Write Back Weekend "Live From AOGB...It's Saturday Night!!"
Throughout my life, like many of you, I have had a love/hate relationship with all things Saturday Night Live. Beginning in 1975 with Lorne Michaels at the helm, this 90 minute LIVE sketch comedy show revolutionized the way we watched live, comedic television. Never before had we seen comedic actors in such a unique and refreshing format. Oh, and did I mention it was live?!
Although I didn't really start watching Saturday Night Live until the 90's, I am old enough to have seen many of the classic clips over the years. I also always felt you could pretty much break up the feel of SNL into five year segments. 1975 is when it all began, ushering in the "Classic Years". Those were the days that featured the first (and some might argue, the best) "Not Ready For Primetime Players". People like Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain graced the stage back then. It was one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled.
But in 1980 the tides began to turn. Gone were many of the staple performers of the early years. Many of them went on to seek bigger fame and fortune in movies and were successful in their pursuits. During this time the entire show had to be recast with performers that were largely unknown then, and now. I guess you could say these were the days of the "Never Ready For Prime time Players". In large part, the 1980-1981 season, such a dramatic departure from the previous years, was considered a horrible failure. There were exceptions to the rule though. Out of the early eighties we got performers such as Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Martin Short and if we are being technical, Gilbert Gottfried, too. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss joined the cast in 1982, but for some reason did not leave all that memorable of an impression. I suppose you can't really take the girl out of Seinfeld after all.
1985 marked the season where all the movie stars joined the cast. Again, I have very little memory of any of these people being on SNL. People like Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid and Damon Wayans were added. From 1985-1990 came the faces that you would eventually associate with SNL for years to come. People like Nora Dunn, Jon (yuck) Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Al Franken (who floated in and out for many years and in many facets), Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson and Mike Myers.
1990 or so was about when I began to watch the show live, as it aired. These years featured much of the same cast from the second half of the eighties, with notable additions being people like Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, Julia Sweeney, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Norm MacDonald, Jay Mohr, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo and Molly Shannon. These are the years that I have many good memories from. The writing may never have seemed as fresh as the very early days, but I do think these years produced a lot of classic skits, and talent that was worth watching.
1995 was the year I graduated from high school. 1995-2000 featured some talented performers, and some not so talented performers. On the talent side we had new names like Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri, Nancy Walls, Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph. On the not so talented side we had Chris Kattan, Colin Quinn, Jim Breuer and Horatio Sanz. The second half of the nineties also marked the addition of Tina Fey to the writing (sometimes performing) team.
From 2000 to today the show's cast has managed to evolve yet again. Gone are many of the nineties staple performers. In their place we got Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Kristen Wiig.
Since the early nineties I have watched (or recorded) every new episode of SNL. Most of the show is in large part, a letdown. Still, I come back to watch it all again and again. The funny sketches, to me, are like diamonds. They are rare to find, but worth sticking around for.
Below you will find a partial list of some of my favorite, all time SNL sketches through the years. I'm sure I will be bound to forget many. I was able to find a direct link to many of them, but don't be surprised if by the time you hit on some of them, they are already gone. I hope my brief description will be enough to conjure up some of the same memories for you, too.
The Land Shark- This is one of the earliest sketches in my list. What was so great about it was that it showed how little props and fanfare you really needed if something was truly funny. It was utterly ridiculous, but thoroughly enjoyable at the same time. It featured Chevy Chase in a Jaws type spoof as the land shark. He would knock on the doors and whisper, barely audible, "Candygram", "Parcel". Of course the woman who was supposedly cautious would always open the door on the flimsiest of descriptions and be consumed by...The Land Shark.
1. James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub Party- This is a skit from the early eighties that featured the comedic genius of
Eddie Murphy. The gimmick was all in knowing James Brown and his shtick. As a kid, I always got a kick out of it took James Brown forever to do anything on stage. As a result, this skit always struck a chord with me.
