T. Bachleratt! Probably some other, non-Forte ones!); and somewhat middling (though not quite as bad as the previous few years) political stuff! It’s really only the truncation, the abrupt loss of Maya Rudolph and the beginning of squandering Casey Wilson that keeps this from the absolute top tier. Seriously, though, I’m not sure if anyone on SNL has ever been as good at coming up with and playing recurring characters as Will Forte, maybe because he has a knack for creating characters who seem like people no one would ever deign to spend a second five minutes with? Whatever he’s doing, it works; I’m not sure he has a dud in the bunch.
14. Season 24 (1998-99)
Now seems as good a time as any to talk about Tim Meadows. Throughout his decade-long tenure on SNL, he seemed destined to be overlooked: As the “other Black guy” in the eras of the flashier Chris Rock and the wilder Tracy Morgan; as the longest-running cast member record-holder for only a few years before Darrell Hammond sped by; and as a performer who, Ladies Man notwithstanding, was more of a utility player than a recurring-character showboat. But by the last few years of his time on SNL (Meadows would leave after Season 25), he was frequently a highlight of one-off bits like the “Shirt in a Can” ad, the “You’re a Champion, Charlie Brown” parody (in which his Franklin calls Lucy from Peanuts a fussbudget with hilarious fury), or a back-and-forth between political candidates vowing to take care of a town’s “bat problem.” It’s a welcome complement to the Ferrell/McKay brand of madness that was a frequent highlight of these years, and a nice distraction from the crazy, eventually numbing wealth of Clinton/Lewinsky scandal-inspired material that dominates Season 24 in particular.
13. Season 45 (2019-20)
On the near-infinite list of things interrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is a very good season of SNL, one where Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, and Kate McKinnon seemed to be wrapping up their successful tenures on the show as newer cast members Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim came into their own. In the short term, the pandemic gave SNL an unexpected boost of creativity when, a couple months into lockdown, the show surprise-returned with three “at home” episodes produced remotely. The inventiveness and personal nature of these sketches, many individually produced solo pieces, was a balm at a time when almost no form of live entertainment was available, on TV or otherwise, and gave just about every member of the large cast a chance to shine in turn. Though these sketches and performances weren’t actually broadcast live, the episodes feel very much in keeping with the spirit of the live show at its most eclectic. Pre-COVID highlights include Eddie Murphy’s first hosting gig in decades, underrated episodes from David Harbour and Kristen Stewart that are nicely heavy on weird character-based sketches and returning faves like John Mulaney, Will Ferrell, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver.
12. Season 13 (1987-88)
At the time, it must have been frustrating to have the momentum of Season 12’s fresh start stalled by a strike-curtailed Season 13. But revisiting it now, this abbreviated 13-episode season feels especially notable for its host mix, presumably in the wake of the show proving itself again the previous year. The usual intensely period-specific hosts (Dabney Coleman, Justine Bateman) are joined by a bunch of once-and/or-future SNL mainstays (Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Danny DeVito, Paul Simon) and an eclectic mix of genuine then-or-future movie legends (Robert Mitchum, Robin Williams, Sean Penn). Sadly, the strike put the kibosh on what would have been a milestone episode: Gilda Radner was scheduled to return to host that spring; she passed away the following year.
11. Season 1 (1975-76)
As a compendium of sketch comedy, it’s often shaky — sketches are weirdly abbreviated or go on forever, and it takes several episodes for the show to even figure out how much comedy it wants to dole out per episode. But as a nascent variety show that would become a more formulaic legend, it’s hard to beat the eclecticism of Season 1. It also has an edge because, like all five classic initial seasons, music clearances for a DVD release have allowed the episodes to circulate in fuller form than many of the seasons that followed. That brevity can be a blessing (there’s a reason a lot of those early years found a second life in mercilessly cut-down Best of Saturday Night Live 30-minute episodes that used to air on Nick at Nite), yet the sheer amount of TV history you get by watching the oldest SNL episodes in full makes it an invaluable document. Also: This is the only full season of Chevy Chase on the show! It seems perfectly and perversely fitting that someone so closely identified with SNL only actually appeared on about 30 episodes.
10. Season 41 (2015-16)
With the 40th anniversary behind them, the Kate/Cecily/Lil Baby Aidy era of SNL has a particularly good showing, with strong episodes hosted by Amy Schumer, Adam Driver, Jonah Hill and Russell Crowe — super underrated, that one. In fact, several of my all-time favorite SNL sketches pop up here: Amy Schumer and Vanessa Bayer as flight attendants rattled by a freak accident; Driver as the host of a cat-blooper video clip show, and Crowe as a disappointing reality-show treat for his friend’s nephew (Pete Davison). Literally the only reason Season 41, which also had episodes with late-period mainstay hosts Miley Cyrus and Tina Fey (joint-hosting with Amy Poehler!), isn’t even higher on this list is a giant Trump-shaped blight. Yes, this was the season they got Donald Trump to host, early in his presidential campaign, and not only was it morally indefensible, it’s a pretty horrible episode, too!
