Saturday Night Live/Awesome

For a show like Saturday Night Live that's been around for a while and has gone through many changes (some good, some bad), your gauge of Awesome really depends on what era you watched and/or loved.

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• Will Ferrell's character pretends to have a Vietnam flashback and ends up singing (and maraca-ing) the entirety of Goodnight Saigon. Violinists come in from nowhere, Green Day casually steps into the background, and by the end of the sketch Ferrell's accompanied about fifty other people (celebrities, the whole cast [at the time], previous cast members, famous hosts) singing with perfectly straight faces and doing various ridiculous things like playing along on unplugged Guitar Hero controllers. There's the sense that everyone turned out because Ferrell's a legend — they all walk offstage at the end one by one as the song tapers off. It's so overdramatic that it breaks the walls of Narmy and Silly entirely and loops back around to Epic. It's already listed on the main page as Crowning Music of Awesome, but this is also what a Moment of Awesome looks like.
• One famous episode had Aerosmith joining in on the Wayne's World sketch along with guest host Tom Hanks.
• The first live show after the 9/11 attacks, with host Reese Witherspoon and musical guest Alicia Keys. After honestly paying tribute to the rescue people by bringing them on stage, Lorne Michaels talks with then-Mayor Rudy Guliani. The following exchange may not seem like much now, but really went far in breaking the unease over the "Is it Too Soon to relax a little while still remaining respectful for the lives lost?" feeling everyone was going through:

Lorne Michaels: Can we be funny?
Mayor Guliani: Why start now?

• • What really makes this awesome is how Giuliani says the opening catchphrase: "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!".
• Elvis Costello returning to the show after being banned following his gig on the Christmas 1977 show (hosted by an old woman named Miskel Spillman, who won a contest where viewers got to pick an average person to host an SNL episode) where he played "Radio Radio" (which, at the time, was rejected for being anti-media). His return consisted of sabotaging the Beastie Boys' performance of "Sabotage" before they all played a rendition of Costello's "Radio Radio". How can you not think that's awesome?
• In one of Buck Henry's episodes, John Belushi accidentally cut his forehead with his very real samurai sword towards the end of the "Samurai Stockbroker" sketch. After the commercial break, Henry appeared with a bandage over the cut. The show lampshaded the incident by having all the other cast members wear identical bandages on the same spot for the remainder of the show, as well as writing up a quick "newsstory" for Weekend Update: "Buck Henry was attacked with a sword by a coked-out John Belushi on a late-night comedy sketch show."
• This exchange by Chris Farley and Paul McCartney:

Chris Farley: Uh...remember when you were in The Beatles? And, um, you did that album Abbey Road, and at the very end of the song, it would...the song goes "and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"? You...you remember that?

Paul McCartney: Yes.

Farley: Uh...is that true?

McCartney: Yes, Chris. In my experience, it is. I find, the more you give, the more you get.

Farley (ecstatic, starts to point at Paul and mouth "AWESOME!"): Well, that's it for this week's show...

• Overlapping with Crowning Music of Awesome, the Season 34 Weekend Update sketch where Amy Poehler does a rap about Sarah Palin with Sarah Palin not four feet away from her comes to mind. And she did that sketch while heavily pregnant.
• September 28, 1991. The Reverend Jesse Jackson (appearing as himself, as opposed to being impersonated by a cast member) reads "Green Eggs and Ham" in honor of Dr. Seuss, who had just passed away. He did it in the speaking manner he would have used were he speaking about racial injustice, or delivering a sermon.
• Betty White hosting. Also a Crowning Moment of Funny and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
• The Ed Helms/Paul Simon episode -- home to, not only the brief return of the TV Funhouse cartoon segments, but to the live-action version of The Ambiguously Gay Duo (featuring Jon Hamm as Ace, Jimmy Fallon as Gary, Steve Carrell as Big Head, Stephen Colbert as Dr. Brainio, Ed Helms [the episode host] as a Two-Face-esque villain, and Fred Armisen as a lizard man). Note to TV and movie executives: if you need to adapt another SNL sketch into a film or TV show, this is the one!
• From the May 14, 2005 show hosted by Will Ferrell, Queens of the Stone Age performing "Little Sister" with backup from Gene Frenkle, Will Ferrell's character from the legendary Cowbell skit.
• Colin Quinn's opening speech from his first time hosting Weekend Update After Norm MacDonald was fired.
• Horatio Sanz' tribute to Mr. Rogers after he passed away. It doubles as a Tear Jerker and Crowning Moment of Heartwarming as well, and triples as a Tear Jerker, a CMOH, and the only time most SNL fans ever liked Horatio Sanz.
• The musical performance from December 1998. Vanessa Williams, Luciano Pavorotti, and the Harlem Boys Choir delivering a GLORIOUS rendition of "O, Come, All Ye Faithful", sung in Latin and English. Absolutely mind-blowing and obviously doubles as a Crowning Music of Awesome as well.