‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Celebrity Jeopardy, Sir Paul McCartney, Stephen Colbert’s audition

We’ve been trying to figure out just how in the world we were going to review a show like the “Saturday Night Live” that is lasting for more than three hours, and spanning 40 years of TV. It’s like trying to review an entire awards show. In some ways, it is impossible.

With that in mind, we’re taking a slightly different strategy here, and really going at this hour by hour. The first hour of the show packed in a lot, and thankfully, not all of it were pre-taped segments. Take a look at some of our personal highlights from it below.

Celebrity Jeopardy – Obviously, this was a huge one. You had the return of Will Ferrell, and then a great slew of impressions. Alec Baldwin’s Tony Bennett is almost always brilliant, and while current, we love Kate McKinnon as Justin Bieber. She held her own in the sea of other great ones! On a negative, we don’t know why Taran Killam did Christoph Waltz (not a memorable impression), and we got a Matthew McConaughey impression from Jim Carrey, since Taran actually does a better one than he does. Even the Bill Cosby gag at the end was hilarious.

Audition tapes – We loved seeing a montage of great auditions from past years, and it included everyone from Dana Carvey to even Stephen Colbert and other people who were not ever a part of the show.

Weekend Update highlights – This was all sorts of fun, even if not particularly new.

Performances – That Paul McCartney performance? Brilliant. He is one of the most notable musicians in the history of the show, and we hope that there will be more like it throughout the night.

What did you think about this first hour of the special? Share below, and head over here to get some other highlights from this particular event. Also, sign up if you want to get some other TV news on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)