An "SNL" Halloween Video Mixtape

Any questions?

I've been in a big SNL mood lately, between the beginnings of the 50th anniversary celebrations and the release of the new film Saturday Night. With Halloween right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to create a video mixtape of sorts, my own personal "Best Of" collection, inspired by those compilation DVDs I grew up watching.

We have to start with a cold open and this is one that's been bouncing around in my brain since 2007. You could say Obama won the election for a million different reasons (cough, Sarah Palin, cough), but I think he won on this night, a year before election day in 2008. I mean, look at him! He crushes it. And with another election gearing up, this is the only way to start us off.

Michael Keaton returns to host this week (a sentence that I'm not sure why I'm typing because it will date this piece!), so it's the perfect time to bring back his trick-or-treating monologue. Keaton is funny! Like funny funny.

Casting the Mystery Gang with Jake Gyllenhaal as Fred, Sabrina Carpenter as Daphne, Sarah as Velma, Mikey as Shaggy, and a terrible-looking CGI Scooby is simply pitch-perfect. It's the kind of casting you dream about. This gross-out parody should be sacrilegious for any Scooby fan who likes to complain as much as I do, but I don't think any of this was malicious, just silly fun. 

Taylor and I just saw this movie for the first time a few weeks ago at a wine bar. She's including it in an upcoming Halloween edition of Taylor Watches Rom-Coms so I won't step on her toes here, but I will say that it's awesome and we had a total blast.

Alright, no more messing around, it's time for the first sketch and we have to start with the Halloween sketch of the 21st century, David S. Pumpkins. Does it make any sense? No. Is it funny? Yes. Any questions?

This is just...so Danny Aykroyd.

You're gonna end up seeing a lot of Bill Hader on this list. I didn't necessarily mean to do that, but he just keeps popping up! That's probably why I put him at No. 9 on my Top 10 SNL Cast Members list.

It's not Halloween without Vincent Price and in this sketch, host Jon Hamm, in the thick of his boozy '60s Mad Men run, just slides in perfectly. I don't think we talk enough about how funny he is. But Kristen Wiig knew!  

I've been obsessed with this sketch since 2008 and it's one I revisit often. Anna Faris just totally commits, Kenan is great as always, and the tune is pretty catchy. It's not explicitly Halloween related, but it is about...well...I don't want to spoil it. You'll see.

We've arrived at the Weekend Update portion of the show and there isn't a lot to choose from because, even if the anchors do make a joke or two about Halloween, the rest of the five-minute clip is unrelated. Update is also usually the thing that ages the worst, largely because jokes about Janet Reno just don't really land anymore. But if there's one Update bit that's evergreen, it's Norm Macdonald's complete and utter disdain for O.J. Simpson and the fact that he totally got away with double murder, joking just days after the not guilty verdict, "Well, it is finally official. Murder is legal in the state of California.”

Enjoy this quick Norm quip about Halloween and O.J. that ends with the exact punchline you hope it ends with.