2. Buckwheat Is Dead!- Another Eddie Murphy clip I fell in love with early on. One reoccurring character that Murphy did was the Little Rascals character of Buckwheat. During the news, the live footage of Buckwheat being shot made "breaking news". The hysterical part was how they kept showing the same five second footage, over and over. It was hysterical in its presentation, but also served as an excellent commentary on our times. The news always had the job of sensationalism, even back then.
3. Steve Martin's Christmas Wish- This clip is from the late eighties or the early nineties. It features frequent host, but never full time player, Steve Martin telling us about the top five things he wished for that holiday season. The You Tube clip I'm linking to has the audio looped over serious pictures. If you just listen to the audio though, it's still hysterical. The audio starts off serious and gets ridiculous. "First would be the crap about the kids, definitely."
4. Choppin' Broccoli- Dana Carvey reminds me of the class clown from your high school. In your small universe, he seemed like one of the funniest guys who ever lived. But then you graduated and suddenly you realized there were other people out there who were just as funny, if not funnier. You move on, but the class clown is still stuck in the golden years. Dana Carvey is that man. Still, back then he was THE man in simple, but ingenious skits such as these. We still sing this when getting dinner ready sometimes, too.
5. Celebrity Jeopardy- SNL have done many reoccurring bits over the years. Some of them have even been worth repeating. The Celebrity Jeopardy spoof featuring Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek was definitely one of them. Every time the skit aired it would feature different celebrities playing for charity, each increasingly more frustratingly stupid than the next. It is also one of the strongest memories I have of laughing and not being able to stop. Sometimes when teaching and it's not getting through, I do hear a tinge of of Ferrell's Trebek impersonation creeping through. Here is just one montage featuring reoccurring celeb spoof of Sean Connery. "The category is Therapists. I'll take the rapists for 500, Alex."
6. Battle of the Bands- Over the years, this skit hasn't been talked about all that much. I thought it was definitely one of the more original and clever bits they did on SNL though. The host was Susan Dey. The challenge was obviously, how do we make Susan Dey funny? The result was a Partridge Family/Brady Bunch sing off. The results were hysterical.
7. Jason Priestly Skating- Another clip that I loved was aired back in early 1992. It featured a surprisingly good host in Jason Priestly, the then 90210 heartthrob. The episode aired during the 1992 Winter Olympics and opened with what was supposed to be Jason Priestly playing a figure skater. During his short performance he fell about a zillion times. Each time the announcer would say "Ohh, that's gonna cost him the gold! Ooh, that's gonna cost him the silver! Oh, I'm afraid that's gonna cost him the bronze!" You get the idea. At the time, since I was so in to watching Olympic figure skating, I thought it was great.
8. I Gotta Have More Cowbell!- There were a few hosts over the years that are like honorary cast members because they bring so much to the table. Alec Baldwin. Tom Hanks. Of course, there's also the incomparable Christopher Walken. A spoof on VH1's Behind the Music, this sketch originally aired to honor a guy from Blue Oyster Cult who had died that week. Over the years though that trivia bit has been largely overshadowed by the genius of this spoof. Mainly the success of this sketch is due to the winning combination of Walken and Ferrell. "I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"
9. The Barry Gibb Talk Show- Another great musical sketch, this one features Jimmy Fallon and recent classic host, Justin Timberlake as two of the Gibb brothers of Bee Gees fame. The pairing of Fallon and Timberlake as the Gibb brothers is magic from the start. Together, they "interview" random guests and burst into equally random falsetto flounderings. The result is, in my opinion, one of the best SNL skits of all time.
10. Norm MacDonald as David Letterman- This clip featured the under appreciated talents of Norm MacDonald perfectly cast as David Letterman. I wish that I had a clip of it because the description doesn't do it justice. They so got down how much of a kiss ass band leader, Paul Shaffer comes across most times. The classic, random line uttered repeatedly, as Letterman often tends to do, is "Eh..ya got any gum?"
11. Love-Ah's- Another reoccurring clip that worked was the odd pairing of Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch as a gross, overly romantic middle aged couple. They specialized in making their guests feel uncomfortable with their numerous romantic references. The only guest just as weird as them of course, was Christopher Walken their sometimes love-ah.
