Safeguards of Sanity

Flipping channels the other night I came across a special that NBC was running called "Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation." It was an awesome look back to the last "glory years" era of the show and it was a refreshing sight.

As soon as I was old enough to be allowed to stay up that late, SNL became a staple of my weekend TV lineup. No matter where I was, I made sure I didn't miss an episode. When we got replayTV (the cheaper knock-off of TIVO) the show was automatically recorded every weekend so that if I did miss it, I could watch it on Sunday. In fact, this became a routine. Replay TV was the perfect device for SNL. No commercials and the ability to fast-forward through the less entertaining sketches was the perfect viewing method.

Then, as I grew older, I began to realize a trend. I was continuously fast-forwarding through more and more of the show until it got to the point where I was watching the opening sketch and then maybe one or two others throughout the episode. The show had genuinely become unfunny to me. Finally, I stopped watching it altogether as I just found it to be a waste of my time. It went from an inventive, pioneering comedic institution to something that seemed contrived, like an awkward high school improv troupe performing at a pep rally to a less than enthused crowd.

This change of events always puzzled me. Naturally, like everything else that goes wrong in my life, I blamed myself. I came to the resolution that I had been young and impressionable and the evidently sophomoric humor had appealed to my immature mind and as I grew older I must have realized that it was just stupid comedy. I rationalized by looking at this as a good thing, an indication of my growth as a person.

While watching the aforementioned SNL special, I realized something I had suspected all along. I was certainly not more mature, by any means, SNL was just truly funny in the nineties. This is probably the reason this program was aired: to show the younger kids of today, the ones who do sit home on Saturday night and watch SNL, that it wasn't always this pitiful- it used to be good. Even my brother, who is thirteen, didn't really get this. Sure he knew that Adam Sandler and Chris Farley and others of that ilk were cast members on the show, but he knew their comedy from the movies they did after they left the cast, not from the ground-breaking comedy they were a part of while at NBC.

In the 90's Saturday Night Live was THE figurative social "ball busters." Since the show is written, rehearsed and finally filmed over the course of only one week, it was able to deal with any pertinent issue that the country was dealing with. Anytime there was a political blunder or a celebrity got a DUI or was arrested, you could look to Lorne Michaels and his crew to see what they had to say about it, how they were going to make light of the situation.

(On a side note: I was watching the special with my temporary Egyptian roommate and it was funny to see how he reacted to the humor. I watched him closely and he would laugh along with the audience, but it was questionable whether he got all of the jokes. At one point, during a weekend update clip, Norm Macdonald delivered a punchline that I cannot recall except that it centered around the word ' hockey.' My roommate laughed at it, uproariously if I may say so myself, and then turned to me and asked, "What is Hockey?" After attempting a rambling explanation of the sport, a little while later, a skit involving a certain president and his alleged oval office mistress came on and after a few minutes he turned to me and goes, "Ahh Bill and Monica?" and continued to laugh. This is wonderful. He had no idea what hockey was but he is aware of Clinton and his sexual escapades. America, Milkshakes all around.)

That was my one A.J. Soprano-type observation for the day, back to my point. What SNL became was the safeguards of sanity. When political figures seemed to be acting like monkeys and celebrities were running around like escaped convicts, the writers at SNL put them in their place. They were the gut check for our social conscious that helped us realize that we were the sane ones because we were able to laugh at what these public figures were doing while they kept that stern look on their face. Even if it didn't deal with an issue that was politically relevant, maybe it just made fun of an absurd show, it still played the part of that friend that you are careful not to do anything stupid around less you risk being made fun of; not in a mean spirited way, just enough to remind you not to take yourself too seriously. That's why the title of the show referred to the pop culture nature of the nineties and its increasing preponderance of opinions on all aspects of the country we were living in.

Then SNL lost that edge. I can't really put my finger on it, but i think it began when that strong core group of cast members left; Farley, Sandler, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey and even David Spade and then the current free fall probably really hit its stride with the departure of Will Ferrell. Today, we are kind of missing that sort of satirical social commentary that SNL used to offer. Chappelle Show carried the torch for a while but it was short lived. The Daily Show has picked up the political slack and does a good job of it too- they are one of the only consistently funny shows on right now but I think the show comes closest to filling the void that was left is South Park.

They have the same sort of production process as SNL that allows them to generate an episode in about a week's time which gives them the ability to talk about current events in a timely manner. They too are consistently funny and have had numerous episodes that elicit the "that's exactly what I was trying to say" response. While people of our generation get most of the humor and enjoy the show for what it is, I feel like it is still looked down upon by "mature adults" who still only see it as a cartoon. There have been a couple episodes that I thought my parents would enjoy and I've explained the crux of the reasoning to them and they have agreed that it seems like smart humor but getting them to sit down for a viewing is like trying to get a child to sit still for a tetanus shot.

(Another interesting aspect that was brought up during the special was Lorne's reliance on stand-up comics as the bulk of the cast during those wonder years. Stand-ups are always the most outspoken of critics and this had to have something to do with the socially perceptive voice of the show. Today, most of the cast is comprised of former comedy troupe students whose training is more in the acting and interpretation of comedy. I'm not saying this a problem, just maybe an explanation.)

That was the biggest impact that the special had on me. It made me realize how much I missed that cutting-edge criticism that was on display each weekend. I can't say I've seen too many recent episodes of the show, but I do hear this season was better. I've caught some of the digital shorts they've made; "Dick in a Box" was great and I loved the Peyton Manning one. Let's hope this a sign of good things to come and I'm crossing my fingers for another run of "glory years."