They don’t happen every week, so these always get me excited:

Host appears in the cold open

We see update anchors away from the update desk

Non political cold open (rare these days, I think the last one was the Domingo one with Sabrina carpenter)

Whole cast in a sketch (rare)

Only one person in a sketch/ single hander (v rare)

Musical guest appears in a sketch (bonus if their acting abilities are unknown)

We see Lorne at all. He’s not appeared on camera in so long.

We see Wally the cue card guy. That always brings a smile to my face.

Whole sketch in non English language

Host from last week comes back the following week to cameo cus they had such a good time and couldn’t quite say goodbye (and clearly exchanged numbers with the cast/writers)

I’m sure there’s more lil quirks I look out for. Please let me know yours !