Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter duetted on Simon’s “Homeward Bound” to open the show, five-decade “Saturday Night Live” luminary Steve Martin delivered the monologue, and Paul McCartney gave an epic closing to a 50th anniversary special celebrating the sketch institution that was overflowing with famous former cast members, superstar hosts and legendary guests.
The 83-year-old Simon has been essential to “SNL” since its earliest episodes in 1975, and told the 25-year-old pop sensation of the moment Carpenter that he first performed “Homeward Bound” on “SNL” in 1976.
“I was not born then,” Carpenter said, getting a laugh. “And neither were my parents,” she added, getting a bigger laugh.
McCartney closed with the rarely performed song cycle from the Beatles’ “Abbey Road,” “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End,” with its wistful ending, “the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
Lil Wayne and Miley Cyrus were among the night’s other musical guests, though the show’s musical legacy also had its own night with a Radio City Music Hall concert on Friday.
“SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration” aired live from New York, of course, on NBC and Peacock. The pop culture juggernaut has launched the careers of generations of comedians including Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell, who all appeared in early sketches.
And the evening included epic cameos that included Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and Keith Richards.
Martin, one of the shows most prolific hosts and guests since the first season in 1975, tried to keep it current in the monologue even on a backward-looking night.
Martin said when the show’s creator Lorne Michaels only told him he’d be doing the monologue, “I was actually vacationing on a friend’s boat down on the Gulf of Steve Martin.”
He was joined by former “SNL” luminaries and frequent hosts Martin Short and John Mulaney, who looked at the star-studded crowd full of former hosts in the same Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza that has been the show’s longtime home.
“I see some of the most difficult people I have ever met in my entire life,” Mulaney said. “Over the course of 50 years, 894 people have hosted ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and it amazes me that only two of them have committed murder.”
Later, on the night’s “Weekend Update,” anchor Colin Jost said there are so many former hosts and musical guests that wanted to see the show that many had to be seated in a neighboring studio and some had to watch “from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn” as a photo of Sean “Diddy” Combs appeared.
Martin took a jab at the always-difficult-to-wrangle Bill Murray in his monologue.
“We wanted to make sure that Bill would be here tonight,” Martin said, “so we didn’t invite him.”
Murray appeared on “Weekend Update” to rank the show’s anchors since they began with Chevy Chase. He poked at the whiteness of the group by first ranking its Black anchors, a list of just one, current co-anchor Michael Che.
The extravaganza came after months of celebrations of “Saturday Night Live,” which premiered Oct. 11, 1975, with an original cast that included John Belushi, Chase and Gilda Radner.
It’s become appointment television over the years as the show has skewered presidents, politics and pop culture.
“It is a honor and a thrill to be hosting weekend update for the 50th and if it was up to our president final season of SNL,” Jost said.
The show had its typical ending, with all involved looking exhilarated and exhausted on the studio stage. This night it was so crowded with luminaries it looked like it might break. Led by Short, they all applauded in tribute to Michaels, who created the show and has run it for 45 of its 50 years.
Alec Baldwin, the show’s most frequent host with 17 stints, appeared to introduce an evening of commercial parodies, seven months after his trial was halted and an involuntary manslaughter charge was dropped in the shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
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