The Comedy Cellar Had the Greatest Comedy Lineup Ever the Week of ‘SNL50’

Last weekend, Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary special featured a guest list to rival the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, but not every comedy show can put together such a stacked line-up — well, at least, not without imposing a two-drink minimum.

Given the immense cultural cachet that Lorne Michaels’ comedy empire still wields nearly a half-century after the tumultuous start of Saturday Night Live, it came as no surprise when the list of returning alumni and A-list hosts who appeared on this past Sunday’s three-and-a-half-hour special was a veritable “who’s who” of humor royalty. Nevertheless, in the week leading up to SNL50, the SNL fandom was arguably more concerned with the superstars who wouldn't be in attendance — looking at you, Bill “Busy Schedule” Hader.

However, on the Wednesday night before Peacock subscribers would spend all of SNL50 on Twitter complaining that they wouldn’t get another Stefon segment, a select few live comedy fans didn’t need to score invites to the red carpet event to see a comedy all-star show when Nate Bargatze, David Spade, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Martin Short, John Mulaney and Leslie Jones all performed on the same lineup at New York’s Comedy Cellar.

During the most recent episode of SNL’s current hottest host Bargatze’s podcast Nateland, George Washington himself recalled how he found himself stranded in New York City when he prematurely flew out to the Big Apple expecting to prepare for his SNL50 appearance. “I got there Wednesday because I was supposed to have rehearsal Thursday, and then, as I was about to take-off, they (tell me) I don’t have to rehearse until Saturday,” Bargatze recalled.

Rather than de-board his plane, Bargatze decided to spend the rest of the week in New York, attend the SNL50 concert and maybe get a few spots in the scene that started his stand-up career. “A lot of comics, we got together and hung out, so we went to the EastVille with (Jim) Gaffigan. … Then, on Wednesday night, I went over to the Comedy Cellar.”

“This is gonna be all just names,” Bargatze warned of his imminent name-dropping monologue as he described the scene at the Comedy Cellar. “You know everybody’s kind of in town, right? Because everybody’s going to SNL50. … So I went up, (David) Spade went up, Rock went up, without knowing… We did not know this, they told us as we were going up. That same show, how that show started, was the host, then it went Steve Martin, Martin Short, John Mulaney.”

“We were the worst part of the show,” Bargatze joked about what would otherwise be a sold-out headlining trio of him, Rock and Spade at the Comedy Cellar. “Steve Martin … he was running his (SNL50) monologue, and I think he went to a club when he did the Oscars, but, like, outside of that, he hasn’t been to a room like that since the 1960s.”

Bargatze couldn’t believe his luck at being on such a stacked lineup and seeing such legends altogether, but more than that, he couldn’t believe the audience’s good fortune, considering the price of admission. “Those people paid, I think, $18 for that ticket. … We were saying, like, it’s gotta be one of the better lineups ever at the Cellar.”

And at $18, the ticket to that show has to be the best value purchase in the history of comedy — or, at least, it’s tied with the $240 MADtv box set.