12. Collette Reardon- If Dana Carvey was the male class clown of SNL, Cheri Oteri had to be his female counterpart. She is another case of a comedienne who soared while on SNL, but just could not make it translate to any other format. I'm not quite sure what happened there to be honest. Collette Reardon was one of many, wacky characters Cheri Oteri created. She is the old lady at the pharmacy who always seems to be on more medication than any one human needs.
13. Lazy Sunday- One of the initial strengths of the newer SNL cast was their clever and innovative short films. I was torn about their success, however. On one hand, I loved how they thought outside the box and somehow made SNL seem more current. On the other hand, the show is called Saturday Night LIVE. A lot of the skits that SNL envisioned would probably seem a lot funnier with editing, extra time and more rehearsal. Still, in all fairness, Lazy Sunday gave us false hope. It featured Andy Samberg and the multi-talented, Chris Parnell rapping about "The Chronic WHAT? cles of Narnia!" It came out the gate strong. Unfortunately there were still many weaker digital shorts to follow.
14. Natalie Portman Goes Wild!- Another one of SNL's biggest strengths is when they seemingly take actors out of their comfort zones. This works best when the celebrity is willing to poke fun at themselves in some way. I don't know how the Natalie Portman meltdown came to fruition, but it certainly was one of the best celebrity spoofs, featuring the actual celebrity doing the spoofing, ever.
15. Christopher Walken's Celebrity Psychic Friends Network- Jay Mohr is one of a few cast members on SNL that I never felt was allowed to truly hit his stride. Tim Meadows and Janeane Garofalo are two others that come to mind. At any rate, what is funnier than Christopher Walken on SNL? Christopher Walken spoofs, of course! Here we have one of Mohr's biggest underused talents, impressions. He interviews wacky "celebrities" like Todd Bridges and Crispin Glover on his psychic friends talk show. "Why aren't you calling?!... We could be in your driveway by now! Me and... Crispin... and Todd, waiting for you...Being...your friend."
As I was writing this post I realized there are probably many, many more. I guess this just proves the crappy SNL is worth wading through to get to the good stuff.
Although I didn't really start watching Saturday Night Live until the 90's, I am old enough to have seen many of the classic clips over the years. I also always felt you could pretty much break up the feel of SNL into five year segments. 1975 is when it all began, ushering in the "Classic Years". Those were the days that featured the first (and some might argue, the best) "Not Ready For Primetime Players". People like Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain graced the stage back then. It was one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled.
But in 1980 the tides began to turn. Gone were many of the staple performers of the early years. Many of them went on to seek bigger fame and fortune in movies and were successful in their pursuits. During this time the entire show had to be recast with performers that were largely unknown then, and now. I guess you could say these were the days of the "Never Ready For Prime time Players". In large part, the 1980-1981 season, such a dramatic departure from the previous years, was considered a horrible failure. There were exceptions to the rule though. Out of the early eighties we got performers such as Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Martin Short and if we are being technical, Gilbert Gottfried, too. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss joined the cast in 1982, but for some reason did not leave all that memorable of an impression. I suppose you can't really take the girl out of Seinfeld after all.
1985 marked the season where all the movie stars joined the cast. Again, I have very little memory of any of these people being on SNL. People like Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid and Damon Wayans were added. From 1985-1990 came the faces that you would eventually associate with SNL for years to come. People like Nora Dunn, Jon (yuck) Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Al Franken (who floated in and out for many years and in many facets), Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson and Mike Myers.
1990 or so was about when I began to watch the show live, as it aired. These years featured much of the same cast from the second half of the eighties, with notable additions being people like Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, Julia Sweeney, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Norm MacDonald, Jay Mohr, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo and Molly Shannon. These are the years that I have many good memories from. The writing may never have seemed as fresh as the very early days, but I do think these years produced a lot of classic skits, and talent that was worth watching.
