Saturday Night Live

NBC's Saturday Night Live is now as culturally relevant as it has been in a long time. The program of October 18th, in which Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin appeared, was the highest-rated episode since 1994. The show has proved so popular that they have been having special half-hour programs on Thursday night, focused on the presidential campaign specifically. Some of these skits are much better than others. The better ones usually feature Tina Fey (a former cast member who is proving to be magnanimous with her time) as Palin. Surely her natural resemblance to the controversial Alaskan politician was a gift from the comedy gods. On Thursday, she was reunited with Will Ferrell, another former cast member made good, who reprised his George W. Bush impersonation.

This got me to thinking about what the show means to me. There is a whole generation of Americans who have never known a time when there wasn't a Saturday Night Live, but of course all things have a beginning. The show began in 1975, but I didn't start watching until it's second season (I distinctly remember the first one I saw--a fourteen-year-old Jodie Foster hosted). I was immediately captivated by it, as I suspect many creative teenagers are. I wanted nothing more to grow up and be a part of it, either as writer or performer. I remember being dismayed at the end of that season that they would take the summers off.

Part of the appeal to me, as it probably has for teens over the years, that's it's among the first grownup things teens are allowed to watch. When I started watching, I would stay up, the rest of my family fast asleep (this was a novelty in of itself, as we had pretty strict bedtimes). Back in 1976, when I lived in Detroit, the local NBC affiliate didn't even carry the show, instead they had some local talk show on. I had to tune in the UHF station, Channel 50, to get it. The show itself in those days seemed as if were somehow illicit (the cast were known as the "Not Ready for Primetime Players," after all). The cast seemed dangerous (particularly Belushi, Aykroyd, and occasional contributor Michael O'Donoghue). When I would talk about the show with my fellow classmates that Monday morning, we felt somewhat superior, that we were part of some secret club. The best show they ever did is still the episode that Richard Pryor hosted in December 1976, which was transcendent (it didn't hurt that Frank Zappa was the musical guest, performing a song called "Slime from the Video").

Once that golden cast dispersed to Hollywood, I have only sporadically kept up with it. Of course their immediate replacements were legendarily horrible. There have been some good casts since then (a friend says that the Billy Crystal-Martin Short-Christopher Guest year was outstanding) but it's not appointment television for me any more. Usually I tune in if I'm still up on Saturday night and the host is appealing to me. I will watch the opening, and if the first skit is bad I know it won't get any better. Sometimes, but rarely, I'll make it to Weekend Update. I imagine most people watch the good skits on YouTube.

Even if the show is not what it once was, it has still proved to be an amazing part of American entertainment. The roster of players is a list of the dominant comic actors of the last thirty years, and some very indelible characters have been created in Studio 8H, from the Blues Brothers to Wayne and Garth to the Makin' Copies guy. I have no idea how long this show will go on (I suppose there's no reason for it to stop, since it is constantly restaffed) but even if I don't watch it all the time it's good to no it's there.