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Trying too hard to be funny: Can we talk about ‘Saturday Night Live'?
The trouble with "Saturday Night Live'
Brett S. Harrison
When I first heard about Tina Fey's wicked impression of Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," it was with a mixture of surprise and regret. Surprise because I'd long ceased to believe that SNL could be funny any more, and regret because I didn't own a TV. I couldn't watch Fey's Palin parody online because of a slow connection, so I missed it.
Fast-forward several months later. A friend gave me an ancient Trinitron TV set that works fine (even if I'm stressing that I'll have to buy a digital converter soon). I'm watching an SNL special highlighting the show's best political humor. I finally see Fey's imitation and it's good, but I'm a little disappointed. The funniest thing about Fey's imitation is her resemblance to Palin. I'd expected brilliance; this is more a case of Fey's being at the right place at the right time, and SNL's producers being smart enough to realize that.
More important, watching Fey as Palin reminds me how good SNL used to be. Between SNL's recent attempts at political satire (like the compulsively mugging Will Ferrell vaguely made up to look like George W. Bush playing a more presidential version of himself), the show interspersed some past gems from the SNL canon. There's the running gag in which Chevy Chase as President Ford finds myriad ways to fall. Or Phil Hartman's strangely sympathetic but still oily Bill Clinton.
Aykroyd and Belushi in the White House
But for me the undisputed highlight is SNL's classic spoof of Bob Woodward's The Final Days. Dan Aykroyd as Nixon goes wickedly over the top, not even attempting to show his human side as he beckons John Belushi as Henry Kissinger to join him in praying for deliverance. Belushi scraps both his own wild and crazy stereotype and Kissinger's Machiavellian schemer to play Kissinger simply as a befuddled subordinate. And it works.
Some news articles contended that Fey's impression of Palin had breathed new life into "Saturday Night Live." Well, maybe for a few minutes. I've caught the show sporadically a few times in the past few months, and it's as limp as ever. One recent skit had Vincent Price hosting his own Valentine's Day special; Bill Hader's Vincent Price was quite good and Alec Baldwin did a mean Richard Burton, but the writing felt forced. Yes, Burton had a drinking problem, but is it funny to see him take out a fifth of whiskey and call Liz Taylor cow?
So what can "Saturday Night Live" do to be relevant again? Short of firing its creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, I have a simple suggestion. Take a few weeks off and make the entire crew watch old episodes of "Second City Television"— the ones taped from its inception in 1976 to 1982, when that inspired show too became bloated.
Secret of Second City's success
You may ask: Why just SCTV? Why not "Your Show Of Shows" or "The Carol Burnett Show" or dozens of other sketch comedy shows? Because, in my humble opinion, not only was SCTV the best TV sketch comedy show ever made but, more important, they knew as much about not being funny as being funny. That is, they never tried to be funny. Once the wacky idea was in place, the writers let the characters dictate the direction, much the way the writers of "Seinfeld" let the characters take charge. When Eugene Levy played "funnyman Bobby Bittman," you laughed because Levy played the character like he might actually exist somewhere. Likewise with John Candy's Johnny LaRue or Andrea Martin's Edith Prickley. The show had its gags and laugh lines, to be sure. But they always occurred within the context of the characters.
Michaels of all people should know this, having recruited most of his early SNL cast from Second City Theater troupes in Chicago and Toronto. But somewhere along the way he's forgotten it.
Or maybe he hasn't. Just the other night night, at ten minutes to one, two skits aired back-to-back to close the show. And they didn't suck.
One featured Kristen Wiig as an earnest, plucky entrepreneur starring in her own TV ad for a hot air balloon service, claiming to be a viable alternative to Jet travel. It wasn't hilarious, but it was well done and completely deadpan. The joke was the premise, nothing more nor less. The closing skit featured host Alec Baldwin (who should get his own show) selling a fake acting tape teaching actors how to play characters with terminal diseases in movies. Again, not sidesplitting, but a step in the right direction. After all, mildly amusing is a step up from atrociously unfunny.
