SNL

In the midst of an otherwise dull (and occasionally painful) red carpet special that aired before the SNL 40th anniversary show, special guest Jim Carrey livened things up by by making Matt Lauer really uncomfortable. His comedic weapon of choice? The recently suspended/disgraced NBC newsman Brian Williams.

Fresh off his much-buzzed about antics at the 2015 Grammy Awards, Kanye West performed "Jesus Walks" and "Wolves" on Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary special.

A few key members of the SNL cast and crew must love “The Californians” because the much-derided sketch was brought back to life for the show’s star-studded 40th anniversary special. For those of us who have always enjoyed this bizarre sketch (and there are about three of us), it’s a welcome return and we will greedily drink up the angry tears of everyone else.

Miley Cyrus paid tribute to singer-songwriter Paul Simon during the 'Saturday Night Live' 40th Anniversary Special by performing his 1975 hit, '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.'

Spoiler Alert: The best thing to happen on the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special tonight is Maya Rudolph as a ***Flawless Beyonce.

Mike Myers and Dana Carvey donned the torn jeans and crazy hair one more time in a Wayne's World sketch during the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special.

We were wondering how long it would take for Taylor Swift to show up in a skit for tonight's Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, and, thankfully, we only had to wait about an hour or so to see her in all her comedic glory.

We knew going in that the SNL 40th anniversary special would be chock-full of just about every famous person who has ever walked within spitting distance of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the opening monologue was quick to make use of this genuinely insane temporary cast of stars. Things got started on the right foot when the always-welcome Steve Martin took the stage ... but then he was joined by Tom Hanks. And then things got really crazy.

The SNL 40th Anniversary Special started off like you thought it might with two of its most popular modern day partners, Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. The two took the stage for the show's cold open and sang, danced and rapped their way through 40 years of SNL history (with a few special guests, of course).

"Here we go, one more time, everybody's feeling fine ..." We can't help but be a little (a lot) excited because 'N Sync just dropped huge news!

Super Bowl commercials are still a big, huge, massive, crazy deal, with major corporations shelling out absurd amounts of money on ads designed to win over the most reliably large and receptive audience in all of televised sports. So of course ‘SNL’ was going to contribute its own commercial parody to the mix...but man, no one was expecting something this mean, scathing or on-point.

Set in St. Louis, the sketch starts with Beck Bennett as a news anchor for “News 4” (which is the CBS affiliate in St. Louis) relaying a serious presentation of current events, right before he hands it off to two morning show hosts (played by Kenan Thompson and Cecily Strong) who have an obnoxious show with an obnoxious theme song called ‘Rise and Smile.’ First, there’s no way this sketch should have been cut, but that’s a pretty obvious position to take.