I don’t know if it’s bad to run year-end coverage after the new year has already hit February, but something does seem off about it, so here I am getting this thing in right under the wire. As is tradition, Saturday Night Live was generally more miss than hit in 2023, but there were still some great sketches buried in each 90 minute (minus ads) episode. And some episodes, most notably the Nate Bargatze-hosted one in October, were even consistently good throughout. It can be hard to find the good stuff given how much content this show produces, so here’s a quick and direct guide to the 10 SNL sketches and videos that made me laugh the hardest in 2023. And just for clarity’s sake, I’m looking solely at the calendar year, in which parts of seasons 48 and 49 aired. If a sketch originally aired at any point during 2023, whether it was Season 48 back in the winter and spring or Season 49 this past fall, it’s in contention. Let’s jump in, though, starting with an ad parody that aired almost exactly a year ago.
10. “Wing Pit”
This might not hit the level of the Totino’s sketches with Vanessa Bayer and her hungry guys, but here’s another funny and effective parody making fun of the over-the-top gluttony of Super Bowl junk food ads. It might go a little too broad and extreme as it slowly turns into outright horror—the bit about serving a chicken god of death mutes the real world satire a bit—but it remains funny throughout, riffing on both the ridiculousness of dude-centric advertising and the unhealthy excesses of the American restaurant industry.
9. “Trump Easter Cold Open”
Saturday Night Live’s political comedy has been death for years, with the deluded misery of the Alec Baldwin era giving us some of the worst stuff in the show’s (very long and spotty) history. So it’s a testament to how goddamned amazing James Austin Johnson is as Donald Trump that I can not only stomach political cold opens again but actually sometimes enjoy them. Johnson’s Trump is already the greatest political impression in the show’s history, nailing not just Trump’s voice but the utterly unique and incoherent way he rambles on. This cold open from April is the best written Trump material the show has done perhaps ever, highlighting Trump’s insane messiah complex and oblivious contempt for pretty much everything that isn’t him.
8. “Airplane”
Get used to seeing Nate Bargatze’s name on this list. The Saturday Night Live he hosted in October was one of the best all-arounders in years. The stand-up comedian has a strong comedic voice and it shined through throughout the night, like in this sketch, when a stock “is there a doctor in the house” scene set on an airplane turns into the passengers debating the most impressive jobs. It’s easy to imagine other performers turning the low-key way Bargatze insists that being a lawyer is the second-most impressive job after doctor into something louder, broader and more forceful, and that would’ve made this sketch less funny and also less believable. Fine work all around on this one.
7. “Traffic Altercation”
Here’s a great bit of physical comedy, with host Quinta Brunson and Mikey Day pantomiming an argument with each other during a traffic jam. Their hand gestures and insults grow increasingly absurd, to the point where they start commenting on and arguing with each other’s choice of signs. It’s not just the physicality that works, though; it’s also smartly written, with Brunson and Day’s passengers surprisingly getting into the action, and a nice twist at the end.
6. “Washington’s Dream”
The second sketch from Bargatze’s episode to make this list takes a historical approach to the age-old jokes about America’s absolute refusal to use the same units of weights and measurements as almost every other country on the planet. To the surprise of his men, it turns out the main reason George Washington oversaw the fight against the British was to guarantee our right to maintain a baffling system of weights and measurements. Once again Bargatze’s low-key, deadpan delivery is crucial to making this sketch work; without that, it would feel like the fundamentally old-fashioned and hackneyed bit it is, even with the Revolutionary dressing.
5. “Subway Platform”
James Austin Johnson deserves all the acclaim he gets for his transcendent Donald Trump impression, but he’s far more than just a mimic. He’s quickly established himself as one of the most versatile members of the current cast, effective as both subdued straight men and over-the-top characters. He’s a Hartman type, the best thing you can be on this show. Take this pretaped segment: Johnson and Devon Williams (who also has a bright future on the show) put on an entirely serious and professional little one-act play that riffs on The Pursuit of Happyness in the foreground, as an increasingly ridiculous scene spirals out behind them within a subway train. The madness around them wouldn’t work nearly as well if Johnson and Williams didn’t nail the drama as well as they do. This is a superior version of a similar sketch about a Waffle House that aired earlier in the year.
4. “Jingle Pitch”
There’s a lot to love about this sketch. The concept, that a pair of young lawyers found the perfect band to record a new jingle while getting hammered at an Italian restaurant, starts strong. Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson nicely underplay a couple of over-the-top characters as the white pop funk band brought in to audition. The ways in which they sing the firm’s phone number are hilarious and unexpected. And, best of all, Bowen Yang’s manic desire to perfectly recapture the exact sensations he felt in that restaurant continuously escalates to great effect. This is just a great comedy sketch right here.
3. “Little Orphan Cassidy”
I was able to catch Chloe Troast’s New Faces showcase at Just For Laughs in July, and she was clearly the best performer in that show. So it wasn’t a surprise when she was announced as a new Saturday Night Live cast member just a couple of months later. She made a quick impact with her genuinely great singing skills, but her starring role in “Little Orphan Cassidy” shows she could easily become one of the show’s standout performers. Playing a stereotypical orphan who has once again been passed over for adoption, she serenades the moon with a belt-out show-stopping number bemoaning that nobody loves her, while revealing that she’s actually in her late 20s, started Covid, and is only trying to get adopted to enact some kind of scheme thought up by her 51-year-old boyfriend Puddy involving making a mold of her new dad’s teeth. The moon (played by Timothee Chalamet) reacting to everything Troast sings is a well SNL goes to too many times, but Troast is such a powerful presence here, and her revelations so weird and unexpected, that it’s still one of the funniest things the show did in 2023.
2. “Make Your Own Kind of Music”
A mustachioed, dude-perm-sporting Emma Stone plays a manic music producer who intuitively knows how music will be used in movies and movie trailers decades later, telling Mama Cass how “Make Your Own Kind of Music” will be forgotten for decades before becoming a popular and ironic needle drop. Stone’s smoking, swaggering ’60s impresario mimics his way through action and horror movie scenes (with the help of Bowen Yang, Mikey Day, and Andrew Dismukes) as Troast does a disapproving but note-perfect Mama Cass. The ending is bad but not bad enough to spoil the amazing first five minutes; it’s another instantly unforgettable SNL role for Stone, a bravura vocal performance from Troast, and an incisive parody of overdone movie cliches.
1. “Lake Beach”
There’s been a noticeable Southern touch to Saturday Night Live over the last few years, with cast members like Andrew Dismukes (Texas), Punkie Johnson (Louisiana) and James Austin Johnson (Tennessee) hailing from the region. (Even the non-nepo baby in Please Don’t Destroy is from Georgia.) It was most evident in the Nate Bargatze-hosted episode in October, peaking with our favorite sketch of the year, the amazing “Lake Beach” music video. This pitch-perfect parody of mindless bro country is also a closely observed look at the kind of muddy lakefront beaches you grow up going to if the ocean is too far away. Obviously that isn’t exclusively a Southern thing, but this song is basically a modern Hee Haw sketch that’s more grounded in reality (despite its absurd touches) and actually funny. If you’ve ever spent a drunken Saturday at Old Hickory Beach, Lake Allatoona, Kerr Lake, or anywhere like that, this video will cut close.