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12 times 'Saturday Night Live' made a cultural bang over the past 50 years

“Saturday Night Live” was intended for countercultural comedy. Fifty years later, it is firmly part of the culture.

The show has become an incubator of talent — think Will Ferrell, Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Phil Hartman, Pete Davidson and Tracy Morgan. It was inspired by a real injury on the set of Child’s “The French Chef” and was written by Tom Davis and Al Franken (the future former senator was also under the table pumping blood out of a tube on Aykroyd’s arm). In the skit, a cashier won’t take his money for a newspaper (“Slowly, I began to realize that when white people are alone, they give things to each other for free”), a city bus turns into a party after the lone Black passenger gets off and a bank clerk simply hands him $50,000 in cash.

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