9. Season 15 (1989-90)
LO-THAR…OF THE HILL PEOPLE!
8. Season 42 (2016-17)
How good can a season be with so many half-spiteful, half-lazy sketches featuring an Alec Baldwin impression of Donald Trump that starts off impressively malicious, but quickly becomes realistically wearying? Actually, pretty damn good. Beyond some dark-cloud election-season episodes that I’ll avoid ever watching again and the general need to push through the first 10 minutes, these episodes have a surprising number of classics: Tom Hanks as a Trump voter on Black Jeopardy!, moms describing their spirit animals, multiple appearances from Cecily Strong’s douchebag-dating Brit Gemma, Hanks again as David S. Pumpkins (any questions?), Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer. There are also some great weird ones: Kristen Wiig and Cecily Strong auditioning for QVC, Kristen Stewart commenting on a dorm’s Dry Fridays program and a Felicity Jones sketch that I love but cannot describe properly.
7. Season 31 (2005-06)
Does this place too much importance of “Lazy Sunday” and the rapid emergence of the Lonely Island and their Digital Shorts? Possibly, but the individual episodes of Season 31 — which saw the introduction not just of Andy Samberg, but also Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, as well as the true emergence of Jason Sudeikis (who wrote on the show earlier and joined the cast late in Season 30) — more than justify that hype. The Jack Black-hosted episode that features “Lazy Sunday,” for example, is a front-to-back winner; the Natalie Portman episode (with its own deservedly famous rap-centric Digital Short) is a lot of fun; long-absent friends of the show like Steve Martin and Tom Hanks return; and Julia Louis-Dreyfus becomes the first female cast member to return to host. Also, though Hader recalls not really finding his footing on the show until halfway through his run, there are few cast members who have endeared themselves to the audience faster than the Hader/Samberg/Wiig/Sudeikis axis. They just picked it up real fast in a way that few 21st-century SNL performers seem prepared to do.
6. Season 32 (2006-07)
Budget cuts before the start of this season resulted in the cutting of three cast members. It was a shame to lose Finesse Mitchell, who was consistently funny for three seasons but never really became a major part of the show, but honestly, Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell, at eight seasons apiece, were ready to go — as were Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey, who both left voluntarily to work on 30 Rock. Anyway, the lean results are hard to argue with; person for person, this is one of the strongest and most streamlined SNL casts ever: Armisen, Forte, Hader, Hammond, Meyers, Poehler, Rudolph, Samberg, Sudeikis, Thompson and Wiig. Plus Hammond, whose presence was largely ceremonial at this point, didn’t take up a lot of parts, so the cast functioned as a diversely brilliant no-filler cast of 10. Poehler and Meyers freshen Weekend Update, and there’s an equilibrium where almost every recurring character in the mix happens to be a pretty solid one, including the Two A-Holes, the Falconer, Bronx Beat and Vinny Vedecci. The put-on-and-repeat-anything-Wiig-does crutch isn’t yet in place, Digital Shorts are in full swing and the show is just really damn good in a way that doesn’t happen so often.
5. Season 26 (2000-01)
If the ‘08 election was the last time the cold-open political sketches consistently worked, was this the last time political comedy on SNL felt like it was actually living up to its full potential in every area? By this, I mean that Weekend Update is revitalized by the installation of then-unknown head writer Tina Fey, paired with impish, pre-annoying Jimmy Fallon, who put together have a spiky, smart irreverence, essentially reinventing Update as a team gig. (There were two-person reigns before this and one major solo anchor afterward, but it now feels like the proper default is for two personalities to complement each other.) And at the same time, the final stretch of the 2000 presidential election, as well as its horrifying vote-scrimping aftermath, is expertly parodied, anchored by the rare twofer of memorable candidate impressions: Darrell Hammond’s stiffly harumph-y Al Gore and Will Ferrell’s blithely bumbling George W. Bush.
A triptych of election-week sketches imagining what the country would be like under each of the two candidates plus spoiler Ralph Nader is about as good as this stuff gets. Did this election season codify the show’s sometimes-tedious both-sides-ism, or at least give Michaels and company the confidence to think that they could stick it equally to both candidates going forward? Possibly. But in the moment, it was the most thrilling SNL election since ‘92. Viewed now beyond the issue of topicality, there are plenty of Peak Ferrell classics, as well as a less one-note batch of recurring characters (Gemini’s Twin, Jarrett’s Room). It’s easy enough to ignore the political stuff on the show when it’s not working (especially when it’s worked so rarely in the past decade-plus), but it’s also hard not to appreciate when the show really feels like it’s working the way it’s supposed to, mixing current events with more timeless silliness.
