I Feel Every Kind of Way About Saturday Night Live
I would have to be a fool as well as a masochist to agree to watch and write about nearly one thousand ninety minute long episodes of a television show that has been on the air for nearly fifty years in preparation for writing anywhere from two to seven books if I did not love it.
I do, in fact, love Saturday Night Live as an institution. I wouldn’t devote two years of my life to watching and writing about it in a way that, honestly, seems deeply unhealthy and a little pathological if I didn’t have enormous affection for it.
But there are also elements of the show that I hate. I think the original cast is every bit as talented and influential and revolutionary as conventional wisdom holds them to be and I think that they might be a little on the overrated side. Saturday Night Live is rebellious and countercultural and it’s mainstream and a staple of the American entertainment establishment.
Saturday Night Live is vast. It’s huge. It’s massive but it is anything but monolithic. That’s because there are lots of different iterations of Saturday Night Live. Heck, within the context of a single show Saturday Night Live can be wildly different, even antithetical.
The same historic episode, for example, had Patti Smith perform ferocious covers of “Gloria” and “My Generation” that became instant punk rock history when the genre was still in its infancy and the schmaltzy, cornball sentimental comedy of Billy Crystal doing a monologue where he plays an old jazz cat overjoyed to be unexpectedly reunited with his close personal friend Billy Crystal.
Patti Smith and Billy Crystal inhabited different universes and opposite sides of the pop culture spectrum but thanks to Saturday Night Live for one weird, magical night they were both guests of one of the most influential television shows in pop culture history.
To cite another example, the Steven Seagal episode is widely regarded as a nadir for the show. Lorne Michaels has called Seagal the show’s all-time worst host, which is no small accomplishment for a show that has been hosted by, among others, Robert Blake, Milton Berle, O.J Simpson, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Rudy Giuliani.
Yet on that legendarily bad show there’s a sketch parodying the over the top jingoism and performative patriotism that characterized the Gulf War where every single soldier gets their own tribute concert that is so funny and so memorable that I intermittently think about it and chuckle.
I feel every kind of way about Saturday Night Live because the show has been just about everything. It’s been great. It’s been terrible. It’s been fresh and new and young. It’s been old and exhausted and tired.
In watching every episode of Saturday Night Live ever I am wading deep into an endless forest of entertainment spanning half a century. It’s going to be exceedingly dark at times. I’m going to get lost. I’m going to get scare. I’m probably going to cry a fair amount. I am going to get confused and dispirited and discouraged.
That’s why Every Episode Ever , We’ve Got a Great Show For You Tonight and We’ve Got a TERRIBLE Show For You Tonight aren’t just for people who love Saturday Night Live. It’s not going to be like The Weird Accordion to Al, where I legitimately have liked or loved just about everything Al has done professionally.
I’m going to have complicated, intense and contradictory feelings about Saturday Night Live. I know that going in. That’s part of what this whole journey is about: figuring out my feelings once I’ve experienced the show in its entirety.
I am a different person now than I was when I lived in the group home as a teenager or got my book deal with Scribner or when I was head writer at The A.V. Club but I remain myself, regrettably.
Saturday Night Live similarly is a much different show now than when it first aired, or during the disastrous Doumanian and Movie Star seasons. Yet it remains a ninety minute long live sketch comedy show combining humor, music and political commentary with a host, musical guest, cold open, opening monologue, “Weekend Update” news segment and house band. There is joy in that repetition.
I’m guessing you also have all kinds of different feelings and opinions about Saturday Night Live through the ages and I very much look forward to hashing things out with y’all so that we can finally determine, objectively, collectively and conclusively, what about the show is hilarious and wonderful and what about it is terrible and unwatchable.
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