The SNL 50th anniversary special: What worked and what didn't

How much you enjoyed Sunday night's prime-time special celebrating the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live probably depended on how seriously you take SNL to begin with.

If all you expected was a diverting, nostalgia-filled evening where former cast members and celebrity friends of the show bounced in and out of sketches based on some of the program's more notable features, then you likely enjoyed the special — which stretched well past its three-hour planned run time.

But if you were looking for a collection of performances that might somehow place the history of this comedy institution in perspective — or if you wanted the show to take some of those old, venerated sketches and use them to comment on modern times — you were likely disappointed by what the SNL crew rolled out.

To be sure, it was a tall order. Presenting a sprawling extravaganza live, with crew and staff decked out in formal wear while trying to pull together a program more than twice as long as the usual Saturday episodes was no small feat.

And the list of celebrities involved was truly impressive, including Meryl Streep — in her first appearance acting on the show — Jon Hamm, Ryan Reynolds, Drew Barrymore, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Ayo Edebiri, Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Simon and Paul McCartney, alongside former cast members like Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bill Murray, Martin Short and many, many more.

As often happens with SNL, the anticipation leading to Sunday's show may have felt bigger than any program could actually deliver. And some sketches seemed so insidery, watching them was like hanging out at the reunion of a high school you never attended.

But there were multitudes of highs and lows for any fan of the program. Many of the heartfelt cameos and the callbacks to classic sketches were worthy of a show that has served as the foundation for Hollywood's comedy establishment for decades.

Here's a quick trip through some notable moments.

Steve Martin delivered an amiable monologue, but John Mulaney brought more bite

Steve Martin cracked a lot of jokes about his own age and his status as "Saturday Night Live's diversity hire," with the skill of a pro who has hosted the show 16 times. A bit where his longtime comedy partner Martin Short was hauled off after Martin called immigration police on the Canadian comic was topical and a little sassy.

But it was former SNL writer John Mulaney who really brought the pain when he noted, "Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted Saturday Night Live. And it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder."

He may have been referring to O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake, two celebrities accused of murder who have hosted SNL. But actor Alec Baldwin was also in the room. (You may remember that a judge dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against him last year after a shooting on a movie set.) Which might have made hanging out in the dressing room a little more tense Sunday night.

Eddie Murphy quickly emerged as the night's MVP, followed by Will Ferrell

Most early sketches weren't all that inspired — why did they revive the show's Lawrence Welk satire? — but Murphy made a return to "Black Jeopardy," one of the funniest early moments, with his sidesplitting impression of Tracy Morgan, who was standing next to him playing another character.

Murphy kicked it up a notch a little later, playing a convict in a return to the show's classic "Scared Straight" sketch, flanked by Kenan Thompson and — my runner-up for the night's MVP — Will Ferrell, who shone in every sketch where he appeared.

Cool as it was to see lots of celebrity cameos, too many sketches went on too long

It was a treat to see Tina Fey and Amy Poehler return, leading a Q&A that they eventually admitted was just an excuse to shoehorn in a bunch of celebrity cameos. But as the list stretched from Ryan Reynolds, Quinta Brunson, Cher and Keith Richards to Seth Meyers, Jason Momoa and Tim Meadows, one began to wonder if the charm was wearing thin.

Ditto with sketches bringing back Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer, Kate McKinnon's UFO lady Ms. Rafferty (with Meryl Streep as her mom!) and Mike Myers' Linda Richman character dropping into Poehler and Maya Rudolph's Bronx Beat show — all wonderful callbacks filled with great cameos that could have been improved by making them shorter.

Some musical performances revealed the strain of bridging generations in entertainment

Instead of a typical "cold open" sketch to start the night, Paul Simon began the prime-time special duetting with Sabrina Carpenter on a touching version of his song "Homeward Bound."

Simon, who has spoken publicly about struggling with hearing loss, offered a sensitive performance but seemed to struggle to stay on key.

Similarly, even as rock superstar Paul McCartney brought a powerhouse medley of Beatles tunes to close the night — "Golden Slumbers," "Carry That Weight" and "The End" — he too seemed to struggle a bit with the high notes, revealing the limits of those musical heroes who were involved with SNL from early on. (My favorite musical moment of the night was the rocking duet between Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard on "Nothing Compares 2 U," a Prince song covered by Sinéad O'Connor. It reminded me of an important moment in SNL history, when O'Connor sang a cover of Bob Marley's "War" and then unexpectedly ripped up a picture of then-Pope John Paul II to protest the church's handling of sexual abuse allegations.)

Who attended, who participated and who didn't was sometimes puzzling

Five of the seven cast members who appeared on the first season of SNL are still alive, but they didn't have much of a presence in Sunday's show.

Laraine Newman appeared in a pretaped sketch where she visited the set with Pete Davidson's clueless Gen Z character Chad, and Garrett Morris introduced a replay of the show's classic film "Don't Look Back in Anger," in which John Belushi outlives all the other cast members (it was an inside joke when the film first aired in 1978, because of the hard-partying lifestyle of Belushi. He died in 1982).

Jane Curtin and Chevy Chase were present, but didn't appear in any sketches; Dan Aykroyd didn't seem to be present, while Gilda Radner died in 1989.

Some other former cast members didn't seem to be in the house, including Dana Carvey, who played Joe Biden for much of the past season, and Bill Hader, who was on the show for eight years.

Mulaney leads one of the night's best sketches, a bizarre musical about the dark side of NYC

Similar to his "Diner Lobster" sketch from years ago, Mulaney led a bizarre musical about the history of NYC's dark side that had Nathan Lane singing about cocaine and vodka to the tune of The Lion King's "Hakuna Matata" and Lin-Manuel Miranda singing a twisted version of Hamilton to Kate McKinnon's Rudolph Giuliani, who exclaimed, "I am throwing away my shot!"

By the end, when a giant banner unfurled — displaying the newspaper headline "New York to Ford: Who's Dead Now?" — it seemed SNL had finally stepped past nostalgia to deliver just the sort of biting, eccentric humor that has kept the show around for five decades.

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.

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