My personal history with Saturday Night Live

Earlier this week I was flipping channels at 2:00 am and found an old John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd movie. Nope, I'm not talking about The Blues Brothers or even 1941. It was Belushi's final film Neighbors. Man, what a strange little movie but I think that's what everybody says about it. Belushi is playing a nebbishy character about 15 years older than he was, Aykroyd has dyed blonde hair with blue contact lenses and that's just the beginning of the weirdness. Maybe that's why the studio hasn't released it on DVD.

Getting back to his age John Belushi was only 33 when he died. Saturday Night Live the show that made him famous is now 36 years old. It kinda makes you wonder how many more of its cast members it's going to outlive. It's also surpassed Chris Farley and is closing in on Gilda Radner. If you're older than SNL then you might officially be declared old myself included. I think I'll step into my wayback machine and relate my own history with Saturday Night Live.

I had just turned six when NBC's Saturday Night (it wouldn't be called Saturday Night Live until 1977) debuted in October 1975. I remember people talking about the show but back then I wasn't allowed to watch it. This was the 1970's and my family had just the one TV in the living room and it was lights out by 10:00 pm. It was also the kind of show my parents hated full of un-American radicals and pinko subversives. They preferred good, clean family entertainment like The Lawrence Welk Show. In the meantime I would have to settle for reading a People magazine article about Chevy Chase or seeing Gilda Radner on The Merv Griffin Show.

When 1980 rolled around I was finally old enough to demand to stay up late and watch what I wanted. My years of waiting were over and I was finally going to be able to see all of those classic characters like the Coneheads, the Blues Brothers and others I had just heard about. Of course by this time the entire original cast had left the show. Psyche! Instead of Belushi and Aykroyd I was now being treated to the comedy stylings of Charles Rocket and Tony Rosato. Crap... Still, I watched the show and it gradually got better. And then worse. And then better again. Saturday Night Live was definitely a strange beast in the 1980's. It went through three executive producers, was almost canceled twice and went through dozens of different cast members.

Still, it may have been the most interesting time in the show's history. Even in the bad years there were brilliant flashes like Eddie Murphy doing his Mr.Robinson sketches or Piscopo's Frank Sinatra impression. 80's SNL also featured a lot of up and coming performers like Penn & Teller, Sam Kinison, pre-Night Court Harry Anderson and future MST3K creator Joel Hodgson. It was a true variety show when you might see a comedy sketch, a musical number, some stand-up and even a magic act all in less than half an hour.

At the beginning of the 90's SNL was completely back on track and may have had the best cast in the show's history e.g. Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, etc. I remember the sketches of legend like Wayne's World and the Star Trek "Get a life" bit with William Shatner. There are also lesser-known sketches I still think about like one where a guy dies, goes to heaven and gets to ask an angel all of those nagging questions that could never be answered here on Earth like "Who had a crush on me in high school?", "Is Jim Morrison still alive?" and "Where did I lose that 100 bucks during graduation?" (The answer was that he didn't lose it, his uncle stole it.)

For 20 years during the 80's and 90's I was a hardcore SNL fan never missing an episode if I could help it. Then about 10 years ago I kinda stopped watching. I think it all began when the cast began to change in the mid 90's. Lorne Michaels tried to overload the cast when Carvey, Meyers and Hartman left but sheer numbers couldn't fill the void. I stuck around until Molly Shannon left but after that I became just an occasional viewer. I might watch until Weekend Update comes on but click off after that. Besides with the internet you really don't need to watch the entire 90 minutes like people used to. Just identify the sketches that are funny and skip all the rest. But yeah, 36 years is one helluva long time. If I live longer than SNL it'll be something to see and if I die before SNL goes off the air I won't be surprised.