Sunday night, NBC will celebrate 40 years of Saturday Night Live with the SNL 40th Anniversary Special, a three-hour event featuring appearances from past cast members, hosts, and musical guests. SNL has a rich history that is certainly worthy of tribute — and there has been no shortage of them on the Internet this week. But, as everyone knows, it’s also a show that has run out of steam in recent years. While the episodes are never exactly bad, the comedy has a tendency to rehash one trite and tired joke: men kissing men. It’s the show’s laziest “punchline,” and one that is never very funny. Here are ten SNL sketches that rely on this boring joke.
In this sketch, Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield play themselves on the set of Spider-Man as they practice the kissing scene. It’s not going well, but, for some reason, Coldplay’s Chris Martin is there to step in and kiss Andrew to show Emma how it’s done.
The recurring “Kissing Family” sketch is the most egregious of the bunch. There is no real joke in the entire thing, besides the fact that the family is over-affectionate and everyone loves to kiss everyone else — especially the male family members. Here’s the sketch featuring Paul Rudd.
Paul Rudd in a second “Kissing Family” sketch, this one featuring a handful of SNL alumni in a strange attempt to mock the Michael Sam kissing controversy.
The joke here is that Paul Rudd and Jason Segel make out. Get it?
One more “Kissing Family” sketch for good measure, this one featuring Zach Galifianakis.
Sure, Kate McKinnon plays Justin Bieber, so it’s not technically two men kissing, but the joke is still groan-worthy: Barack Obama kissing Justin Bieber in order to promote Obamacare.
In this 2001 episode, Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell — as Elton John and Eminem, respectively — parody the duo’s “Stan” performance before ending with a hug and, yup, a passionate kiss.
In “Troll Bridge,” James Franco plays a troll who refuses to let a couple pass until one of them kisses him. It’s not Aidy Bryant who kisses him, but Kyle Mooney.
Tom Green’s 2000 episode included him kissing a man in the monologue, sharing a bathtub with Lorne Michaels, and then making out with Will Ferrell in a bird-watching sketch. The video, fortunately, seems not to exist on the Internet, but you can get the gist of if here.
In that same Tom Green episode, there’s a pretty funny sketch with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan as Air Supply… until it, too, ends with a lip-lock.