“Saturday Night Live” celebrated its 50th anniversary this weekend with a special montage of past clips of skits and performances. To some viewers’ surprise, the footage included the appearances of the now-widely-controversial musicians, Sean “Diddy” Combs and R. Kelly.
Before the montage of videos, Tom Hanks gave a somber yet satirical introduction, citing the achievements of the show as well as the widespread variety of celebrities from musicians to actors who have been featured in the skits.
“As we celebrate the achievements of the past 50 years, we must also take a moment to honor those who we’ve lost, countless members of the SNL family, taken from us too soon. I’m speaking, of course, about SNL characters and sketches that have aged horribly. But, even though these characters, accents and, let’s just call them... ethnic wigs, were unquestionably in poor taste, you all laughed at them,” Hanks said in the segment. “So if anyone should be canceled, shouldn’t it be you, the audience? Something to think about. Anyway, we now present to you this in memoriam.”
As the special continued, headings came across the screen categorizing the celebrities featured. Under “Problematic Guests” was a 2010 clip featuring Robert De Niro (who was cosplaying as a woman) and Combs. In the skit, Combs flirts with De Niro’s character saying, “If you wasn’t my mans’ mom, I’d tear that ass up.” De Niro’s character then grinds on Diddy before the rapper utters the line: “Don’t judge a book by its cover. My man is like R. Kelly...”
On queue, the segment then plays a cut of R. Kelly smiling on the main SNL set standing next to Lady Gaga. In that episode, the two performed an overly sexual rendition of “Do What U Want (With My Body).”
The segment was certainly a jab at the musicians’ controversial sex crime cases. R. Kelly was sentenced in Chicago to 20 years in prison for child sex abuse and 30 years for racketeering, sexual exploitation of children and interstate prostitution in Brooklyn. On the other hand, Combs is currently in jail facing federal sex crime charges including trafficking and racketeering on allegations that he sexually abused both men and women.
Among the other segments were acknowledgments of bad jokes, racist moments, sexist jabs and problematic characters. SNL definitely didn’t shy away from covering the highs and lows over the course of the show’s past 50 years.