[Starts with show intro]
Female voice: And now, what I remember about this year.
[Cut to Aidy, Kate, Cecily and Kenan on SNL stage]
[cheers and applause]
[music playing]
Aidy: This year was crazy.
Cecily: It was so crazy, it made a lost of us crazy.
Kenan: Yeah, it was actually a pretty fun year for me. But I’ve discovered people don’t love hearing that. So, I’m just going to say, yeah, it was crazy.
Bown: We went from doing very weird shows at home to terrifying shows in person.
Ego: Everyone else was fleeing New York but Lorne was like, “We should go back for comedy.”
Heidi: Yeah, it was a perfect environment for laughs. This was what rehearsals looked like. [Cut to picture of cast members rehearsing with their masks on.]
Bowen: And this is what the writer’s room looked like.
[Cut to a picture of old military wearing smoke masks carrying guns.]
Kate: I remember there were so many covid precautions that if I wanted to hug anyone, I had to pull them into a closet and do it in the dark away from the authorities. That led to a lot of confusion.
Aidy: I remember hearing that if you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, then you don’t have covid. And I did that so much because I believe in science.
Cecily: Now, I remember the guy at work who gave us test results but he tried to do it funny. They’d be like, “[worrying voice] I have your results. You’re negative.”
Kate: Oh, that guy. We killed him, right?
Pete: I can’t believe I made an entire season without testing positive… for covid.
Chris: One time, I was getting swab stuck up my nose and I looked in my left and Adele was getting swab stuck up her nose and we locked eyes and I panicked and I said, “It’s 11? What the hell does that mean, fam?”
Chloe: I remember how we would bang pots and pants for doctors and nurses at seven o’clock every night.
Beck: And I remember how we slowly stopped doing that until there was just one guy doing it alone for two weeks.
Melissa: We went from, “I want New York to I hate that one guy.”
Kate: At the beginning, our audience was mostly first responders, doctors and nurses.
Aidy: Which sounds really nice But we quickly realize that a doctor who just left the ER after a 36 hour shift is maybe not the best audience for comedy?
Cecily: Yeah, like one time, and this is true, in the middle of our show, a guy in the audience was just reading a medical test. [Cut to a picture of a person reading at ext book during the show.]
Kenan: Yeah. That’s when we started inviting second responders which are random people who show up to the scene of an emergency and go, “Oh, damn. Look at that. That dude cracked his head open.”
Kenan: Yeah. And they brought their own alcohol too.
Andrew: And it was a tough year to be a first year cast man.
Punkie: Yeah. You couldn’t even be in a sam room with writers.
Lauren: And the cast was already so big.
Unknown person: Yeah, this is my first line the entire season.
Cecily: It was really hard year. But sometimes adversity only sharpens creativity. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from this season.
[Cut to A clip of Elon Musk dancing as Wario in the Wario sketch.]
Kyle: Look, these were unusual circumstances to do comedy under. Was every sketch perfect? Yeah, pretty much. We crushed it. Every sketch was a 10. No notes.
Alex: Hey, remember when Morgan Wallen got booked on the show?
Beck: Remember when a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head and then we did a 15 minutes sketch about that?
Kenan: Yeah, and then I ended that sketch. I said, “Live from New York” as another fly who was a ghost of Herman Cain and that’s what the season has been like.
[cut to Chris Rock]
[cheers and applause]
Chris: I hosted the first episode of this season and that feels like six years ago. Here’s how messed up the world was when I hosted. I wanted Kanye West to be the musical guest. And he couldn’t do it because he was running for president. Remember that? Also the week I was here, the sitting president who said covid would disappear got covid. That was this season. That was this season. Then the election was over, Heat Miser loses, big moment for SNL. Clearly the right time to leave, to end of season. But no, these idiots did 12 more shows. Even Jim Carrey knew it was time to go home.
Pete: Yeah. But the main thing was that we were in it together. Everyone was there for each other no matter what.
Cecily: Sorry. Pete, is that a green screen?
Cecily: Have you been doing the show from home this whole year?
Pete’s mom: Petey, your hot pockets are read.
Pete: I’ll be right there, Lorne.
Kenan: Mostly, we remember how lucky we were to have a job at at time when so many people were out of work. We remember that seeing even the tops of our friend’s faces was better than being alone in our apartments with our adopted pet children.
Aidy: We remember losing members of our SNL family, like our beloved music producer Hal Willner.
Kenan: And so many family members of our cast and crew who we thought of every time we had a show.
Kate: This was the year we realized we were more than just cast. We’re a family.
Aidy: And, like a true family, we are kind of sick of each other and we need a little break.
Kenan: So, we’ll see everybody, fingers crossed, in thanksgiving.
Cecily: Thank you for staying with us through and election, and insurrection and an objection that there was an insurrection.
Kate: And as someone who played Rudy Giuliani and experienced the year through his eyes, I can tell you, it was one wild ride, baby.
All: And live from New York, it’s Saturday night.