I watched Saturday Night Lives premiere episode which was hosted by George Carlin on October 11, 1975, under the original title NBC’s Saturday Night. Sure, I haven’t watched every episode of SNL, maybe 50%. When Patrick and Katie arrived in the 1980s, it was harder to stay up late to watch SNL.
During the 1990s, the cast was in flux. Chris Farley and Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Spade, and Chris Rock, would come to be known as the “Bad Boys of SNL” for their outrageous comedy style. Fearful of cast members leaving for film careers, Lorne Michaels increased the SNL cast (there are 27 cast members today!). This caused a rift between the veteran members and the new, younger talent. In addition, this new staffing increased competition for the show’s limited screen time, and an increasing reliance on “younger”, less subtle humor–also not funny.
One of the highlights of SNL in the 2000s was Tina Fey, who was a cast member and head writer from 1997 to 2006. Fey returned to the show during the 2008 presidential election for several critically acclaimed guest appearances as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
SNL’s political sketches attracted me in 2016. The show frequently parodied Donald Trump’s first presidency. The ongoing impression by actor Alec Baldwin led to a significant increase in ratings and a “shot of relevance” for the show. Later, Maya Rudolph returned to play Vice President Kamala Harris.
Do you have a favorite moment from SNL?
I watched and enjoyed it for years, but evolving life changes kept me away after that, and when I returned for a peek in the nineties I realized I was no longer the target audience!
Bob, Diane and I are not in the current SNL “target audience” either. We occasionally will watch the Opening and the Monologue and WEEKEND UPDATE. About 90% of the time the musical artist or group is unknown to us.
The first five years.
Not get off my lawn, whippersnapper!
PS – I won’t be watching tonight.
Jeff, I doubt if we’ll watch the whole 3 hour SNL ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. Maybe an hour…
I’m a real outlier. I was never a big fan, never understood the popularity of Belushi, Ackroyd, Murray, Farley. I’ve avoided the 50th anniversary hoopla like a dose of the bird flu. Maybe I’ll be around for the centennial in 2075. Doubt it though.
Fred, I’m wondering how long SNL will last. When Lorne Michaels leaves, that may be the beginning of the End.
My favorite skit is Dan Ackroyd playing Julia Child accidentally slicing her thumb while chopping vegetables (or, possibly, a chicken). Ackroyd stays in character the whole time (“Oh, I’ve just cut the dickens out of my thumb,” he says in Child’s sing-song voice) even while gallons of blood are pulsating around him. I’ve read that Child herself thought the skit was funny. Another favorite is Bill Hader as a military veteran trying to make a puppet but he keeps having flashbacks (to ‘Nam?). It doesn’t sound like it would be funny, but the way Hader does the character is hilarious. Although I haven’t been a regular viewer since the 1980s, one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that many of the skits go on way too long—long after anything even remotely funny has occurred—and some recurring features (“The Californians”, Stefan the Club Kid) beat their conceits into the ground.
Save the chicken!
Of course, “I can see Russia from my house” is hard to top.
Also, the one where Carrie Fisher hosted and they did the beach movie was a favorite. “I’m Annette, this is my boyfriend Frankie, and these are my breasts.”
Also in that show was a skit we loved – The Loud Family, where everyone talked really, really loud. Jackie’s family was like that, so we referred to them as The Louds after that.
Deb, I totally agree with you on the length of many of the SNL sketches: way too long! And…not funny.
What Jeff said plus Billy Crystal. I I taped Steve Martin doing King Tut on VHS and showed it to my class when we were doing our third grade Egypt unit . The curriculum was communities around the world. Good memories.
Jackie
Jackie, Steve Martin as King Tut was classic! I taped constantly on VHS and showed business related stories to my students on the classroom TV. They were the TV generation. Now, it’s all about their cell phones.
Speaking of Billy Crystal: for years, every year at Passover we made fun of Edward G. Robinson’s over the top performance as Dathan in the 1956 The Ten Commandments. That season, Billy Crystal did a riff on that and we were totally hysterical:
“Yeah, where’s your Moses now?”
Jeff, SNL was one of the few comedy shows that did sketches on religion.
WEEKEND UPDATE has often been my favorite sketch series throughout, though some anchors are better than others.
Todd, Diane likes Colin Jost.
He had a certain willingness to dismiss what needed dismissal during his stint. Did either of you get to enjoy his series TOUGH CROWD?
Todd, I’ll have to look into TOUGH CROWD.
Sorry, late hour muzziness–TC was Colin Quinn’s series, with some notable female comedians as well as male mostly giving each other grief while discussing/joking about current affairs…it used to follow THE DAILY SHOW.