Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Season of the Iconic Comedy Show

Sat­ur­day Night Live began its 50th sea­son last fall, around the same time as the pre­miere of Jason Reit­man’s film Sat­ur­day Night, which dra­ma­tizes the pro­gram’s 1975 debut. All of this has put fans into some­thing of a ret­ro­spec­tive mood, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to have been tun­ing in since the very begin­ning. For oth­ers, SNL is a show they haven’t been watch­ing all that long, used to watch, or watched at one time and have start­ed watch­ing again. With its ever-chang­ing cast, writ­ers, sketch con­cepts, and over­all comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty, it’s nev­er remained the same for too long at a stretch, and though many view­ers have their favorite sea­sons, few grasp the full sweep of its his­to­ry as a tele­vi­sion insti­tu­tion.

Now, any­one can get a sense of SNL in its entire­ty with Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live, a YouTube series that, true to its title, recounts the show’s most notable per­form­ers, char­ac­ters, inno­va­tions, trou­bles, and moments planned or oth­er­wise (often the lat­ter, giv­en the nature of the broad­cast). Each sea­son gets its own episode, start­ing with the first, whose Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers includ­ed such young up-and-com­ers as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Gil­da Rad­ner.

As that list of names would imply, this “hip com­e­dy vari­ety pro­gram for baby boomers that dared to stay up late” soon became a ver­i­ta­ble force of era-defin­ing fun­ny­men and fun­ny­women. Then as now, SNL tends to send its break­out stars to Hol­ly­wood, albeit with vary­ing results.

That con­tributes to the con­stant churn that has brought onto the show’s ros­ter such house­hold-names-to-be as Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Adam San­dler, and Tina Fey, while also fea­tur­ing non-cast-mem­bers like Penn and Teller or guest hosts like Steve Mar­tin, whose appear­ances great­ly raised their own pro­files. To watch through these encap­su­la­tions, which as of this writ­ing have reached sea­son nine­teen (1993–94), is to take a jour­ney through Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture itself. Cre­ator Lorne Michaels’ recent­ly declared lack of intent to step down any time soon bol­sters SNL’s aura of unstop­pa­bilty, built up over five decades of influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties, still-quot­ed gags, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters — if also the occa­sion­al unco­op­er­a­tive host, chem­istry-free cast, or acci­den­tal­ly uttered bit of pro­fan­i­ty. But what’s the fun of doing half a cen­tu­ry of live TV if it goes with­out a hitch?

Fol­low Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.