4. Season 2 (1976-77)
Steve Martin, Eric Idle and Buck Henry all host twice; that’s just one of many things about an ascendant SNL that would never fly on today’s show. Also, this might just be a product of the time or the shock of the new, but the musical guests on the show’s first full season as a phenom are nuts: host and musical guest Paul Simon performing with George Harrison (all together, there are around half a dozen songs on that episode, and with good cause); the Kinks; Chuck Berry; Frank Zappa; Tom Waits; The Band. I try not to fetishize those early seasons too heavily — there are plenty of flop sketches, despite the retrospective star power — but when a single batch of episodes includes all of those musicians, plus the debut of Bill Murray and the exit of Chevy Chase, it’s difficult not to feel a kind of awe.
3. Season 12 (1986-87)
This is probably the closest the show will ever get to the shock of the new back in 1975 (and even here, a third of the “new” cast had been on the show the previous season). Rescued from the brink of cancellation, SNL added Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson and Kevin Nealon to Season 11’s saving graces Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Nora Dunn and A. Whitney Brown, and suddenly, they had a show again. Not just a promising good start, not just glimmers of hope, but a show with hit-the-ground-running, let’s-do-this energy. Seriously: Carvey does the Church Lady and “Chopping Broccoli” on the season premiere. (And, reflecting no small amount of desperation for audience-approved characters, the Church Lady comes back two episodes later.) The Hooks/Dunn duo the Sweeney Sisters are in the second episode. Al Franken belatedly turns in a killer Ronald Reagan sketch for Phil Hartman in episode six — which is hosted by the Three Amigos, for god’s sake! There’s a Shatner-driven Star Trek sketch to accompany the classic from Season 1! Some of the individual performers would go on to have better overall seasons later, but for pulled-together, collectively-achieved comeback, Season 12 is hard to beat as a team effort.
2. Season 4 (1978-79)
Is Season 4 vastly better than Season 2 or vastly inferior to Season 3? No, not really. At this point, it’s a game of inches. Bill Murray isn’t quite as good as Dan Aykroyd as a partner for Jane Curtin on Weekend Update; it feels a little more of a reflection of his popularity than a great use of his time. (Honestly, I’ve wondered if the same might be true about Amy Poehler on Update, good as she was.) There’s only one Steve Martin episode instead of two (though Buck Henry appears twice, and Michael Palin does two to Eric Idle’s one, just to change things up a bit). That Milton Berle episode is famously pretty bad. Otherwise, everyone pretty much remains in the pocket here. And, sorry, in case it’s unclear why this rates so highly overall, gotta namecheck more musical acts: Rolling Stones, Zappa, Devo, Talking Heads, Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead and the Blues Brothers.
1. Season 3 (1977-78)
Is that Steve Martin episode with “King Tut,” the Festrunk Brothers, Theodoric of York, “Dancing in the Dark” with Gilda, a “Point/Counterpoint” on an Aykroyd/Curtin Weekend Update, the Nerds and the Blues Brothers as the musical guests the best SNL ever? Maybe. More certainly it is the most SNL ever: A host who’s practically a member of the cast! Multiple recurring characters! Recurring characters as the musical guest! Signature bits from Aykroyd, Radner, Murray, Belushi and Martin himself! Almost every segment clip-show fodder! But while it wouldn’t be accurate to say this was just a run-of-the-mill episode for Season 3, it’s also not exactly a wild outlier, either. (It’s not even the season’s only Steve Martin-hosted episode to feature the Festrunk Brothers and Belushi singing some rock and roll!) This same season has the famous Charles Grodin episode, with an unusual meta-runner about his lack of preparation; the one where Elvis Costello switched it up last-minute to play “Radio Radio” at his whim; and the introduction of two of Gilda Radner’s signature characters, excitable little girl Judy Miller and older crank Roseanne Roseannadanna, among other stuff that we could tediously describe as “iconic.”
The way that Season 3 triumphs is perfectly in tune with the gloriously erratic history of SNL: Individually, any of these characters or episodes or sketches could be surpassed. They wear out their welcome in the endless nostalgic replays and recountings and revivals; other funny people come along with stuff that feels fresher, newer or more current; something like the Blues Brothers can easily look like self-indulgent you-had-to-be-there stuff in the rearview. Mathematically, this doesn’t need to be the best season. But the math simply doesn’t add up the same way as it would in so many normal TV shows, and perfection remains elusive if not impossible. In aggregate, through some unrepeatable iteration of a deeply familiar formula, this one’s the champ forever.
Images via NBC Universal
