There's a line that perfectly explains the appeal of Saturday Night Live, the venerable sketch comedy program that celebrated its 40th anniversary last night in a star-studded program. It goes something like this: "It doesn't matter how old you are, your response to SNL will always be, 'Well, of course the show sucks now, but when I was growing up it was great.'"
It's a simple fact of life that 90 percent of any comedy sketch show is either forgettable or crap (or forgettable crap). But that last 10 percent is memorable enough to overwhelm the memory of everything that sucked, to make it seem like things were so much better way back when. So if you were a teen in the mid-to-late 1970s you remember deli samurai and "dead honky"; if you were a teen in the mid-to-late 1980s you remember Wayne's World and the Church Lady and Phil Hartman; if you were a teen in the mid-to-late 90s, you remember Celebrity Jeopardy and The Ladies Man and "the Order of the Hand will rule!" and "get off the shed" and "I drive a Dodge Stratus!" (Basically everything that involved Will Ferrell yelling, in other words.) If you were a teen in the mid-to-late 00s, you remember digital shorts and Sarah Palin and, probably, something dreadful by Kristen Wiig. If you're a teen today, you'll probably remember nothing about the show fondly, because you're an awful millennial and SNL isn't a series of gifs aggregated by PewDiePie.*
If you can't tell from the synopsis above, the golden age of SNL for me was 1996 to 2000, which, shockingly, directly coincides with my years in high school. Odd how that works out. But it's true: SNL's brand of sketch comedy is pretty squarely aimed at the intellectual level of a teenager, so it's not surprising that our fondest memories of the show tend to come from when we were teenagers ourselves.
So, now that you know my biases, a few thoughts on last night's show and the surrounding hoopla.
Celebrity Jeopardy Was Amazing
Norm Macdonald was always at his funniest when doing Burt Reynolds on Celebrity Jeopardy. Last night was no exception. Though you could tell the show was going to have some rough patches when this bit went on and on, cycling in various extra celebrities because, hey, three isn't enough.
The Californians Is Comedy Genocide
I don't know who it is that finds this skit funny, but could you please not reproduce? I cannot believe they decided that a good way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this show was to devote 10 minutes to people standing around with atrocious valley girl accents talking about how to get places on the highway. And anyone who watched this and was like "HAHAHA Betty White kissing Bradley Cooper HAHAHA" should just stop getting out of bed in the morning. For the sake of the rest of us.
Jerry Seinfeld Is Very Problematic
Jerry Seinfeld's celebrity Q&A segment last night was one of the few truly hilarious segments. In addition to cracking a joke about Brian Williams—a much edgier bit than Jane Curtin's joke earlier in the night making fun of Fox News, given the venue—he also hammed it up with Larry David. However, the Twitter scolds weren't happy with Jerry because, gasp, he refused to act super-apologetic for his sitcom's lack of diversity. When Ellen Cleghorne asked about the lack of black women on his show, he snarked, "Good point, Ellen, we did not do all we could to cure society's ills, you are correct."
For failing to kowtow before the gods of diversity and beg forgiveness, there was much angst.
So, Seinfeld's joke about how there were no black people on his show because the show wasn't about improving the world...has an aftertaste.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 16, 2015
Boy did that seem like an inartful way to address race on both SNL and Seinfeld.
— Jack Moore (@JackPMoore) February 16, 2015
I give that bit: FOUR PROBLEMATICS. Tsk, Jerry. You should know better. Apologize.
The Musical Performances
I know, I know, music has always been a big part of the show. So it's not surprising that we had four performances in a three-and-a-half hour show. But Paul McCartney's voice is shot, Kanye did weird Kanye stuff, and Paul Simon closed the show with some Boomer nostalgia. In a shocking turn of events, the best performance of the night was delivered by, and I can't believe I'm typing this, Miley Cyrus. Bizarre.
The Show Felt Really Unbalanced
I have to say, everything felt either oddly languorous (10 minutes of The Californians) or weirdly rushed (jamming all the pre-taped bits into a four minute montage). I mean, we got five minutes of Kanye doing performance art and 15 seconds of Mr. Bill; we got a four minute intro of Eddie Murphy by Chris Rock, and then 45 seconds or so of Eddie Murphy mumbling some thanks and throwing the show to commercials; we got a weird little extended interlude paying tribute to Tracy Morgan, who, though badly injured in a car wreck a few months back, isn't dead.
I could've used more Robert Smigel, is all I'm saying.
Rolling Stone's Ranking of SNL Cast Members Is Garbage
If you put Tina Fey ahead of Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tim Meadows, and Bill Murray, your list is hot garbage. It's a bad ranking, and the people who came up with it should feel bad about themselves for creating it.
*Get off my lawn.