Eddie Murphy, who once rescued Saturday Night Live during a rough patch in the 1980s, rescued a sketch in the show’s 50th anniversary special with a note-perfect imitation of Tracy Morgan.
The Black Jeopardy sketch, a reprise from many years ago, featured Kenan Thompson once again playing host Darnell Hayes. Morgan played a fictitious contestant, as did fellow ex-cast member Leslie Jones.
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After a flat opening stretch that made it seem like the sketch could go either way, Murphy was introduced as Morgan. Wearing a jumbo-sized gold medallion and a red satin patterned jacket, Murphy-as-Morgan got huge laughs and even nearly broke Thompson. “Big dog gonna make some big money!” he crowed.
Thompson replied, “Don’t you already have a lot of money?” Murphy/Morgan: “You gotta have a lot of money if you’re going to live like I live. I eat four-cheese lasagna! If it only got three cheeses, I ain’t eatin’ it. I refuse to ingest three cheeses!”
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The two then leaned into the Morgan-Morgan duality. Murphy speculated after a question about a family reunion, “We might be related.” Morgan’s milquetoast contestant snapped, “I don’t see it.”
Cast members on the red carpet Sunday talked about Murphy’s return hosting stints sending electricity through Studio 8H. His arrival as a teen-aged comedy phenom in the early 1980s helped revive SNL during a fallow period when creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels had stepped away from his duties due to a contract dispute. By the time Michaels reclaimed his throne, Murphy had made an indelible impact with characters like Gumby, Buckwheat and Mr. Robinson and parlayed his fame into a Hollywood movie career.
In Sunday night’s Black Jeopardy sketch, Chris Rock stepped in for Thompson, playing himself and delivering a “special guest clue” as host. He mused, “You might remember me from Saturday Night Live. I was known as the Black guy who came after Eddie Murphy. That’s kind of like being the point guard that came after Steph Curry.”
Tom Hanks also appeared at the end of the sketch in a throwback to a memorable moment in 2016. The star appeared in a version of the sketch in late-October of that election year, just days before Donald Trump won his first term in the White House. In the 2016 sketch and on Sunday’s version, Hanks played a contestant named Doug, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.
In the 2016 version, Doug goes from fish out of water to a good-natured, neighborly type who manages to find common ground with others on the game show. In the new version, Doug seems less comfortable and does little more than mumble a line suggesting that the “mess” of today’s world could be solved by more people going to church. What a difference the past eight years have made.
Watch the video above.