It's become almost a cliché to disparage "Saturday Night Live." It reminds me of the way people, not too long ago, used say, "If only the Phillies got some pitching." The Phillies finally did something about that and won the World Series.
To read responsea, click here and here.
Fast-forward several months later. A friend gave me an ancient Trinitron TV set that works fine (even if I'm stressing that I'll have to buy a digital converter soon). I'm watching an SNL special highlighting the show's best political humor. I finally see Fey's imitation and it's good, but I'm a little disappointed. The funniest thing about Fey's imitation is her resemblance to Palin. I'd expected brilliance; this is more a case of Fey's being at the right place at the right time, and SNL's producers being smart enough to realize that.
More important, watching Fey as Palin reminds me how good SNL used to be. Between SNL's recent attempts at political satire (like the compulsively mugging Will Ferrell vaguely made up to look like George W. Bush playing a more presidential version of himself), the show interspersed some past gems from the SNL canon. There's the running gag in which Chevy Chase as President Ford finds myriad ways to fall. Or Phil Hartman's strangely sympathetic but still oily Bill Clinton.
Aykroyd and Belushi in the White House
But for me the undisputed highlight is SNL's classic spoof of Bob Woodward's The Final Days. Dan Aykroyd as Nixon goes wickedly over the top, not even attempting to show his human side as he beckons John Belushi as Henry Kissinger to join him in praying for deliverance. Belushi scraps both his own wild and crazy stereotype and Kissinger's Machiavellian schemer to play Kissinger simply as a befuddled subordinate. And it works.
Some news articles contended that Fey's impression of Palin had breathed new life into "Saturday Night Live." Well, maybe for a few minutes. I've caught the show sporadically a few times in the past few months, and it's as limp as ever. One recent skit had Vincent Price hosting his own Valentine's Day special; Bill Hader's Vincent Price was quite good and Alec Baldwin did a mean Richard Burton, but the writing felt forced. Yes, Burton had a drinking problem, but is it funny to see him take out a fifth of whiskey and call Liz Taylor cow?
So what can "Saturday Night Live" do to be relevant again? Short of firing its creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, I have a simple suggestion. Take a few weeks off and make the entire crew watch old episodes of "Second City Television"— the ones taped from its inception in 1976 to 1982, when that inspired show too became bloated.
Secret of Second City's success
You may ask: Why just SCTV? Why not "Your Show Of Shows" or "The Carol Burnett Show" or dozens of other sketch comedy shows? Because, in my humble opinion, not only was SCTV the best TV sketch comedy show ever made but, more important, they knew as much about not being funny as being funny. That is, they never tried to be funny. Once the wacky idea was in place, the writers let the characters dictate the direction, much the way the writers of "Seinfeld" let the characters take charge. When Eugene Levy played "funnyman Bobby Bittman," you laughed because Levy played the character like he might actually exist somewhere. Likewise with John Candy's Johnny LaRue or Andrea Martin's Edith Prickley. The show had its gags and laugh lines, to be sure. But they always occurred within the context of the characters.
Michaels of all people should know this, having recruited most of his early SNL cast from Second City Theater troupes in Chicago and Toronto. But somewhere along the way he's forgotten it.
Or maybe he hasn't. Just the other night night, at ten minutes to one, two skits aired back-to-back to close the show. And they didn't suck.
One featured Kristen Wiig as an earnest, plucky entrepreneur starring in her own TV ad for a hot air balloon service, claiming to be a viable alternative to Jet travel. It wasn't hilarious, but it was well done and completely deadpan. The joke was the premise, nothing more nor less. The closing skit featured host Alec Baldwin (who should get his own show) selling a fake acting tape teaching actors how to play characters with terminal diseases in movies. Again, not sidesplitting, but a step in the right direction. After all, mildly amusing is a step up from atrociously unfunny.
It's become almost a cliché to disparage "Saturday Night Live." It reminds me of the way people, not too long ago, used say, "If only the Phillies got some pitching." The Phillies finally did something about that and won the World Series.
To read responsea, click here and here.
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