15 Of The Funniest Sketches & Best Moments From Saturday Night Live Season 49 (So Far)

Saturday Night Live is getting ready to pick back up in 2024!

Next week on Saturday, January 20th, 2024, Season 49 of the long-running NBC sketch comedy series will return to Studio 8H in New York City to continue the rest of the season beginning with host Jacob Elordi & musical guest Reneé Rapp. There've been so many amazing moments to highlight from this new season. From Academy Award winner Emma Stone joining the esteemed Five-Timers Club, to Grammy Award nominated comedian Nate Bargatze bringing a home-run for the stand-up community with an excellent hosting debut.

Check out the Best of Saturday Night Live's Stand-Up Monologues!

In honor of the show's current halfway point, here's a catch up on some of the highlights from each episode of SNL Season 49. These are 15 of the funniest & best sketches & moments seen so far this season picked by 800 Pound Gorilla News!

Chrissy Knox, the over-eager poster model played by host Emma Stone, made her return in this recurring sketch where she reprised the role from her two previous hosting stints. The role of the college student that was once taken on by Pete Davidson was succeeded by current standout castmate, Marcello Hernández. It's the sketch where the posters in the student's room each compete for his attention.

This iteration alongside Stone & Hernández featured Mikey Day as an intentionally underwhelming David Beckham, Kenan Thompson as UFC champion Troy McCoy, & Ego Nwodim as a video game character.

Knowing that this country music trio (made up of host Nate Bargatze, Andrew Dismukes & James Austin Johnson) are each through & through Southerners makes this sketch even more fitting with Bargatze & Johnson both being from Nashville & Dismukes being from Houston. Another great musical sketch where this trio sings about their funny & quirky lake beach activities and truly nailing the Southern energy. 

Watching Marcello Hernández & Bad Bunny's growing friendship on screen through SNL sketches & Bad Bunny music videos is a joy to witness. They really didn't have to go this hard on this sketch, but they did it anyway in the now recurring Protective Mom sketch bringing back Pedro Pascal as Marcello's overprotective mom & having host Bad Bunny as Marcello's overprotective aunt.

This almost reminds you of SNL's earlier family oriented sketches like the Kissing Family or Kristen Wiig's "Sue" in the Surprise Party sketches with the very extreme emotions both portray. Hilariously done & certainly looking forward to many more in this recurring series!

Kenan Thompson said it best when asking how old the quote "monster baby" played by host Adam Driver is. Instead of 11 months, "you mean, 11 months and like 15,000 days?"

Driver doesn't get enough credit for the low-key comedy chops he has. Then again this was his fourth time hosting & he's proven himself to be a fantastic host since then. His commitment to going ALL THE WAY into each character he plays in & outside of this show is seen evidently. He captures the cognitions of a baby's mind & behavior perfectly & physically executes it so well.

It'll be a grand time next time he hosts when he becomes a five-timers member.

Seeing Bad Bunny as Shrek in his nonchalant self in front of the Please Don't Destroy guys is absolute chaos (in truly the best way possible).

Bad Bunny was the host in this skit, where she show's up in a full Skrek costume acting just kinda whatever about the whole appearance. He ends up assigning roles to all three of them with Martin playing Donkey, John playing Michael Jackson (who's apparently supposed to be the main character, and Ben playing Puss In Boots. You won't believe the reaction when Ben suggests Bad Bunny should play Puss In Boots instead, it's quite hilarious!

Since beginning on the show just hardly a year ago, Marcello Hernández has created his own mold that only he can fill with his charisma & charm combined with his indeed funny stand-up & sketch comedy. That’s become especially evident since he’s started appearing on the Weekend Update Desk.

In this weekend update appearance, Marcello chimes it up with Colin Jost about reasons why men are depressed in this day in age. And Marcello shares his unique & humorous takes on growing up in a house full of women, never going to a barbershop again and how that ties back into men being depressed. Colin’s reluctant script read towards this end is quite funny as well, it’s worth the watch!

One thing that comedy fans may not have known about the Please Don’t Destroy comedy trio is before they became the comedy trio they are in sketch comedy, they actually got their early start in stand-up as they share in this digital short with season 49 premiere host, Pete Davidson (and believe it or not, it was in the Def Jam comedy scene in Harlem).

The child actors they hired for this short were beyond spot on & really showcases the guys’ versatility. It also wouldn’t be a proper Pete Davidson episode if John Mulaney didn’t show up (watch for yourself).

