Saturday Night Live promised surprise appearances, cameos and returning cast members heading into its anniversary 50th season, and Lorne Michaels and company have certainly delivered. That continued last night too, as fans were treated to not only a surprise Church Lady sketch from beloved former cast member Dana Carvey but also an appearance from his podcast co-host David Spade. The Joe Dirt star played Hunter Biden, one of the guests on Church Chat, who pointed out he has more in common with Jesus than we’d like to give him credit for.
Carvey, of course, has been a pretty regular fixture on Saturday Night Live this season. The funnyman has played both President Joe Biden and Elon Musk. Fans were, of course, surprised we got a reprisal of his most famous character on this week’s episode, but it was nothing compared to the surprise of seeing David Spade. Despite being among the more successful former SNL cast members, the actor has only hosted the show twice since he left and made a handful of cameo appearances, most memorably ten years ago when he appeared as his flight attendant character during the SNL 40 special to tell The Californians sketch that it was running long and needed to get out.
You can watch Spade and Carvey do their thing below…
There is no show currently on television that can more easily lean into nostalgia than Saturday Night Live. The sketch comedy staple has fifty years of good memories, and it has the most impressive group of alumni in Hollywood history. As an example, Spade himself would be hard pressed to crack a top 20 list of most successful Not Ready For Primetime Players, and he’s been a main character in more than 250 episodes of network television shows… not including SNL. That’s how extensive the pool SNL can draw from is.
But it’s also important that the show continues to move forward and creates a connection with fans of a new generation. These cameos from Carvey and Spade are a thrill to me because I grew up watching them, but they’re not going to create any new fans. It’s the next generation of stars that need to do that.
Fortunately, the current cast is extremely talented and seems to be doing that. SNL has definitely leaned into nostalgia more than usual this season, but that’s quite clearly a combination of it being the 50th anniversary and the presidential election. The latter brought out famous faces like Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg, but that’s no different than previous cycles which brought out the likes of Tina Fey to play Sarah Palin and most famously, Alec Baldwin to play President Trump.
A few weeks ago, I guessed that SNL would lean away from politics a little bit moving forward, and that seems to be happening. How much it leans into or away from the nostalgia, however, will likely fluctuate week to week, especially given the upcoming hosts.
Saturday Night Live will return with new episodes for the next two weeks and some exciting upcoming hosts, both of whom are former cast members. Chris Rock will handle the duties next week, and Martin Short will handle them the week after.
Most of this most recent episode was dedicated to current cast members and host Paul Mescal, and I suspect we’ll see a similar dynamic moving forward, with maybe one random cameo or sketch dedicated to the old timers each week, at least apart from the actual SNL 50 special which is coming in February.