Bill Murray’s Ranking of Best Weekend Update Anchors Left A Longtime Rival Out of Top Three
Bill Murray showed up on the SNL50 version of Weekend Update to rank the show’s all-time best fake-news anchors. The bit was less jokey than one might expect — this is plausibly Murray’s actual ranking — but it still allowed him to get in a few shots, including a diss of an old rival.
The bit got off to a clunky start, with Murray ranking Saturday Night Live’s all-time best “African-American” anchors. The joke is that it’s a one-man list, with Michael Che finishing first and last. Fair to call out Saturday Night Live for its long legacy of underutilizing Black comics. But then pretty awkward for Murray to move on to ranking the “normal” anchors. “Normal?” asked Che, with good reason.
Then Murray ranked 10 of his favorite anchors, revealing the name “Colin” at #10 before letting Jost know that he was referring to Colin Quinn.
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Numbers nine through five were all unassailable choices, with Murray giving flowers to some of the best to ever deliver goofy headlines:
9. Kevin Nealon
8. Dennis Miller
7. Seth Meyers
6. Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon
5. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Murray took a quick moment to apologize to Jimmy Fallon for ranking his Tina Fey pairing below the Fey/Poehler duo. “It was close,” Murray said, “but I checked online and girl on girl is still very, very popular.”
At number four? One Cornelius Crane Chase, the man with whom Murray notoriously brawled prior to Chase’s monologue during a live show. Chase, “who we’ve all come to know as Connie,” was given his due as the guy who got Weekend Update off the ground but Murray placing his old rival at number four came off as intentional disrespect.
Who’s better than Chase? Murray had the Dan Aykroyd/Jane Curtin team at number three (“I was the first to call Jane an ignorant slut”) and the unassailable Norm Macdonald at number two. Who was left at number one? Could it be the man sitting next to Murray — Colin Jost, still waiting for his name to be called?
Let’s end the suspense. Murray gave the number one spot to a guy who “is currently sleeping every kind of way with the lovely actress Scarlett Johansson” — Bill’s brother, Brian Doyle-Murray.
That had to hurt Jost, but the list probably stung Chase even more.
