The best Saturday Night Live episode of all time*

As measured on the calendar, Saturday Night Live marks its 50th anniversary this year. However, it can also be said that each of the 50 “Saturday Night Life” celebrates its anniversary.

Of course, there are people who watch shows every week, every year, and have followed their evolution for decades. But many of us are a particular season or group of performers who define the show for us.

Please don't receive this from me. Take it from Lorne Michaels. “In general, when people talk about the best cast, he once said, 'Well, that's when they were in high school.' ”

I was in high school in 1984. Even back then, I'm most vulnerable to the crazy years that defined myself by pop culture obsessions and nerds, and the wil of sketch comedy – I was a modest “SNL” fan. . I loved “SCTV,” David Letterman and Monty Python.

After college, I moved on to the enthusiasm of “The Simpsons” and other comedy. I sometimes enjoy “SNL.” Sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I enjoy dislike it. But honestly, for most of my life, I thought of it like a utility – I'm always there, but I'm more of a “fan” than I'm a gas company fan. It's not to become.

But when “SNL” vibrated at my wavelength, when I spent every Monday quoting lines from each other and quoting lines from each other in the school cafeteria, when I was the right age to keep getting up. It was there for a while. You can narrow down your selected “SNL” to a specific season. In fact, certain episodes: Season 10, Episode 9, air dated December 15th, 1984.

(You can stream an abbreviation version of this episode on Peacock. You'll need to search for abbreviated clips online, as you'll be annoyed by many classic episodes. My wife, an archivist, was a few years ago. I got her contact and found a recording of Samizdat. Of the full episodes, I cherish it like a heirloom.)

My sense is that many “SNL” fans think that Season 10 is like an asterisk. Michaels wasn't even the show at the time – this was Dick Eversol Interregnum and had a big shakeup in the cast.

Eversol has brought in established comedy performers such as Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Martin Short and Pamela Stephenson to help baseball owners open their wallets to free agents. The series didn't have Eddie Murphy, who had continued the tradition of breakout stars leaving the series.

But this night he returned. Sw on the sparkly black jacket stage, he said he vowed to sign on as a host after making “Best Defense” with Dudley Moore. (“The money they gave me, you would have done “the best defense” too.”) In the interim, a small film named “Copsman Beverly Hills” came out, and Murphy returned the conquered hero.

The episode created a monumental pedestal for him. He recreated several famous characters, including an adult version of Soba from the inner city child host Robinson and “Our Gang” Urchin.

However, the enduring classic of the episode is “White Me” pre-drawn mockmentary, covered with Ned Flanders' mustache, infiltrating with a white face and revealing the secret methods of white Americans. “is. (The Premise was the takeoff of the 1961 book, Black Like Me, which later adapted to the film.

“When the white people are alone,” Murphy discovers, from newspapers to bank loans, “they give each other things for free.” When the only other black man on a New York City bus gets off at the stop, the white passengers serve cocktails and begin dancing to oldies music. It's a picture of racism as a weapon rather than an invisible gate, and it's like a brutal, full-boa satire that “SNL” only manages from time to time.

This episode shows off Murphy's versatility. He plays the piano to fill the 30-second dead air when a commercial break is wrong – and the ability to become both explosive and deadpan. Playing an extremist afrocentric scholar in Black History Minute Sketch, he stumbles for a while, then turns the break into a character representation.

Also, excruciatingly, he rejected decades later, in commemoration of Murphy's early comedy homophobia. In a Saturday night news monologue about children's toys, he lifts up a Ken doll in a pink shirt and warns his parents. This is another legacy of '80s comedy, and it has permeated the Gen X School Lunchroom.

But many of the moments I love in the episodes are from the strange and almost forgotten bits that exploited the particular talents of this ensemble and struck my formed comic sensibilities at the right angle. Masu.

Murphy's Gumby Character (Green Clay Stop Motion Figure Reimagined by Club Bean with Bolsit Belt as Bean) A stop motion figure of green clay, gangsters and shaming played by Crystal, Guest, Short Take a sketch of the deli of Rishman, who recalls and claims insults and claims: a sandwich named after a celebrity. (“Molly Amsterdam is what we called the melting of herring.” Crystal declares.) Larry David – brings the gross Jewish sensibility to television with “Stop Your Enthusiasm” in “Seinfeld” – was the writer of the show. Do newspaper crosswords.

This episode plays great by the plastic surgeon receptionist Jerry Lewis, like a sketch of a pair of South African bishop Desmond Tutu (Murphy) and Heisman Trophy winner Dougfruty (Hall) There are also plenty of fillers that look like short performances. But one viewer filler is another genius, and for me the sketch is “climbing the stairs.”

The premise is ridiculous. Short is a World War II soldier, Lawrence Orbach, trapped in a farmhouse. He needs to save the unit for help with a phone upstairs. Growing up in the Midwest, Obach doesn't know how to climb stairs. (“It never came out!”)

It's almost an idea, and it's like a late episode sketch that many viewers hoped to have been cut out for time. However, Short takes over it with his trademark horrifying awkwardness and self-sacrificing physical comedy, throwing himself at him on the stairs as if they were Everest's face. Sketching is stupid. It lasts too long and becomes exposed. You cannot reasonably defend yourself. And God will help me, I can't think of it in 40 years without laughing.

Was this broadcast the largest 90-minute “Saturday Night Live” ever? Probably not! If you live long enough, you will become an old man in the deli about your vague and personal affection. This episode is my Molly Amsterdam sandwich.

But that hit the spot for me. Ultimately, this is all Saturday Night Live promises. Not even perfection or excellence, but give something stupid and unbearable, leaving you in a few years, laughing stupid laughing with memories that come out nowhere.