Photo by Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
Saturday Night Live has kept audiences laughing for five decades now, and to celebrate this massive milestone, we asked fans to vote for their favorite live sketch from our curated list of 50 — or write in their favorite — and the results are in!
To no one’s surprise, “More Cowbell” has been crowned the best SNL sketch of all time. Audiences fell in love with the famous sketch, starring Christopher Walken, Will Ferrell, Chris Parnell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, and Horatio Sanz, 25 years ago. Since then, it’s been named one of the most iconic sketches in SNL history.
The hilarious “Matt Foley: Down by the River” sketch starring Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, Julia Sweeney, David Spade, and Christina Applegate came in at No. 2, and “Celebrity Jeopardy!: French Stewart, Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery” landed at No. 3.
Want to know what sketches made the top 10? Check out the titles below, and drop your thoughts in the comments.
SNL50: The Anniversary Special is now available to stream on Peacock.
This legendary sketch featuring Christopher Walken as producer Bruce Dickinson and Will Ferrell as the enthusiastic cowbell virtuoso in the rock band Blue Oyster Cult ran away with the poll, garnering over 27% of the vote. It was, by far, the most popular sketch.
Coming in second with 14% of the vote is the late Chris Farley’s first appearance on this list and first appearance as motivational speaker Matt Foley, who, yes, lives in a van down by the river and does a great job making David Spade and host Christina Applegate crack.
Celebrity Jeopardy! has been an SNL mainstay over the years, but when Norm Macdonald returned to the show to host in 1999, it resulted in some of the sketch’s most iconic moments from “Turd Ferguson” to “Ape Tit” to the oversized cowboy hat. This one racked up just under 12% of the vote.
After the top three, the remainder of sketches split the vote fairly evenly, with this classic from 1990 — featuring Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze trying out for the famous male burlesque troupe — leading the rest of the pack with just a hair over 5% of the vote.
This recurring sketch starring Rachel Dratch as a woman who only ever sees the dark side of life became so well-known that its title character made its way into the mainstream lexicon as a term to describe a vocal pessimist.
Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon’s send-up of dry public radio programming hit a high note when host Alec Baldwin joined them as a baker named Pete Schweddy to talk about his famous Schweddy Balls.
The first appearance of Kate McKinnon’s unfortunate alien abduction survivor whose story is dramatically different than her peers is arguably also the best one, if only for the fact that McKinnon is so good that nobody else in the sketch, especially host Ryan Gosling, can keep it together.
The most well-known iteration of this sketch came in 2016 just before the election, when host Tom Hanks appeared as a white man in a MAGA hat who discovers surprising commonalities with his fellow contestants. Incidentally, this was also the episode that introduced the world to David S. Pumpkins.
The oldest sketch to make into the top 10 features John Belushi as the proprietor of the Olympia Restaurant, where the only items on offer are cheeseburgers, chips, and Pepsi, no matter what the customers want.
And the oldest sketch on the list is followed by the newest sketch, in which host Nate Bargatze’s George Washington describes a vision for America that includes inexplicable alternate weights and measurements, among other confusing things.