Timothée Chalamet’s episode this season still goes down as one of the most memorable episodes so far this season. In this sketch, Timothée plays a sleep demon who just happens to be the Australian indie pop star Troye Sivan. This demon invades this woman’s dreams played by Sarah Sherman and is coached by her doctor played by Bowen Yang, an expert on being famous versus gay famous (and how Nathan Lane is NOT in this category).

This combo of players couldn’t be more perfect. The boygenius cameo at the end is also a cherry topper!

Check out our recap of the best moments of Timothée Chalamet hosting from this episode! 

In an attempt to order some ramen on a casual writing night in this Please Don’t Destroy bit, Ben & Martin get disrupted by John suddenly getting a call that his girlfriend broke up with him (you won’t believe the Sophia who actually dumped him). And yet admitting that they’ll be there for him and they’re trying to actively listen, Ben & Martin still do whatever it takes to get this ramen. Hopefully this girl is not medium spicy!

In this year’s Christmas episode hosted by Kate McKinnon, they pulled out all the stops to make this a memorable one for the holiday season. Including bringing back SNL greats Maya Rudolph & Kristen Wiig for this very nostalgic Christmas sketch about ABBA’s unreleased Christmas album.

It gets progressively more outrageous as the sketch goes on. From casually singing & dancing in choreography, the quartet including Bowen Yang begin to aggressively sing in each other's faces and in lots of other different directions. And spoiler alert: no one’s holding it together, including the paid advertising host played by James Austin Johnson. Add this to the dozens of classic SNL Christmas sketches to go in the history books!

Talk about a banger of a season premiere!

Major props to host Pete Davidson, the writers, the production team & everyone involved with this sketch for pulling it off so well; so perfectly timed, portrayed and executed. In this sketch called I’m Just Pete (riffing off of Ryan Gosling’s I’m Just Ken from the Barbie movie, heard of it hopefully?) Pete portrays Ken and does what any great comedian would do: poke fun at themselves and do it so greatly. Featuring most past lives of Pete including First Weekend Update Pete & Met Gala Pete.

Undeniably, Nate Bargatze’s hosting debut on Saturday Night Live was definitely one of the best episodes this season (quite possibly best episode in recent years fans have shared) and did not disappoint. The stand-up community couldn’t have been more thrilled for Nate not only when he got the opportunity, but also nailed it on the otherside.

Of course being a comedy website, we can’t not recognize Nate’s tight stand-up monologue where he riffs on how much his magician Dad LOVES having surgeries, being a dad himself & getting older (specifically being born in the 1900s).

Check out our recap from Nate Bargatze’s hosting debut on SNL!

Two months later and we’re still pumping SmokeCheddaDaAssGetta’s smash joint “cling, cling, cling”!

This panel is quite the outstanding ensemble of castmates to portray the legendary group covering 50 Years of Hip-Hop. James Austin Johnson continues to crush it with his Rick Rubin impression, Kenan Thompson is consistently Kenan as Dr. Cornel West, Punkie Johnson as Mary J. Blige, Ego Nwodim as host Nunya Bizness & Timothée Chalamet reprising his role as the soundcloud rapper from his 2020 sketch with Pete Davidson.

For those familiar with the longstanding tradition of the Weekend Update era helmed by Colin Jost & Michael Che, every Christmas episode & season finale they do their famous Christmas Joke Swap where each of the anchors write jokes for each other to read on air, and they read it for the first time on the spot.

Normally Michael Che consistently always wins this bit (depending on what your definition of winning is). In this new installment of Joke Swap, he brought out the renowned poet, author, & activist, Dr. Hattie Davis, who apparently appeared on the show during season 3 and came back to sit in on this segment to make it interesting. They somehow manage to make these bits more risky & hysterical as they continue this bit which makes it so great!

This was one of the smartest & driest sketches Saturday Night Live has put together in many years.

Host Nate Bargatze plays General George Washington where he shares with his fellow soldiers the dreams he has for this country set in 1777. It starts off like a pretty standard army speech where he starts inspiring a country where we choose our own laws & choose our own leaders. And then it quickly changes pace in the best way, where he cleverly begins to point out the endless flaws in the small things our country does not have right. He goes on pointing out how silly we’ve gone with choosing our own system of weights & measures, the flaws of football, temperature and more.

His deadpan delivery & Nateland signature could not be seen more evidently here making this such an important & funny sketch to look back on (and it’s all clean & truly great comedy).

The first episode of 2024 kicks off on January 20th with host Jacob Elordi & musical guest Reneé Rapp. The show airs Saturday nights at 11:30 PM ET on NBC, all episodes and more are streaming on Peacock!

Click right here to get the latest comedy news delivered to your inbox!

Follow 800 Pound Gorilla News on Instagram, Twitter, & Threads.