‘Saturday Night Live’ celebrates 50 years of comedy
Live from New York, it’s the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live.”
It’s the most shocking time of the year for “Saturday Night Live.”
During the sketch show’s final episode of 2024, “Weekend Update” anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che once again partook in their biannual “joke swap,” in which they make each other read jokes that the other person has supposedly never seen before. The jokes are typically horribly offensive things that the other person wouldn’t want to say on television.
But this time, there was a twist: Jost’s wife, Scarlett Johansson, was in the building after appearing in a sketch about the show’s five-time hosts. A camera was set up to capture her reactions, and Jost noted that she looked “so genuinely worried.”
First off, Jost was given a joke about leaving his wife after she turned 40 last month.
“I want to dedicate this next joke to my boo, Scarlett Johansson,” he read. “Hey, boo. Y’all know Scarlett just celebrated her 40th birthday, which means I’m about to get up out of there!”
Jost added, “Nah, nah, I’m just playing. We just had a kid together, and y’all ain’t seen no pictures of him yet because he’s Black as hell.”
The “Black Widow” star sipped a drink while watching. A photoshopped picture of her and Jost with a Black child was shown as the comedian got to his punchline, which made Johansson curse and shake her head.
But Che wasn’t done and soon after gave his co-anchor a shocking joke involving his wife and a Costco sandwich, too lewd to repeat here.
Read more about the stars you love: Sign up for USA TODAY’s Everyone’s Talking newsletter.
Johansson was visibly stunned after the bit and could be seen blurting out, “Oh, my God!”
Jost got his revenge with the jokes he forced Che to read, including one about Jay-Z being accused of raping a 13-year-old girl with Sean “Diddy” Combs. Jay-Z has strongly denied the allegations and accused the lawyer who filed the complaint against him of a “blackmail attempt.”
“Jay-Z is innocent,” Che read. “He wasn’t even at those parties, and I know because I was! And Diddy, if you’re listening, we’re bad boys for life.”
Che also had to read a joke about “Moana 2” being a box-office hit, “because like me and my good friend Jeffrey Epstein used to say, there’s nothing like an island adventure with a teenage girl.”
During the news portion of “Weekend Update,” Jost was taken aback when the audience cheered for Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“Yeah, definitely woo,” he told the crowd sarcastically. “You’re wooing for justice, right?”
Tom Hanks, Emma Stone, John Mulaney and more welcome Martin Short into ‘SNL’ five-timers club
For the episode’s cold open, “SNL” unwrapped a gift for fans: one of the most star-studded sketches ever.
Saturday’s episode began with a cavalcade of celebrities welcoming host Martin Short into the five-timers club, the group of stars who have hosted the show that many times.
Tom Hanks opened up the sketch by talking to the audience about how he created the “exclusive” club as an “ingeniously lazy way to avoid writing a monologue.” He was joined by Paul Rudd, who taught Short the five-timers club secret handshake, and Tina Fey, who said the “Only Murders in the Building” actor is “one of the least rare things in Hollywood: a loud man.”
Alec Baldwin, a 17-time host, entered and said he plays Republicans on the show because of his “strong daddy vibes.” Soon after came Johansson, who shut the door in Jost’s face; Kristen Wiig, who wore a bathrobe and joked she is definitely “not living here,” and Emma Stone and Melissa McCarthy, the latter of whom busted out some physical comedy by falling through a wall.
John Mulaney then stopped by, saying the sitcom he and Short starred in together, “Mulaney,” couldn’t air now because “it wasn’t good and no one liked it!” There was one last cameo when Jimmy Fallon came in, announcing he soon had to go “host another game show and laugh at my own jokes.”
Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, more stars join sketches in final ‘SNL’ of 2024
While they were all in the building, many of the stars who appeared in the cameo-filled cold open stuck around for roles in sketches.
During a sketch about two men who get into an argument over a parking spot on Christmas Eve, McCarthy popped up as an aggressive woman who spits her drink on a car window.
In another sketch where the different kinds of people in an airport participate in a parade, Wiig played a woman who accidentally sat down on a motorized suitcase, while Rudd played himself being denied entry into a lounge area. McCarthy also appeared as a gate agent having trouble pronouncing people’s names, while Hanks played Sully Sullenberger, the captain who famously landed a plane on the Hudson River after a bird strike. Hanks previously starred as Sullenberger in the movie “Sully.”
Plus, Rudd had a main role in a “Sábado Gigante” sketch as a confused man who is pulled out of the audience and has no idea how the Spanish-language show works. In the sketch, Dana Carvey showed up once again, offering Rudd’s character a totally unhelpful hint.
“SNL” will return in 2025, and the show’s 50th anniversary special is set to air on Feb. 16.
