“Live from the ‘Today’ show’s Rockefeller Plaza, it’s Friday morning!”
NBC’s a.m. show provided a slight Halloween trick — but mostly a treat — Friday morning, when the “Today” personalities paid homage to 40 years of “Saturday Night Live” in celebration of the pagan dress-up holiday. Willie, Matt, Tamron, Al and the gang were joined by some very special guests in their pursuit to set a new standard for morning shows on Halloween.
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First, real “SNL” cast member Kenan Thompson took a break from writing and rehearsing for tomorrow’s “Chris Rock”-hosted episode to provide the necessary cold open, where he gave a humorously bad weather reading as Al Roker. Mock “SNL” opening credits followed, teasing the theme for the show’s 2014 costumes.
Afterwards, archived “SNL” footage of Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri as the Spartan Cheerleaders gave way to Willie Geist and Tamron Hall taking over the iconic roles, performing an expert cheer. Their colleagues all followed suit: An “SNL” clip would open a scene before the rest of the sketch was played out by a “Today” show personality in character — you can watch it all unfold below.
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Natalie Morales played Molly Shannon‘s classic character Mary Katherine Gallagher next, where she was joined by NBC News’ Peter Alexander as her Catholic school priest.
Continuing the theme, the real Roker and Lester Holt performed a tune as the Blues Brothers, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb took on Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar from “Wayne’s World,” and Matt Lauer delivered a pretty perfect performance as the titular character from “Saturday Night Live’s” “It’s Pat” skit, where he was ultimately joined by Julie Sweeney, who played the androgynous character on the actual NBC sketch comedy show.
Finally, Savannah Guthrie, Jenna Bush Hager and Meredith Vieira re-booted the fan-favorite “SNL” “Mom Jeans” parody commercial.
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Later,
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