【1988 Archives】

We can't seem to quit Saturday Night Live.

In any given episode988 Archives you're never more than a tasteless punchline away from cringing out of existence. And yet the show can still bring plenty of laughs, too, usually thanks in no small part to the Herculean efforts of its talented team of cast members and featured players.

It's been a long, brutal 2019 for an awful lot of us, but these 10 SNLsketches managed to pierce the darkness and get us shouting with joy. Let's take a look at the best the year had to offer across the back half of the show's 44th season and the first half of its 45th.

10. Weekend Update: Smokery Farms

Some of the best SNLsketches are the ones where things go horribly wrong. In this pristine example, Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon barely manage to keep their cool during a Weekend Update segment that has them brandishing a basket full of raw meat that apparently spoiled after it was left out for too long under the stage lights.

This sketch is as deeply uncomfortable to watch as it is funny, and may be the only SNLmoment to date that you can actually smell just by watching.

9. Dance Rehearsal

If you watch a lot of SNLthen you already know things tend to get extra weird with the live sketches as any given show starts winding down for the night. This one capped off Chance the Rapper's episode back in October, and it works only because Kenan Thompson is a comic genius.

I'll never get tired of hearing him bellow "The moooooooooooon!" as he fumbles with an increasingly varied assortment of window coverings.

8. Bodega Bathroom

John Mulaney's 2019 return to SNLbrought yet another riff on Broadway spectacle. A year earlier, he'd starred in a brilliant re-write of Les Mis, inspired by diner lobster. The newer sketch is a full-blown Broadway medley that's all about the wonders and horrors contained within a New York City bodega's public bathroom.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable sketch that shines even brighter in Dec. 2019 alongside the recently released (and absolutely perfect) Catsmovie adaptation.

7. Weekend Update: Goop products

If you existed on the internet at all in the 2010s, you probably heard talk at some point about Gwyneth Paltrow's company Goop. And whatever you heard was probably snarky. In this Weekend Update surprise, a Goop goof gets flipped on its head when Paltrow herself pops up – as Goop manager Fifer James – to lightly joke about her company and herself.

6. Leave Me Alurn

Every once in a while, a fake product commercial on SNLis too good to be true. The Leave Me Alurn is one such product. It's a "conversation prophylactic" for women to carry around and brandish when they want an easy way to deflect a man's unwanted attention. As the sketch explains, it's "a portable urn for women travelers to make men think you're about to scatter your dad or grandpa's ashes in a meaningful place, so they back the hell up off."

5. Judge Barry

Judge Barry doesn't need time to deliberate. He's a judge who makes snap judgments, that's the whole schtick.

It's not the setting or even the guest host in Chance the Rapper that sells this sketch, though. It's the unexpected appearance of a wild Jason Momoa, who's clearly having a blast and trying so hardnot to lose his shit.

4. The War in Words: William and Lydia

You'd think a husband and wife exchanging letters during wartime would be rough ground for building a comedy sketch. You'd be wrong. Mikey Day's increasingly harried exchange with Phoebe Waller-Bridge starts off sweet and goes to... some other places, real fast. This is Weird SNLat its best.

3. Grouch (Joker parody)

What if Joker, but it's Sesame Street? That's the question asked and answered in this faux trailer, starring David Harbour as a gritty Oscar the Grouch who's been hardened by life's many terrible curveballs and just cannot take it anymore. It's an origin story for the ages, and easily one of SNL's sharpest of 2019.

2. Chris Farley Song

Adam Sandler coming back to host SNLwas an exciting event, but his brightest moment of the night was more about tears than laughs. In this heartfelt tribute to a fallen comedy icon, Sandler sings the praises of his former SNLco-star Chris Farley, who was taken from us in 1997 at just 33 years old. The "sketch" winds through some of Farley's brightest moments on the show, but this one is meant to hit you right in the feels — and it does.

1. Eddie Murphy's entire episode

This one's a bit of a cheat. You could easily line any SNLTop 10 for 2019 justwith sketches from the Dec. 21 show, which brought Eddie Murphy back to host for the first time in more than three decades. Lots of people have observed that the episode stands as one of the show's strongest in that same stretch of time, so let this most excellent North Pole News Report sketch stand in for all the rest. Seek out the full episode and watch it sometime. You won't be disappointed.