Top 10 Times SNL Said What We Were All Thinking
#10: "I Got to Pay for All This Damn Food?"
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"Home for the Holidays" “Coming Home for the Holidays” is a tried and true American pastime. At the end of the year, people all over the country flock home to reunite with their families. It’s so popular a tradition, Hollywood has made it into an entire genre. In real life, though, the ‘most wonderful time of the year’ is a stress bomb. In this 2019 sketch, Eddie Murphy shows how harrowing the season can be. Holiday joy is often a thin veneer hiding anxiety over money and family drama. Traveling, spending money, cooking big meals - these are all massive stressors. For many people, the holiday season is far from holly jolly.
#9: “Google Maps Is the Best”
"Lazy Sunday" “Lazy Sunday” is an “SNL” classic that put Lonely Island Digital Shorts on the map. In it, Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell perform a hardcore rap planning out their day. They make plans to eat cupcakes and go see “The Chronicles of Narnia.” One line in the sketch, however, is a fun time capsule into the pre-smartphone internet era. This was a time of printed-out maps and plotting out routes in advance. You couldn’t just go anywhere on the fly. Most people didn’t have access to maps on their devices, and everyone had their preferred service. Mapquest was briefly king, but “Lazy Sunday” encapsulates the moment when Google won the map wars.
#8: “The Moon Came Out Surprisingly Early”
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"The Nerds: Broken Fridge" “The Nerds” was a recurring “SNL” sketch with some of the best members from the original cast. It was a slice of everyday life, highlighting the awkwardness of being a nerdy teen in high school. One of the most famous iterations is "Broken Fridge" from 1978. Bill Murray and Gilda Radner’s nerdy teens witness a repairman try to fix a busted fridge. Dan Aykroyd’s repairman has the cliche top-butt open to the elements. The two teens struggle mightily to keep their amusement in check. They crack joke after joke, pun intended, channeling all of our inner teenagers. It’s been a go-to comedy classic subject ever since.
#7: "Meet Your Second Wife!"
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"Meet Your Second Wife" One of “SNL’s” greatest skills is digging into esoteric topics in American culture. In 2015’s “Meet Your Second Wife,” they took a comedy hammer to men in the dating world. Divorced men ‘replacing’ their first wives with a ‘younger, hotter version’ has been a ‘thing’ since the invention of divorce. It’s also been a source of derision for years. Still, “SNL” takes the chiding to its most natural extreme in this sketch. The men meet their second wives while they’re still children, showing how gross an age gap can be if you really think about it.
#6: “It’s So Hard to Navigate This Crap”
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"This Is Not a Feminist Song" Every social movement in American society goes through familiar and predictable cycles. They start with big moments spreading awareness. That trickles down through society until it sparks a backlash. That leads to a series of counter backlashes and infighting on social media. Eventually, the message gets swallowed up by the noise and people don’t know how to engage without causing offense. In “This Is Not A Feminist Song,” the female cast members of “SNL” are exhausted by the struggle. They try to navigate the nuances of creating a feminist anthem without offending anyone. It’s so difficult, though, that they end up with a song that says very little.
#5: "Nevermind"
"Weekend Update" Gilda Radner was one of the best cast members in the history of “Saturday Night Live.” She was incredibly skilled at finding one silly thing about everyday life and taking it to a hilarious extreme. One of her classic “SNL” characters was Emily Litella, everyone’s elderly grandparent who is hard of hearing. Every time Emily appeared, she’d mishear a single word and go on a ridiculous rant. She’d hear violence instead of violins and eagle rights instead of equal rights. Opinionated and partially deaf, Emily Litella’s catchphrase “nevermind” evokes that one grandparent or aunt in every family.
#4: “Miracles Shouldn’t Be Plan A”
“Dr. Anthony Fauci Cold Open” The lockdown during the first year of Covid-19 was a scary time. There was a great deal of uncertainty as our collective understanding of the virus evolved. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the government’s Coronavirus Taskforce, became a familiar face. He would brief the public with updates, trying to impart the best information available. It didn’t help that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, constantly undermined his own scientists. Fauci tried to steer clear of his erratic boss, but his frustration was often visible. In their first cold open during lockdown, Brad Pitt’s Fauci voiced our universal frustration when he said, “Miracles shouldn’t be Plan A.”
#3: "Not an Excuse to Act Like a Jackass"
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“Weekend Update: Pete Davidson on Kanye West” Sometimes, “SNL” is so accurate with their roasts that they manage to predict the future. In 2018, Pete Davidson was a guest on “Weekend Update,” playing himself. He was chosen to address Kanye West’s controversial “SNL” appearance the week before. Kanye showed up with a MAGA hat spreading conspiracy theories about slavery. Pete explained from his own personal experience that, when you have a mental illness, it’s important to take your medication - and that’s something he thought was important for Kanye to hear. This segment sparked a personal beef between the two men. It culminated when Pete went on to briefly date Kanye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian. Four years after this segment, Ye had his now infamous weeks-long anti-Semitic meltdown. Ye was dropped from his agency and lost his brand partnership with Adidas.
#2: "Cat's Out of the Bag"
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"Welcome to Hell” The Me Too Movement was a game-changer across the globe. People everywhere - but especially women - told the truth about the harassment and assaults they constantly face. What was new about #MeToo is that, in some ways, men started really listening for the first time. Millions of men’s eyes were finally opened to just how dangerous it can be for women to live their lives. “Saturday Night Live” took a few months before addressing Me Too with a sketch. When they did, they came out swinging. “Welcome to Hell” is a poppy music video by the women cast members welcoming men to their scary reality.
#1: "A Midlife Crisis of Cosmic Proportions"
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"Billionaire Star Trek" Throughout all of human history, there has been one immutable, inexorable truth: the uber-rich are EXTRA. The world is filled with gilded palaces, exotic animal menageries, obscene jewels, and impressive art collections. In 2021, the ultra-wealthy took things to the final frontier: space. Billionaires like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos had their own little private space race. They spent billions on private spacefaring as the breathless news media cheered them on. Meanwhile, normal humans witnessed this and said things like “you could just solve world hunger.” “Saturday Night Live” brought in Owen Wilson to drag Jeff Bezos for his “midlife crisis of cosmic proportions.”
