It seems like the theme of the blog is generally centered around weekends. We write about weekends which gets me thinking of Saturday Night Live, the show that has been part of our pop culture for 30+ years at fluctuating levels. If you had to make a list of shows that have influenced pop culture the most or better yet, a tv show that people can name or quote lines of off the top of their head, Saturday Night Live might be near the top, and it's ironically, on the worst night of the week to have a show.
It probably had survived so long because Nielsen Ratings measure a show's performance by your share of the TV audience and there is no one else who feels its of any use to put on a show on a Saturday Night. I used to think that Saturday Night Live's audience is primarily composed of people too young or too old to go out on a Saturday Night but there is a significant portion of people our age who are watching the show too.
I think that what's interesting about Saturday Night Live is that while it's not as popular as it was in the Rock/Farley/Spade/Hartman days (I'm not going to include Adam Sandler in that era because he has taken his talent and squandered with sooo many bad movies since his SNL days), it still manages to poke its head into pop culture when you're ready to call it down and out. I would've actually thought that Saturday Night Live stood a good chance of being killed when youtube started becoming popular since both youtube and saturday night live both cater to the audience who wants their comedy in 5-minute sketches but SNL found a way to jump on board the trend with the digital shorts produced by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaeffer and Jorma Takome (Andy is the one on camera). "Dick in a Box" and "Lazy Sundae" are two that have gone viral on youtube, but there's also "Iran so Far," Adam Samberg's love song to the President of Iran with Adam Levine providing some of the vocals, and a hillarious one with Tom Hanks singing "Don't Touch my Testicles." The "Iran So Far" is probably the funniest thing Andy Samberg has done in my opinion and it's possibly the best thing Saturday Night Live has done all season.
The other smart thing Saturday Night Live is doing that nothing else on NBC is doing is its not giving away all its content for free on the internet. You can't watch an entire episode of Saturday Night Live online like you can for many shows on hulu or their respective network sites. They usually post about 2 or 3 sketches a week but I recently discovered that the people in charge of posting the sketches online aren't picking the best ones. I think this is smart because SNL isn't like a TV show. It does basically the same stuff as youtube. A lot of the funnier material (the stuff that isn't recycled from past skits) is usually in the show and it's that five-minute stuff that you're dying to see over and over again.
I would have thought that the show would have suffered because about 2 years ago they had some serious budget cuts and had to cut 5 or 6 people, and now their cast is much smaller and less experienced. Then again, an astoundingly high number of the members of the current cast are capable of doing a Christopher Walken impression. Check out this skit where you will see 8 seperate members of the current Saturday Night Live cast impersonate Christopher Walken:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/16389/saturday-night-live-meet-the-family#x-4,cClips,1
After watching this, I can reach two conclusions: 1) It's very easy to impersonate Christopher Walken or 2) The cast is, in fact, a talented group of comedic actors
All I can say is I tried seeing if I could talk like Christopher Walken for a few minutes by playing this skit and trying to mimic the way they talk. It's harder than it looks.
*By the way, the Deer Hunter, mentioned in the skit, is a movie about the Vietnam War that is incredibly disturbing. It's the last thing someone would find "hillarious"
Also, just for the heck of it, because as Allen says, lists are popular, i'll give you a quick rundown of my opinion of the best cast members SNL has ever had. I'm not going to include Adam Sandler even though he's clearly one of the ten most successful and popular characters because I just personally am not a fan of him. I think he was incredibly lucky to do as well as he did. He doesn't just have the boyish charm of a 12-year old, I think he has the IQ of a 12-year old, too. From what I've seen of the very first 10 years, I'm not convinced that John Belushi or Chevy Chase were particularly funny either. I'll say that Dan Akroyd is a pretty good straight man. Ok, anyway:
1. Phil Hartman-So versatile and also incredibly edgey. Did anyone know that the Sinatra family (Frank Sinatra was still alive and in fairly decent health) was up on arms about that Sinatra skit he did? He had so much potential post-SNL too.
2. Mike Meyers-The hyper-active kid was a favorite of mine
3. Chris Farley-I think obviously everyone got to know how talented he was on SNL and after SNL. Tragic story as well.
4. Dana Carvey-Chopping Broccoli is a pretty good skit of his
5. John Lovitz-Pretty underrated in my opinion. Not too good of a fit post-SNL, but at sketch comedy, he was as good as they get and Lorne Michaels thought so too
6. Norm McDonald-I loved his deadpan style
7. Will Ferrell-Well, pretty much everyone knows how talented he is
8. Chris Rock-They say he was underused but I really wouldn't have been able to think up a whole lot of uses for Chris Rock if I was a writer
9. David Spade-He's a little twirp, but, seriously, he's kind of like my hero too. He's the little kid in gym class who gets beaten up by the jock, but at least he gets a witty verbal jab off on the process
10. Amy Poehler-Affirmative action dictates we have to put a female in, but there were a lot of talented ones to chose from. The hard question was who to put first, since by putting her at #10 i'm saying she's the most talented female ever on the show, and i don't know about that
11. Jimmy Fallon-I don't care if he laughed at the camera, he seemed like a cool guy and I loved his music parodies.
12. Tim Meadows-Mainly a straight guy but a very good one at that
13. Jan Hooks-She was on in the late 80s, later did 3rd Rock from the Sun
14. Tracy Morgan-He's probably kind of dumb in real life, but used it to full effect on the show. Brian Fellows, Astronaut Jones, the homeless guy who lived in a sewer
15 Terry Sweeny-The only gay cast member ever in the history of Saturdy Night Live and a fairly funny guy at that
16 Chris Kattan-Not so much for Mango but some of the other stuff he did
17. Mark McKinney-Was on Kids in the Hall before SNL, joined the cast for a year in the mid-90s.
18. Ellen Cleighorne-The token black woman on the cast during the early 90's, interesting fact: according to Jay Mohr's tell-all memoir of his time there, she was a bitch who never talked to anyone
19. Julia Sweeny-She was the sexually ambigous "It's Pat" character, but she was fairly versatile and lasted quite a while during the show's golden age
20. Kristen Wiig-You should have to earn your place on one of these lists by being on the show for a few years, but she's just too good. The Target Lady, Penelope, Nancy Pelosi, she was hillarious in the film Knocked Up as the assistant on the E! network
You know, what I could easily exchange the last 10 for 10 others, I forgot to add Darrell Hammond, Dan Akroyd, Colin Quinn...., so whatever
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