It might be Sunday, but don’t tell that to Lorne Michaels and the minions at NBC and Comcast that he arguably has more savvy, experience and clout than the majority of them have–collectively. Being the overlord of what is still their most-viewed program–in any daypart–allows you to dictate when you get to celebrate your golden anniversary, regardless of what the actual calendar says. So even though SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE officially began as NBC’S SATURDAY NIGHT on October 11, 1975 we are getting a three-hour jubilee modestly called SNL50 on February 16th–meaning it should technically be called SNL49.35. And on a Sunday, no less.
We’ve been down this exact road before–a decade to the day, in fact, when a similar contigent of the lucky 300 that will be allowed to re-enter Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center convened for SNL40. And as Bill Simmons and Matt Belloni lamented on the extended preview that they offered up on one of the Simmons’ bi-ish-weekly RINGER podcasts this past week, not a lot of significance has happened either cast-wise or zeitgeist-wise in the last decade to warrant much more than a rehash of what we saw then.
So while I’m indeed gonna watch, because I can always time-shift WHITE LOTUS and after seeing how the NBA All-Star game “tournament” format is evolving I have zero desire to see that live, I can’t say I’m as giddy with excitement as, say, Simmons appears to be. Look, don’t get me wrong, just as he does, his fandom goes back to the beginning, and I’d contend since I have a couple of years on him my dedication began even earlier. Plus being “live from New York” while growing up a subway ride away from it all gave me an opportunity to actually see an early episode. It wasn’t one of the Top 50–to be sure, in hindsight it may not have been one of the Top 500. It featured Louise Lasser, at the height of her popularity as the pigtailed star of Norman Lear’s MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN as host, and we audience members were all given similar wigs to don for what the producers thought was a great sight gag as a cutaway to one of her monologue jokes. When the show was originally rerun in a slightly edited 60-minute version you can briefly see me and a friend looking positively ridiculous and clearly not laughing. I’m truly glad the archives are now centered around individual skits that have lived online since SNL40 and to this day remain among the (allegedly) most popular destinations on Peacock.
And as I mused last fall, the current season hasn’t been all that compelling, either. There are moments, to be sure, and I tend to seek them out in the manner that a significant portion of the show’s overall audience currently does–on Sundays, fast-forwarding through the time-shift recording or in online clips that trade news sites liberally drop even before the live show has ended. But they just aren’t as plentiful or, frankly, as daring as they were during earlier eras. And while it will be nice to see the surviving stars reune and perhaps even rise to the occasion with something newly written that hopefully will be as funny and timely as it will be poignant, I’m more in the camp that will see this as a reminder that those first 40 years we’ve already celebrated will basically be run back tonight, with a few more grey hairs and wrinkles reacting.
USA TODAY’s generous Kelly Lawler ran down her own list of what she saw as the Top 50 sketches, and in a nod to generational bias she does include a whole bunch of more recent ones that I personally wasn’t in love with. It is telling that what she and quite a number of veteran observers–including Simmons–acknowledge was the show’s best skit ever actually aired before its first year on the end ended, when it was still called by its original name. Lawler’s write-up alone conveys both the humor and shock value that was especially enhanced given the much more reserved times we were in a half-century ago:
“Word Association” is a daring, boundary-pushing sketch that would never make it to air in modern times, and not just for the use of a racial slur. A simple interplay between Chevy Chase and host Richard Pryor goes from innocuous to outrageous in just a few seconds, as Chase’s white hiring manager character unleashes increasingly offensive racial insults at applicant Pryor until he reaches the worst slur imaginable. Pryor’s reaction to the slur is so quick it doesn’t allow the audience time to be shocked and appalled, only to laugh at his escalation in the war of words.
The sketch was written by Paul Mooney, a Black writer who Pryor insisted join the team for his “SNL” hosting stint. Mooney said in his memoir he simply drew upon his own experiences interviewing with NBC earlier that week, and the resulting sketch is a parable of the Black experience in response to racism. It forces those who like to believe racism doesn’t exist to confront it outright, and also laugh at their own ignorance.
Considering where we are now, and how this topic is still so relevant, it’s a reminder of what the show was–and probably still should be.
And yes, it probably should still be airing on Saturdays, at least live. Maybe that might be step one toward rehabilitating its descent.
Until next time…