Sunday night ended up being a treat for comedy fans as the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary show mashed together characters and cast members from different eras to honor the show’s five decades on NBC.
While some big names, such as Dan Aykyroyd and Bill Hader, did not end up making appearances, the star-studded affair had no shortage of hilarious bits and sketches. Here are a few standout moments from our live coverage.
Meryl Streep’s long-awaited ‘SNL’ debut
The distinguished Meryl Streep made her “SNL” debut in the most sordid way possible: in a discussion of private parts alongside frequent alien abductee Colleen Rafferty.
The multiple Oscar winner turned up to play the mom of Kate McKinnon’s character, who descriptions of her close encounters always seem to turn scatological and gynecological.
The chain-smoking Colleen Sr. was no less graphic. “My bathroom break took longer than I thought,” she apologized. “My No. 1 turned into a No. 3.”
But her explicit turns of phrase seemed to involve a lot of Streep movie titles: “Underwearwise, this devil wears nada.”
And she described her crotch as an “Into the Woods” situation.
Eddie Murphy makes an impression — as Tracy Morgan
At the 40th anniversary “SNL” a decade ago, one of the major letdowns was Eddie Murphy, who returned after a long hiatus only to give a brief, bland speech of appreciation.
But for the 50th, Murphy came to play, joining a “Black Jeopardy” reprise and playing Tracy Morgan — alongside Tracy Morgan, cast as a schmo named Darius.
“You gotta have a lot of money to live the way I live,” Murphy said in unmistakable, blustery Morgan tones. “I eat FOUR-CHEESE lasagna!”
When host Kenan Thompson said the two contestants seemed almost related, Morgan muttered, “I don’t see it.”
Murphy later teamed up with Thompson as the second of the “Scared Straight” convicts whose harsh stories to small-time offenders always seem to resemble movie plots. Though one recognized the yarn about a 400-pound professor taking a transformation serum came straight out of “The Nutty Professor,” Murphy still warned him that in prison, “You’ll be handling so many guys at once that they’ll all be yelling ‘Hercules! Hercules!’ ”
Amy Poehler has a way with ‘sweata weatha’
Though Amy Poehler cut her teeth in Chicago, with iO and the influential Upright Citizens Brigade, she says it’s a New York character that “SNL” fans love best.
“I hear about ‘Bronx Beat,’ the sketch I do with Maya [Rudolph], because people like to say ‘sweatah weatha,’ ” she said on the preshow red carpet. “I think why that sketch is so fun is we were both seniors [in the cast] when we did it. We were very loose and having fun.”
The “Bronx” duo made an appearance on “SNL 50″ alongside another sentimental talk show host from New York. As Linda Richman, Second City alum Mike Myers looked as loud as ever in leather pants and bedazzled sweater, but toned down her usual histrionics. It was one of the night’s more grounded performances.
Poehler and Rudolph played tough-talking housewives Betty and Jodi nine times over the years, opposite guests including Peyton Manning, Hugh Laurie and Katy Perry.
Sabrina Carpenter sings about Domingo in a full-circle moment
The inevitable moment with Domingo, the breakout character of the season, became a seven-minute epic with an army of guests and triple the usual songs.
Domingo fever began back in October with a bridesmaid version of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” so in a meta moment, this bit’s “Defying Gravity” parody culminated in Carpenter herself hitting the explosive, sky-high “Wicked” note. She was playing bride Kelsey’s recently paroled BFF at a vow renewal ceremony.
Of course, the irresistible Domingo (Marcello Hernandez) shows up for a “You Belong With Me” knockoff. Along the way we meet Martin Short and Molly Shannon as Kelsey’s parents, Domingo’s brothers (Pablo Pascal and Bad Bunny) and the groomsmen of the cuckolded Matt (Bowen Yang, Andy Samberg, Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett), who sing yet another “Espresso” parody.
Asked a confused Carpenter, “What even is this song?”
Cecily Strong’s party girl is pregnant — and you won’t believe who Dad is
If Cecily Strong is pregnant, that means one of her classic “SNL” characters must be too.
The former Oak Parker appeared on the “SNL 50″ edition of Weekend Update to bring back The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party, the tipsy, easily distracted commentator with a tenuous grasp on vocabulary and current events.
“Wow,” she grumbled to co-anchor Michael Che. “You just assume I’m pregnant because I have a baby inside me? That’s misogy-nastic.”
But this kid is arriving in a troubled world. “It’s deva-spacing,” The Girl said. “It’s a constipational crisis. For me, literally.”
We also learned the baby’s father is a similarly ill-informed Update pundit: Bobby Moynihan’s Drunk Uncle. “We’re just a typical Hollywood couple,” he said. “Beautiful woman in her 30s, drunk idiot in his 70s.”
Strong was a child actor on the Chicago stage and later did improv and sketch shows at Second City and iO. When she left “SNL” in 2022, she had the longest tenure in the show’s cast of any woman.