1995 was the year I graduated from high school. 1995-2000 featured some talented performers, and some not so talented performers. On the talent side we had new names like Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Cheri Oteri, Nancy Walls, Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph. On the not so talented side we had Chris Kattan, Colin Quinn, Jim Breuer and Horatio Sanz. The second half of the nineties also marked the addition of Tina Fey to the writing (sometimes performing) team.
From 2000 to today the show's cast has managed to evolve yet again. Gone are many of the nineties staple performers. In their place we got Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Kristen Wiig.
Since the early nineties I have watched (or recorded) every new episode of SNL. Most of the show is in large part, a letdown. Still, I come back to watch it all again and again. The funny sketches, to me, are like diamonds. They are rare to find, but worth sticking around for.
Below you will find a partial list of some of my favorite, all time SNL sketches through the years. I'm sure I will be bound to forget many. I was able to find a direct link to many of them, but don't be surprised if by the time you hit on some of them, they are already gone. I hope my brief description will be enough to conjure up some of the same memories for you, too.
The Land Shark- This is one of the earliest sketches in my list. What was so great about it was that it showed how little props and fanfare you really needed if something was truly funny. It was utterly ridiculous, but thoroughly enjoyable at the same time. It featured Chevy Chase in a Jaws type spoof as the land shark. He would knock on the doors and whisper, barely audible, "Candygram", "Parcel". Of course the woman who was supposedly cautious would always open the door on the flimsiest of descriptions and be consumed by...The Land Shark.
1. James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub Party- This is a skit from the early eighties that featured the comedic genius of
Eddie Murphy. The gimmick was all in knowing James Brown and his shtick. As a kid, I always got a kick out of it took James Brown forever to do anything on stage. As a result, this skit always struck a chord with me.
2. Buckwheat Is Dead!- Another Eddie Murphy clip I fell in love with early on. One reoccurring character that Murphy did was the Little Rascals character of Buckwheat. During the news, the live footage of Buckwheat being shot made "breaking news". The hysterical part was how they kept showing the same five second footage, over and over. It was hysterical in its presentation, but also served as an excellent commentary on our times. The news always had the job of sensationalism, even back then.
3. Steve Martin's Christmas Wish- This clip is from the late eighties or the early nineties. It features frequent host, but never full time player, Steve Martin telling us about the top five things he wished for that holiday season. The You Tube clip I'm linking to has the audio looped over serious pictures. If you just listen to the audio though, it's still hysterical. The audio starts off serious and gets ridiculous. "First would be the crap about the kids, definitely."
4. Choppin' Broccoli- Dana Carvey reminds me of the class clown from your high school. In your small universe, he seemed like one of the funniest guys who ever lived. But then you graduated and suddenly you realized there were other people out there who were just as funny, if not funnier. You move on, but the class clown is still stuck in the golden years. Dana Carvey is that man. Still, back then he was THE man in simple, but ingenious skits such as these. We still sing this when getting dinner ready sometimes, too.
5. Celebrity Jeopardy- SNL have done many reoccurring bits over the years. Some of them have even been worth repeating. The Celebrity Jeopardy spoof featuring Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek was definitely one of them. Every time the skit aired it would feature different celebrities playing for charity, each increasingly more frustratingly stupid than the next. It is also one of the strongest memories I have of laughing and not being able to stop. Sometimes when teaching and it's not getting through, I do hear a tinge of of Ferrell's Trebek impersonation creeping through. Here is just one montage featuring reoccurring celeb spoof of Sean Connery. "The category is Therapists. I'll take the rapists for 500, Alex."
6. Battle of the Bands- Over the years, this skit hasn't been talked about all that much. I thought it was definitely one of the more original and clever bits they did on SNL though. The host was Susan Dey. The challenge was obviously, how do we make Susan Dey funny? The result was a Partridge Family/Brady Bunch sing off. The results were hysterical.
