‘SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night’ Review: Peacock’s Fluffy Docuseries Is a Self-Congratulatory but Well-Earned Victory Lap
In the very first minutes of Peacock’s new docuseries about NBC’s Saturday Night Live, former cast member Joe Piscopo describes it as “the biggest show ever, the biggest thing to happen to television.” And while reasonable minds could quibble over whether that’s a bit of an overstatement, it is indeed difficult to deny the series’ lasting cultural impact. And not just because it’d be churlish to nitpick a compliment on the occasion of someone’s 50th birthday, even if that “someone” is a TV program.
That attitude, self-aggrandizing and self-congratulatory but perhaps justifiably so, prevails throughout SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night. Despite the “unprecedented access” promised in marketing materials, the documentary is the exact opposite of a warts-and-all portrait; it is, instead, a glossy love letter to a hallowed institution. But it’s at least a pleasantly watchable one, thanks to its genuine enthusiasm for its subject matter, as well as to the sheer number of famously charming A-listers paying their respects.
Executive produced by Morgan Neville (Piece by Piece), SNL50 presents as less of a single continuous narrative than as four discrete documentaries arranged in increasing levels of SNL-specific geekiness — beginning with a warm and fuzzy look at the casting process, and ending with an affectionate deep dive into the notoriously rocky 1985-1986 season.
That first hour is particularly packed with celebrities (Bill Hader! Amy Poehler! Pete Davidson!), but the sheer number of recognizable names and faces proves to be a unifying M.O. for the entire project. Anyone who’s enjoyed mainstream American comedy at any point in the last few decades can expect at least a few of their favorites to pop up.
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This being a victory lap produced by NBC’s sister network, it comes as no surprise that the vast majority of what they have to say is glowing. If last year’s Saturday Night seemed too reverent of the show’s legacy to be totally clear-eyed, it’s got nothing on SNL50’s rose-colored view. While the docuseries can acknowledge some of its subject’s missteps, it has no interest in interrogating its place in the comedy landscape. (It goes almost without saying that truly dark aspects of its legacy, like the “culture of impunity” enabling toxicity and abuse, are entirely ignored.)
There’s not much in the way of juicy gossip, either, at least of the sort that might allow us to feel like we’re being let in on something, and very few outside commentators to offer critical analysis or broader cultural context. Watch these installments back-to-back-to-back-to-back as I did (all four release Jan. 16), and the relentless positivity can start to take on the sugarcoated feel of a studio tour — or, more cynically, a corporate holiday party where everyone’s competing to see who can praise their employer most effusively.
That said, studio tours and holiday parties can be fun even when you know you’re not seeing the full picture, and so it is with SNL50.
The most delightful moments of the entire endeavor come in the premiere, directed by Robert Alexander, as established SNL alums watch their own auditions, tearing up (Heidi Gardner) or groaning (Bowen Yang) or adamantly refusing to participate before gamely consenting to a minute or two (Poehler).
The most intimate sections come in the second outing. Embedding with the 2023-2024 writers’ room in the week leading up to the Ayo Edebiri episode, director Marshall Curry captures the grueling but eye-opening process by which the imperfect sausage gets made, week after week. Neither of these installments offers much in the way of startling new information, but it’s nevertheless interesting getting to see these details firsthand.
The third, helmed by Neil Berkeley, is where SNL50 starts aiming for less casual, slightly nerdier viewers. Its 49 minutes are focused entirely on 2000’s “More Cowbell,” which even SNL director Beth McCarthy-Miller laughingly describes as an “absolutely bonkers” choice. Though Christopher Walken — the man whose intense delivery immortalized lines like “I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!” — declines to talk, seemingly everyone else is game to chat, from Will Ferrell to the members of Blue Öyster Cult to a manufacturer of cowbells.
No detail is too small for an excavation this wonky, not even design department head Leo Yoshimura pointing out that a certain lamp is slightly crooked. Unless you’re a superfan of this specific sketch, it’ll surely feel like entirely too much attention to lavish on six minutes from a quarter-century ago. But the enthusiasm it reflects is sweet all the same.
However, it’s the ostensibly self-critical fourth chapter that most clearly lays out SNL50‘s ovearching message. As director Jason Zeldes launches into an in-depth examination of the so-called “weird year” that saw SNL creator Lorne Michaels return as executive producer, build a whole new cast from scratch and proceed to deliver a famously disastrous season, he deploys a Twilight Zone-inspired framing device that asks us to imagine a world in which SNL was canceled then and there — as it nearly actually was, before manager Bernie Brillstein was able to persuade NBC to give Michaels (who appears here only in clips from a 2005 interview) another shot.
Much is made of how crucial that transition year was in turning SNL from just another television program to an institution bigger than any one floundering cast or low-rated season (though not bigger than Michaels himself, since it’s also presented as the moment that “Saturday Night Live” became synonymous with “Lorne Michaels”).
Much less is made of the questions that Brillstein, as recorded in a 2005 sit-down, recalls asking himself in that moment of crisis: “I had a kind of existential moment. Should it exist? Was it worthwhile that it existed? Was it just habit? Maybe it was time.”
From today’s vantage, of course, those questions are moot. The point is that it did endure, to become the sort of iconic ongoing work that merits a commemoration like SNL50. But the docuseries never stops to ask if those same questions might apply now. It’s here to fete a half-century of world-dominating success — not to explore the world it’s left in its wake, or to ask where it might go next.
