The science of Saturday Night Live analytics has taken off in recent years, with multiple social media accounts breaking down minutiae like cast member airtime, celebrity cameo appearances, and five-timer host stats. Now @snlyltics has shared a ranking of this season’s most popular sketches, based on the number of YouTube views. With half a year to go, here are YouTube’s most popular SNL sketches of Season 49.
George Santos Expelled Cold Open (episode 6)
“I think he deserves an EGOT.” That was George Santos’s review of Bowen Yang’s winking impression (at 4.2 million views and counting), a performance that Santos believes deserves an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award. In an interview with comic Ziwe, however, he dismissed the idea of Yang playing him in a movie. “That movie is not ever going to happen,” Santos said. “The book (The Fabulist, on which a movie might be based) has no perspective of me or anybody close to me. It’s a f***ing fiction.”
Well, he oughta know.
Protective Mom 2(episode 2)
Pedro Pascal was the hosting MVP of Saturday Night Live Season 48, so the crowd went nuts when he reprised his Protective Mom character alongside Bad Bunny’s Protective Aunt (4.6 million views). Pascal’s character originated when he “came to the show and he had this idea of wanting to do something in Spanish, and he wanted to be my mother,” Marcello Hernández told Seth Meyers. “And I was lucky enough to be the only person at the show that could write in Spanish.”
Deion Sanders on Weekend Update (episode 1)
Coach Prime shouted out Thompson’s performance (4.8 million views) on the local news. “I’m a fan of Kenan, let’s get that straight. I love him. I love what’s he’s brought to comedy over a couple decades,” Sanders told 9 News in Boulder. “I had the pleasure and the honor to host Saturday Night Live before, and I will never forget those moments. But (Kenan’s impression) was good.”
Washington’s Dream (episode 3)
My pick for the funniest sketch of 2023 is also proving popular with YouTubers to the tune of 6.6 million views. “I wrote a draft of it last season. I forget who we originally wrote it for, but it was very much a dramatic actor who would play more of a serious Washington,” SNL head writer Streeter Seidell told IndieWire. “You can see that version of it, but in hindsight Nate was the perfect person to do it because it had this charm that I don’t know that it would have with a real powerful George Washington. An Academy Award-winning actor might have taken it too seriously.”
I’m Just Pete (episode 1)
In a behind-the-sketch feature on YouTube, the cast boggles at the production designers’ Barbie World version of Staten Island. As for Pete? “It’s funny that I’m so excited to do this,” he says of the sketch with more than ten million YouTube views. “I do everything I hate in it. Like dancing and singing and wearing wigs.”