Saturday Night Live

I am a life-long Saturday Night Live fan. I have been watching with varying degrees of fan-boy intensity since I was in junior high. I have an internal alarm clock that is permanently set to go off at 11:30 PM on Saturday nights. I’ve read all those behind-the-scenes books. I began watching during the Carvey/Hartman/Lovitz era, and while I was too young and dumb to get most of the political stuff, there was always something that would crack me up. I’m sure part of it was some sort of rebellion – laughing at things my parents would find distasteful (Steve Martin’s Penis Beauty Cream anyone?), which has probably been part of SNL’s lifeblood over the years. I stuck with the show as my beloved cast members left and found employment in dubious films and sitcoms, and new guys rolled in. I know people a little younger than me usually think the Sandler/Farley/Spade years were a hoot, but I got tired of those guys pretty fast, and found that Janeane Garofalo’s after-the-fact bitching reflected my own opinions about that cast. But I stuck with it, and would defend the show to the “Saturday Night Dead” criers (real original guys) over the years. But I think all that has changed.

This is a long-winded way of me getting around to saying that I might be ready to leave SNL behind. It makes me sad to even type it, like I’m putting down Old Yeller or something. But the show and I seem to have outgrown each other. SNL has jumped on the Cartoon Network bandwagon of “random = funny”, and while I think a little of that can be effective, that seems to be their only trick nowadays. The sketches are now all incredibly self-conscious, and every other one seems to end in some sort of joke about how they don’t know how to end the sketch. Ha ha! Way to deflect criticism by acknowledging it head-on! Whoa, check out that guy dancing in a too-tight leotard! He doesn’t have the body to pull that off! Ha ha!

And is there a less diverse show on television? They just hired four new people – all white. Have they ever had an Asian regular? I don’t think so. And all these years and casts – only one gay castmate (Terry Sweeney, if you’re keeping track at home)? Certainly, they’ve never had any idea what to do with their black comedians, who usually are more successful after the show. From where I’m sitting, they need some new life on the program, but Lorne Michaels seems to be staunchly against any sort of tampering with the format and feel of the show.

Look, I know writing good sketches on a weekly basis is tough. And maybe it’s just that I’m getting old, and SNL is keeping pace with the youngsters – the same youngsters who apparently love Family Guy, a show that I find has a similar laughs-per-minute quotient to genocide. Maybe I’m turning into the old guy who came into my theater last week and yelled at me for not showing Red Skelton movies. “In my day there were no talking meatballs,” I’ll soon be mumbling. But for whatever reason, lately, when my internal alarm clock goes off, I’ve found myself hitting the snooze button. You have no idea how sad this makes me. “Hold still boy. Good boy…” *blam!*