Going Down On SNL With Will, Artie, Norm… And Tom Hanks?

Last weekend’s Saturday Night Live season finale closed with a full-cast rendition of Billy Joel’s heartstring-strumming Vietnam vet anthem Goodnight Saigon, led by host and former cast member Will Ferrell. 

If you somehow missed it, the punchline was that Ferrell’s traumatized reflections were inspired not by time spent in the land of napalm and Agent Orange, but by a vacation he took four years ago. The cast was joined by Green Day (the night’s musical guest), Paul Rudd, Anne Hathaway, Norm MacDonald, Tom Hanks, Artie Lange, and whoever else happened to be within screaming range of 30 Rockefeller Center that night. (It’s worth noting that Artie looks healthier than we’ve ever seen him here.)

For anyone who’s grown up in or around New York, Billy Joel’s more emotive narrations hold a certain nostalgic weight. While the sentiment doesn’t seem to ring as poignantly out West as in New England, Maura from Idolator hit it on the head when she described feeling “a sort of chill when this clip first started, the reminder of friends’ fathers in the early ’80s falling into a similarly glazed state when this song came on during what were the requisite plays of The Nylon Curtain.”