7. Jason Priestly Skating- Another clip that I loved was aired back in early 1992. It featured a surprisingly good host in Jason Priestly, the then 90210 heartthrob. The episode aired during the 1992 Winter Olympics and opened with what was supposed to be Jason Priestly playing a figure skater. During his short performance he fell about a zillion times. Each time the announcer would say "Ohh, that's gonna cost him the gold! Ooh, that's gonna cost him the silver! Oh, I'm afraid that's gonna cost him the bronze!" You get the idea. At the time, since I was so in to watching Olympic figure skating, I thought it was great.
8. I Gotta Have More Cowbell!- There were a few hosts over the years that are like honorary cast members because they bring so much to the table. Alec Baldwin. Tom Hanks. Of course, there's also the incomparable Christopher Walken. A spoof on VH1's Behind the Music, this sketch originally aired to honor a guy from Blue Oyster Cult who had died that week. Over the years though that trivia bit has been largely overshadowed by the genius of this spoof. Mainly the success of this sketch is due to the winning combination of Walken and Ferrell. "I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"
9. The Barry Gibb Talk Show- Another great musical sketch, this one features Jimmy Fallon and recent classic host, Justin Timberlake as two of the Gibb brothers of Bee Gees fame. The pairing of Fallon and Timberlake as the Gibb brothers is magic from the start. Together, they "interview" random guests and burst into equally random falsetto flounderings. The result is, in my opinion, one of the best SNL skits of all time.
10. Norm MacDonald as David Letterman- This clip featured the under appreciated talents of Norm MacDonald perfectly cast as David Letterman. I wish that I had a clip of it because the description doesn't do it justice. They so got down how much of a kiss ass band leader, Paul Shaffer comes across most times. The classic, random line uttered repeatedly, as Letterman often tends to do, is "Eh..ya got any gum?"
11. Love-Ah's- Another reoccurring clip that worked was the odd pairing of Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch as a gross, overly romantic middle aged couple. They specialized in making their guests feel uncomfortable with their numerous romantic references. The only guest just as weird as them of course, was Christopher Walken their sometimes love-ah.
12. Collette Reardon- If Dana Carvey was the male class clown of SNL, Cheri Oteri had to be his female counterpart. She is another case of a comedienne who soared while on SNL, but just could not make it translate to any other format. I'm not quite sure what happened there to be honest. Collette Reardon was one of many, wacky characters Cheri Oteri created. She is the old lady at the pharmacy who always seems to be on more medication than any one human needs.
13. Lazy Sunday- One of the initial strengths of the newer SNL cast was their clever and innovative short films. I was torn about their success, however. On one hand, I loved how they thought outside the box and somehow made SNL seem more current. On the other hand, the show is called Saturday Night LIVE. A lot of the skits that SNL envisioned would probably seem a lot funnier with editing, extra time and more rehearsal. Still, in all fairness, Lazy Sunday gave us false hope. It featured Andy Samberg and the multi-talented, Chris Parnell rapping about "The Chronic WHAT? cles of Narnia!" It came out the gate strong. Unfortunately there were still many weaker digital shorts to follow.
14. Natalie Portman Goes Wild!- Another one of SNL's biggest strengths is when they seemingly take actors out of their comfort zones. This works best when the celebrity is willing to poke fun at themselves in some way. I don't know how the Natalie Portman meltdown came to fruition, but it certainly was one of the best celebrity spoofs, featuring the actual celebrity doing the spoofing, ever.
15. Christopher Walken's Celebrity Psychic Friends Network- Jay Mohr is one of a few cast members on SNL that I never felt was allowed to truly hit his stride. Tim Meadows and Janeane Garofalo are two others that come to mind. At any rate, what is funnier than Christopher Walken on SNL? Christopher Walken spoofs, of course! Here we have one of Mohr's biggest underused talents, impressions. He interviews wacky "celebrities" like Todd Bridges and Crispin Glover on his psychic friends talk show. "Why aren't you calling?!... We could be in your driveway by now! Me and... Crispin... and Todd, waiting for you...Being...your friend."
As I was writing this post I realized there are probably many, many more. I guess this just proves the crappy SNL is worth wading through to get to the good stuff.
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