If nothing else, I’m a creature of habit and fiercely loyal to those I developed decades ago. High on that list is my slavish devotion to watching SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, whose 52nd season kicked off last night. That means I started making it part of most of my weekends when I was in freaking high school. Heck, I was in the audience for a dress rehearsal to a summer original episode where myself and my fellow audience members were cajoled into wearing Mary Hartman pigtail wigs. Old habits do die hard–even the questionable ones.
But this old habit was pushed closer to the inevitable end than I might have first envisioned by what I endured on time-shift delay, which fortunately I was old school enough to have dedicated a DVR with a half-hour added on for potential live overrun to. (Remember, I’ve been around a long time too). Usually, that’s reserved for sporting events that actually run into the time slot window or force majeure occurrences. But as DEADLINE’s Peter White soberingly observed last night, that was anything but the case on this occasion:
It wasn’t a great start to the season for Saturday Night Live in many parts of the country after linear viewers suffered a delay thanks to college football running late.The Oregon-USC game finished just over 15 minutes late, meaning that many affiliates started after the Jalen Brunson-hosted opener with a 16-minute delay.
USC hosted its Big Ten rival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Ducks won 41-27, but the delay was not helped by the fact that the latter’s star quarterback Dante Moore was carted off the field and taken to hospital by ambulance after a late hit. Many stations including in L.A., Chicago, Houston, Baltimore, Dallas and Charlotte were on the delay, while stations in New York, Boston, Washington, DC and Miami, all of which are owned and operated stations, aired it live.
Ah but Peter, but what you failed to note was that the game itself was over at 11:16 PM ET, which in previous years simply meant late newscasts and shoulder programming were accordioned to sync up to SNL’s etched-in-stone 11:28 PM ET start. And NBC does own the stations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas, which apparently now prioritize advertisers of sports and news over those in broadcast television’s most viewed entertainment series. On KNBC, while there was arguably breaking news surrounding USC coach’s feeble attempt to explain why one of his linemen took pleasure in rending a Heisman Trophy candidate semi-conscious with a late hit, we also were treated to an extended sponsored segment with predictions of today’s NFL schedule from someone called Derek Of The Desert. When your station has the rare attempt to be gifted with a Sunday Night Football clash featuring its hometown Rams as the button of that schedule, everything and anything else are considered chopped liver at best.
Or maybe they had access to last night’s dress rehearsal and knew exactly how meh what was in store was going to be. To be fair, there were already diminished expectations given that the host was New York Knicks hero Jalen Brunson. Episodes hosted by athletes are rarely strong; unless you’re blessed with someone experienced with commercials and media-trained as Peyton Manning you’re effectively molding human clay from scratch. In Brunson’s case, it was more like wood. Anyone who got a glimpse of how meek his brief stint with Knicks uberfan Mariska Hargitay on last week’s Emmy Awards broadcast knew how much of a work in progress he is. And let’s face it–his casting was partly driven by giving a New York-based crew still giddy about the Knicks’ first title since 1973–before SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was even in development–and partly a dog whistle promotion to the network’s upcoming dedication of Tuesday prime time to his pursuit of a repeat.
Even the attempts to channel the teammate energy that someone like Derek Jeter was blessed with during the memorable “Yankee Wives” skit on his December 2000 episode fell far short of that bar. During his monologue, Brunson bros were merely sporting championship merch and using video for dozens. And he was anything but helped by skits like the one that immediately followed it that cast him as an office nerd hell-bent on trying to sink a wastepaper basket shot. The “jokes” fell farther short of scoring than any half-assed attempt to toss a rolled-up wad of paper a few feet.
The rest of the show was equally as uneventful and unoriginal. For as much attention as has been paid to the show’s frequent cast changes as it attempts to find appointment viewing personalities once more little has been said or written about the downgrade amongst writers’ originality and resonance. Nary an attempt was made to introduce recurring characters, even with the promising likes of Ashley Padilla and Ben Johnson–the latter the survivor of perhaps the last best attempt at such habit-forming content, the sorely missed PLEASE DON’T DESTROY–attached. Newcomers Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter were non-entities, essentially filling the typecasting slots better occupied by the likes of Ego Nwodim and Aidy Bryant not that long ago.
Weekend Update was especially disappointing, with Jeremy Culhane’s over-the-top channeling of a cackling Tucker Carlson going on too long and focused on far outdated topics like summer box office movies which other shows have covered ad infinitum in real time. And even the cold open was plagued by the increasingly tiring and redundant version of James Austin Johnson’s portrayal of our current president. After a summer of Matthew Friend videos showing off far greater range and riff, it’s clear Johnson’s version is lapsing into the Alec Baldwin pile of yesterday’s news.
Maybe Lorne Michaels and his minions should pay closer attention to these opinions–I know from my social media feeds I’m anything but a small voice in the desert in this case. Maybe they’ve stopped caring now that the golden anniversary fete has become a pleasant but fading memory? That certainly seems to be the prevailing ‘tude around these parts.
Perhaps they might want to see if Friend might be free for at least a guest shot–if not perhaps freeing up the war chest to potentially see if he might be interested in upping his rapidly expanding game and repertoire to the national stage? There was a time when the show was struggling that they were able to get Billy Crystal for a year just as his movie career was about to take of. This might be the last chance to get an up-and-comer like Friend involved.
Or maybe that window has closed already. In which case, get into brainstorming mode, folks at 30 Rock, because if you’re in danger of losing someone as habitual and as seasoned as moi, you’re in worse shape than even you might be open to pondering about. Just please–don’t anyone bring up Derek of the Desert.
Until next time…