Premiering in 1975, Saturday Night Live has become a quintessential aspect of American pop culture. Many celebrities got their big break on this show. People like Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler, and many others. This year marks the 40th anniversary, which led NBC to create a 40th Anniversary special, bringing back old cast members, hosts, and musical guests.

There was a lot of hype leading up to this special, but did it deliver? It was definitely good, but not as good as I believe it could have been. There were a lot of great things in the special. It opened with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake rapping about various old SNL skit, which was a fantastic way to open up the show. Next, the monologue brought up a lot of celebrities onto the stage for various funny lines. Oh, and Paul McCartney and Paul Simon sang “I’ve Seen A Face” together for about thirty seconds and it was the greatest music related thing to happen in twenty-five years.

Then, they did a Celebrity Jeopardy skit, which was easily the highlight of the show. From beginning to end, the skit had me laughing. I’ll probably be quoting that skit just as often as I quote the other classic SNL skits. Next, there was a Californians skit, which was also funny, but not as great as the Celebrity Jeopardy skit. After that, they did a Weekend Update which really could have been better. It was shorter than Weekend Update usually is and wasn’t all that
funny.

After that, there was a bunch of different tributes until the show ended with a Wayne’s World skit, which I enjoyed very much. The musical guests were all good, but it was nothing to write home about. Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg had a prerecorded song about actors breaking character on air that was decent, but could have been better.

So, the episode was basically just like every episode of SNL except it was three and a half hours long. It starts out good, then the Weekend Update happens and after that it’s just decent. If you are a fan of SNL and didn’t see it, I recommend that you do. To everyone else I recommend that you find the Celebrity Jeopardy skit on YouTube.