In a season so heavily focused on celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” it was easy to forget that there were also 21 regular episodes of the show this year.
While not every sketch from this run will go down in history, this year “S.N.L.” did cover a contentious presidential election and reckon with the re-election of Donald Trump; create an unexpected online trend by ruining a couple’s impending marriage; and allow Timothée Chalamet to appear as both a host and a musical guest.
Will we someday talk about these segments with the same reverence we reserve for the Coneheads or “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood”? That will be the job of some future recapper to decide. (Hopefully.) For now, join us as we look back at the most memorable moments of the past season of “S.NL.”
Political impressions of the season
After abundant speculation about who would play the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees, the results — with Maya Rudolph as former Vice President Harris and Jim Gaffigan as Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota — were mostly lackluster. The performances were too amiable and not particularly satirical (much like the real-life Harris’s own appearance on the show).
James Austin Johnson has remained a dependable President Trump. But we’ll give the edge this season to the “S.N.L.” alums Dana Carvey, who finally found a funny way to play President Biden, and Mike Myers, who seemed to be having the time of his life skewering Elon Musk. Two ’90s-era “S.N.L.” stalwarts remaining relevant? No way! Way.
Inexplicable viral phenomenon of the season
Was it funny when a quartet of bridesmaids (played by Ariana Grande, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman and Heidi Gardner) sang an off-key rewrite of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” about a marriage-wrecking hunk named Domingo (Marcello Hernández)? Sure. Did anyone expect it to lead to countless TikTok tributes, two additional sketches this season (including one on the 50th anniversary) and an appearance by Hernández as Domingo at one of Carpenter’s concerts? Probably not.
The Domingo phenomenon was mostly espresso and not too depress-o. But if next year brings more sketches or a line of Domingo-branded male enhancement pills, it will probably have gone too far.
Opening monologue of the season
It seemed like tempting fate when Bill Burr was offered what had been the ceremonial Dave Chappelle post-election weekend hosting slot; in return, Burr delivered a somewhat polarizing stand-up monologue that both was and was not about the recent re-election of President Trump. (As one representative line went: “Ladies, enough with the pantsuit, OK? It’s not working. Stop trying to have respect for yourselves. You don’t win the office on policy. You got to whore it up a little.”)
When Chappelle returned, the weekend before Trump’s second inauguration, he proved worth the wait, with a powerful, 17-minute monologue that touched on everything from the death of President Carter to the Los Angeles wildfires to the war in Gaza. At its memorable conclusion, Chappelle implored Trump and the American people: “Do not forget your humanity, and please have empathy for displaced people, whether they’re in the Palisades or Palestine.”
50th anniversary celebration of the season
To borrow a phrase, everyone involved with “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” went all-out, and it had everything: Will Ferrell in booty shorts; Sabrina Carpenter duetting with Paul Simon; Maya Rudolph dressed as a heroin shot; Jack Nicholson an airdate that inexplicably preceded the actual 50th anniversary of the show’s debut broadcast by more than eight months.
Yet, for all the hype and the many demographic demands that the (three-and-a-half hour) anniversary show had to satisfy, it delivered a classic “S.N.L.” experience: overly ambitious while feeling as if it had been written earlier that morning. And while it would be folly to pick one segment to summarize the entire night, we’ll just arbitrarily pick the “Close Encounter” sketch with Meryl Streep, who was a long-awaited and perfect match for Kate McKinnon’s oddball energy.
Weekend Update desk segment of the season
It got a bit overshadowed by the unexpectedly bawdy in-studio reaction it elicited, but Ego Nwodim’s comedy set as her standup alter-ego Miss Eggy, “the baddest chick on the block,” was a character piece that was (nearly) flawless in its execution — at least until the live audience was asked to chime in. Hilarious in its own right, the bit was memorable enough to get a return outing in the season finale, this time without swear words shouted by the crowd.
We’ll give runner-up status to Michael Longfellow for his comically aloof commentary on the Real ID rollout, and to Hernández for powering through his “Movie Guy” segments on sheer charisma.
TV parody of the season
Arriving just days after the third-season finale of “The White Lotus,” “The White Potus” was a timely and topical sendup of that much-discussed HBO comedy-drama that managed to touch all the bases. The “S.N.L.” lampoon nailed the breezy cinematography and melodramatic tone of its source material, managed to draw a few salient parallels between the “White Lotus” characters and the current Trump administration and brought back some welcome alumni (like Alex Moffat as Eric Trump and Beck Bennett as Vladimir Putin).
The segment also proved unexpectedly controversial when the “White Lotus” cast member Aimee Lou Wood called it “mean and unfunny” for how she was depicted (as played by Sarah Sherman with a set of prosthetic teeth). Sherman sent Wood a conciliatory bouquet of flowers, saying, “I feel terrible that anyone would feel bad.”
Musical inspiration of the season
Bob Dylan, who hasn’t performed on “S.N.L.” since Season 5, proved to be an unlikely muse in Season 50.
He was the motivation for this charmingly freewheeling sketch that imagined a red-carpet premiere for the biopic “A Complete Unknown” attended by Dylan (Johnson) and his youthful portrayer Chalamet (Chloe Fineman). He also inspired the real-life Chalamet’s performances of Dylan songs on the show a few weeks later.
And while it’s too soon to say whether Jane Wickline will go on, like Dylan, to win 10 competitive Grammy Awards and the Nobel Prize for Literature, her own offbeat musical ramblings about Sabrina Carpenter, the trolley problem and a baby shoe found at the Central Park Zoo have become a welcome part of the “S.N.L.” fabric. We’ll check back on her progress in another 50 years.
Dave Itzkoff is a former Times culture reporter.
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