'SNL' celebrates 50 years of late-night comedy
15:19 Share

A famous comedy show on American television is celebrating its 50th anniversary this Sunday night.

Hi there, everyone. I'm Jeff, and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics. You're learning English, so it's also good to learn about the places that speak English. And today's story is all about a very famous television show in the United States, Saturday Night Live.

This is its 50th season on the air, and on Sunday, they're going to make a three-hour 50th anniversary special. So I thought this would be a great time to introduce you to SNL.

Today's episode is number 748, so that means you can find the transcript, the exercises, and the discussion area for this story at plainenglish.com slash 748.

And today, I've also added links to clips from the show, comedy segments of Saturday Night Live. They are mixed into the transcript at plainenglish.com slash 748. So make sure to check those out. Before we start today's story, I'd just like to remind you that the podcast is just one part of how we can help you upgrade your English skills.

At plainenglish.com, you can make faster progress with active learning strategies. You can take quizzes, do activities, listen to the fast version of the audio, watch video workshops, practice what you learn, and even join a live call with JR and me. It's all about helping you build your skills to become a better, more confident English speaker.

Sound good? Go to plainenglish.com to start your free 14-day trial today. Now, let's jump into today's story. Saturday Night Live, or SNL for short, is a comedy sketch show that airs, you guessed it, live on Saturday nights.

It comes on at 11.30 p.m. in New York. It's on NBC, one of America's four national broadcast networks. It has held its time slot for 50 years, half a century, on the same channel at the same time. This is a remarkable achievement.

Few other shows have had such staying power, and certainly no other comedy show has. So what makes SNL so special? To answer that question, let's start with what Saturday Night Live is. The short answer is that it's a live comedy performance with a little bit of live pop music mixed in.

The show has a standing cast of performers. The performers usually spend between three and seven years on the show. That's long enough for them to develop their voice, but every season features new performers, so the show always feels fresh and updated.

In addition to the standing cast, there's always a guest host and a musical guest. There's a new guest host and a new musician or band every week. The guest host opens the show with a monologue, and the host appears in some of the sketches. Famous people, including politicians, tend to play themselves.

The musicians play two songs in two different segments later in the show. But the heart of Saturday Night Live is the live sketches. The sketches are short comedy performances, usually about five minutes long. The sketches poke fun at real-life situations, pop culture, celebrities, or politicians.

Each sketch has a fully built-out set, and the performers are in costume. While the sets are being changed and the cast members jump on and off the stage, the show airs pre-recorded segments, like parody commercials or parody public service announcements.

Most shows have a segment called Weekend Update, a parody news bulletin.

One of the great things about SNL is that it captures the mood of the moment. The sketches you see performed live on Saturday night were written on Wednesday of that same week. That means the writing didn't go through layers of approval or weeks or months of revisions. The humor is raw and up-to-date.

Generations of viewers have the same comment about SNL. They say it was funniest when they were young. Most SNL sketches are one-time routines. Here's an example. The sketch is a parody of daytime talk shows.

In the sketch, a celebrity psychologist tries to help a couple solve their marital problems. The wife is angry because her husband was two hours late to their anniversary dinner. The wife starts crying. The audience boos the husband.

The talk show host and the therapist chide the man, who didn't even call, to tell his wife he'd be late. Only at the end of the segment do we learn that the man is a firefighter. On the night in question, he was fighting a fire, saving lives. But the therapist won't hear it.

You're all about excuses, he tells the firefighter as the studio audience jeers. In another sketch, a couple sits at the kitchen table, wondering what to do about all their credit card debt.

A man comes into the kitchen with an innovative new program to get out of debt. It's called Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford. The couple struggles to understand the concepts in the one-page booklet. Other sketches are recurring.

Church Chat is a local TV show with a judgmental host who can't stop herself from criticizing other people's behavior. Celebrity Jeopardy showed clueless celebrities trying in vain to win at a quiz show.

Debbie Downer was a woman who always found a way to ruin a happy moment with a negative or depressing comment. Target Lady was the store employee who made intrusive comments about what shoppers were buying. Some SNL sketches have been adapted into movies.

You may have seen Blues Brothers, Coneheads, Wayne's World, or Superstar. They all started as SNL sketches. Other times, the sketches became so popular that their punchlines became part of the vernacular. More Cowbell, A Van Down by the River, and Simmer Down Now. The celebrity parodies are funny.

Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and basically every president and major candidate have been parodied. In one famous sketch, a debate moderator asked then-candidate George W. Bush to summarize his campaign in one word.

He looked straight into the camera and said, strategery, which is not a word. But the real Bush White House took it in stride and started holding strategery meetings in the real White House. Lorne Michaels is the creator of Saturday Night Live and has been the producer for all but five years of its half-century existence.

He is the one who chooses which sketches make it into the show. Early in the week, writers and performers create more sketches than are needed that week. Throughout the week, some are rewritten and others are cut entirely.

At 8 o'clock p.m. on Saturday, the cast does a live rehearsal of that week's show in front of an audience. Lorne Michaels watches the rehearsal and makes last-minute changes to lines and stories based on what the audience likes best.

Then, the whole team has a frantic 90 minutes to make the final cuts and edits before the live show begins before a fresh audience at 11.30 p.m. I mentioned Lorne Michaels, the producer. He describes Saturday Night Live like a Snickers bar. It's not the best candy bar, but it's reliable and most people like it.

And when you bite into a Snickers, you expect a certain portion to be peanuts, a certain amount to be chocolate, and a certain amount of caramel. And so the show has a certain amount of celebrity parodies, a certain amount of current events, and a certain amount of, let's call it, juvenile humor.

Anyway, if you want to get an idea of what Saturday Night Live is like, I've put links to the sketches I talked about in the transcript of this episode. So go to plainenglish.com slash 748 and you'll see links in the whole transcript to videos of the sketches that I mentioned. There are probably 15 of them, so click on those and enjoy.

There will be a three-hour 50th anniversary special show this Sunday, ironically Sunday, on NBC. It's at 8 o'clock p.m. New York time on February 16th. If you're outside the U.S., it's hard to watch American Network Television, but if you can find it,

tune in for a little bit. If you're listening after February 16th, 2025, you can search for clips, I'm sure, on YouTube. Well, that's all for today. We'll be back on Thursday with a new story. See you then. Listen up if you speak Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, or Turkish.

One of the most frustrating things about listening and reading in a second language is being confused by unfamiliar words or phrases. When you listen to plain English or when you read the transcript, you probably encounter some words you don't know. When that happens, you have a few options. You can stop the audio, go look up the definition,

then return to the episode, find your place, and press play again, but that's exhausting. Or you can just skip it and be confused. That's no fun either. But what if you could see the translation of the word into your language instantly without having to stop the audio, without having to look anything up?

Well, you can at plainenglish.com. For each episode, we translate about 100 words and phrases from English to nine languages. Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Turkish. And we highlight those words in blue.

All you have to do is hover your mouse over the highlighted word and you'll see the translation instantly. It works great on mobile too. It really makes listening a lot more satisfying and it's a great way to expand your vocabulary in English.

The best way to see these translations is to sign up for a free 14-day trial at plainenglish.com. During your trial, you can read as many transcripts as you like, all with the translations into your language. So sign up for your free trial today at plainenglish.com.