The best sketches from SNL's 49th season

Matthew Haughey

Sep 10, 2024 • 3 min read

I've watched Saturday Night Live from a frighteningly early age—I bet I've seen almost every episode live from about 1979 onwards, when I was barely 7 years old staying up late on Saturday nights to see some comedy.

Before NBC launches into their 50th season of SNL in a couple weeks, I wanted to highlight my favorite sketches from the past season that I still think about months later.

#3 Detectives

My favorite kind of SNL sketch is one that hits a sweet spot between comedy and social commentary, while also upending our preconceived notions. The all-time best example of this is Black Jeopardy.

Detectives has a funny premise and it delivers as it hints at societal injustice. It's a true fact these days, less than half of murders get solved because cops are historically terrible at solving major crimes. There's a whole world of scuba divers on YouTube that solve missing persons crimes in a matter of hours once they focus on them even though local cops say they've gone cold for a decade or more.

What I love most is when they introduce two young women addicted to their phones as temporary interns, you assume they'll be the butt of upcoming jokes but instead they can accomplish the job that inept cops can't do in mere seconds thanks to accidental deep forensics analysis gained through snooping instagram feeds.

Among my friend groups, whenever someone shares news about a person we all know—like say someone big in the tech industry gets a divorce—there's always one friend that predicted it six months before and when you ask them how, they point to instagram and say "He hasn't appeared in a photo with his wife in over 9 months, also her feed has photos from Europe when he was in the US so it was clear something was up."

Cops are actually worse at their jobs than people think and the badass heroes of this story are two women in their early 20s well-steeped in internet culture. I love it.

#2 Jumanji

Kristen Wiig's entire episode is one gem after another, but this sketch captures the best kind of absurd premise that SNL is known for in sketches.

It starts out normal and quickly gets to its point. But then it turns again as characters argue about what it means to be "Jumanji'd".

There's a satisfying finish and the absurdity of it all lives in my head to this day. Any time me and my spouse are offered a board game and we're too tired to play, we'll decline and quote "I can't be Jumanji'd if I don't put myself in a position to be Jumanji'd!"

#1 Washington's Dream

Every SNL episode in the 49th season where a standup comedian hosted was one of their best, but Nate Bargatze's entire episode was filled with gems. This one hits all my buttons and it's so good I made a rule for myself that anytime it shows up in YouTube recommendations to "watch next" I always press play and I've seen this 20-30x at this point.

It's a silly premise: take an inspirational speech from George Washington to soldiers before a revolutionary battle and combine it with 1980s brick-wall observational comedy about how stupid our English system of measurement is. Then sprinkle in some social commentary about a founding father talking about equality that isn't entirely equal to all citizens.

Nate's delivery really sells it and it makes me laugh every time. It's kind of the perfect SNL sketch and easily the best of the year for me.

Honorable mentions

There are lots of other good sketches worth sharing from the past year, so here goes in order from the first episode to the 19th, the best bits: