Did you watch the season premiere of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” a few weeks ago?
The show’s “cold open” was A spoof of “Monday Night Football”, NFL analyst Peyton Manning with guest host Miles Teller and “SNL” writer and features player Andrew Dismukes imitating his brother Allie. Instead of talking about the game, the two focused their ongoing commentary on “SNL”, putting aside a different skit-in-a-skit, shown in split screen, with other cast members Donald Trump and As his ministers sprung around the stage. At Mar-a-Lago during Hurricane Ian.
“Let’s take a look at the statistics so far,” quipped Taylor a few minutes into the program. “Fourteen attempted jokes, only a mild laugh and three laughs.”
“I heard they stayed until 5 a.m. to write the show,” Dismukes said.
“What time did he start writing? 4:30?” Torn Taylor.
The parody was clearly meant as a fanatical self-referential bit of meta scitic. But what that three-chuckle sketch really revealed to audiences—if one can call it a thin crowd of stragglers still tuning into the show—is that “SNL” has become so wacky over the years, even Even its writers and artists know how lame it is.
I hate to point it out, because “SNL” has meant so much to so many viewers over so many decades — or at least a reason to make teen generations feel a little less crappy about being stuck in a Saturday night house. Is. , But apparently this crumbling remnant is now called 48 . it’s time to put inth Weather, out of your long-standing sorrows.
It’s time to cancel “SNL”.
I understand that this is supposed to be a “transition year,” As Lorne Michaels, the 77-year-old creator and producer of “SNL,” insists on calling it. Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon and Eddie Bryant left the program at the end of last season, along with about a half-dozen other regulars who bolted Studio 8H through 2022. In fact, it has been the biggest cast turnover since Mahan. 1995’s Escape, when Adam Sandler, Mike Myers and Chris Farley all split from the show. And while it’s at least theoretically possible that this latest crew of “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” — Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Marcelo Hernandez — could be the second arrival of John Belushi and Gilda Radner by now. . He hasn’t even reached the level of Gilbert Gottfried’s comedy this season.
To be fair, the mediocrity of “SNL” isn’t entirely the fault of the new cast. Not that the show was killing it with the cast that came before them, or for that matter, with the cast before it. The show’s audience has been shrinking for decades: this season’s premiere pulled in just four million viewers, making it the fewest views in the series’ history. While “SNL’s” rating has remained relatively strong – it is number 4 in the top 50 live broadcasts among demos 18–49 – it is still attracting only a third of the viewership that dates back to the 1990s. was. Granted, no one is watching broadcast TV today the way they did 30 years ago, but it’s kind of a thing. Why is NBC attached to a show that peaked during the Clinton administration?
But let’s be honest — even in the 1990s, “SNL” wasn’t always so good. To be even more honest, the show was never All that great, even during its early golden age in the 1970s. Certainly, there were many moments of inspired comedic genius (Belushi’s.) Samurai DailyDan Aykroyds Julia Child impersonationBill Murray’s smarmy Lounge singer humming the “Star Wars” theme) But watch those ancient episodes on Peacock today and you can’t help but wonder what the fuss was about, especially when it comes to Chevy Chase. Even then, in those first Weekend Updates, he came across as insufficiently smug.
what was What was extraordinary about “SNL” when it first hit the airwaves, though, was how new and fresh it sounded. Television in the 1970s was mostly a vanilla wasteland full of pabloms like “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Love Boat.” Even its best — “The Bob Newhart Show,” “The Rockford Files,” “The Odd Couple” — were fairly traditional fare following the straight-forward formula.
But “SNL,” which burst onto the scene like a pop cultural revolt in 1975, was a completely original revelation. It’s rock n’ roll (this is where Simon and Garfunkel met again in 1975), political humor (Gerald Ford’s impersonation of Chase, consisting mostly of slapstick pratfalls, probably helped choose Jimmy Carter in 1976) ), and was full of senseless spoofs of TV. Even the TV commercials – the hands that feed the broadcast – were fair game for parody on this new show.
In those early years “SNL” felt rebellious and subversive, even when its jokes fell flat, which they often did. It was as if the prisoners had taken refuge. Only all these prisoners had escaped from institutions with names like “The National Lampoon” and Second City. And the fact that it was all broadcast on the high-wire act of live television made it even more exhilarating.
Over the decades, “SNL” has occasionally managed to recapture that original iconoclastic energy, or at least put its cheesy imprint on major cultural moments. Tina Fey’s “I Can See Russia From My Home” Gaga Sarah Palin (who appeared on the show opposite Fey, just before the 2008 election, proving just how careless a politician she really is). Kate McKinnon Sitting at the piano to sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”To strike after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the perfect note for the show (No matter what one-time cast member Rob Schneider has to say about it,
Nevertheless, television today is not a particularly hospitable environment for rebellious skit comedy. For one thing, the Rebels took over the medium a long time ago with shows like “The Simpsons,” “Seinfeld” and “South Park,” which left the norm of TV after “SNL” opened the door. . These days, iconography is the new establishment.
For another, rebellion is for kids, and in 2022, young people aren’t staying home on Saturday nights to tune in to the National Broadcasting Company over some ancient cathode-ray-tube contraption in their parents’ living room. Not even when Lorne Michaels invited a teen magnet like Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, 67, to the show as a guest host (see the October 8 episode; not really, it’s a disaster). They are not watching TV at all; They are glued to their phones. To the extent they even know about “SNL”, it’s likely because they’ve seen clips of it uploaded to Tiktok or YouTube.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to NBC for giving Belushi and Aykroyd and everyone else 90-minutes of weekly late-night airtime so many years ago. I’m glad I live in a pop cultural universe in which “Saturday Night Live” played such a big part. All I’m saying is that it’s finally time to assemble the cast on that iconic stage, fire off that Howard Shore theme song, and finally, say goodnight.
