I was not going to watch this.
No one does hype like old media. They carpet bomb in every publication known to man and by time the event transpires, you're worn out.
Meanwhile, the lionization of Lorne Michaels just rubs me wrong. He comes across as so smug.
But when I saw Paul Simon sing poorly in the opening...
I was brought right back to 1975, when SNL debuted.
You see SNL used to be the outside, the counterculture, the antidote, a club you belonged to with the hippest people and the hippest jokes. We all caught the references. It was like someone was paying attention, the show was not homogenized like the rest of network TV.
And that was all we had. Along with a few independent channels with reruns.
TV was the idiot box. Now that's social media. If you watched TV you were déclassé, and then along came SNL.
The marijuana revolution penetrated the youth culture back in the sixties. By 1975 if you hadn't smoked dope, you never would. As for the cocaine the cast members were doing...most people didn't catch on until later in the decade.
But those cast members...
They were instant heroes, instant stars, known by everybody within months. The only thing I've seen similar to this is the cast of "The Sopranos." This little Mafia show on HBO...got it exactly right and suddenly even secondary mobsters like Paulie Walnuts were heroes.
But things have changed in the ensuing fifty years.
Now no one gets the references. There are hosts you've never heard of. This is not SNL's fault, it's the change in the landscape. Now TikTok is hip. Knowing the right influencers makes you an insider. And the power is not from the top down, but the bottom up. There are no string-pullers like Lorne Michaels anymore.
But old media keeps writing about him and his show. Like the zombies who go to the mall in "Dawn of the Dead," it's instinct. And now even the malls are extinct.
So every Sunday you read about what happened on last night's SNL as if it was tablets handed down from heaven. But except for a few moments, the show does not resonate. Because once you do something long enough without change the paradigm becomes stale. We like the new, the innovative. But...
Tonight's program was live. In a world where live is everything, where we treasure the experience. And it seemed live. And that was electric. So after taking a shower and seeing a funny joke on Black Jeopardy, I settled in.
Eddie Murphy was as funny as ever. And Woody Harrelson would have been a good cast member in the first season. Not worried about keeping up with the Joneses, but enmeshed in the alternative culture that started with the Beats and evolved into Richard Brautigan and William S. Burroughs and a whole host of musicians. It wasn't about how rich you were, but what you had to say, what you stood for.
Now it's all about your job and how much money you make.
But the people in attendance... This was Lorne's club and you're not a member, and you want to be. It was his Bar Mitzvah. Or a premature wake. Everybody came out of the woodwork. And it was like Hollywood in 1939.
But it's 2025.
There was Jerry Seinfeld. And Larry David. And Cher. You were looking at the audience picking out stars like studying the cover of "Sgt. Pepper."
But the biggest star of all was Jack Nicholson. Because he's been hiding for years. And Jack always did it his way, he's the epitome of cool, and it was great to see him.
And Meryl Streep was hilarious.
But mostly the skits fell flat.
But I stayed tuned in. Because this was like Sunday night TV back in the sixties. When we watched "Bonanza, when we tuned into "Ed Sullivan" for the Beatles. It was cold outside, we were all home settled in front of the screen. And when you went to school the next day what was on TV was the topic of conversation. Actually, mostly Tuesday morning in high school, everybody was cracking jokes from the previous night's "Laugh-In."
But those days are gone.
But tonight's show felt like a cultural rite, it felt like the old days.
Only...
Some of the performers were truly old. And it was disillusioning. It was like Lorne couldn't tell these emperors they had no clothes.
It wasn't only Paul Simon who couldn't sing. And Paul McCartney's performance was worse, because he seemed to have no knowledge that those of us watching were wincing.
So I expect the ratings to be pretty good. Because the Boomers and Gen-X'ers who grew up on the program needed to tune in on this cold winter night. To relive the past.
But their children?
They could do without it.
So I have mixed feelings. Seeing the endless cast members gave me a thrill, irrelevant of how they looked today. And one of the absolute highlights was the Bronx girls talking to Mike Myers. This show evidenced that the truly talented, the true stars, stand out, heads and shoulders above the rest.
Like Maya Rudolph. Even Alec Baldwin had the right attitude.
And then there was Bill Murray. He's one of the few cast members who never changed, never sold out, and we love him for that. He's presently in sexual harassment limbo, but when he delivered the Weekend Update Top Ten... The attitude, the sneer, the taking it seriously while winking and indicating it's irrelevant... That's the essence of what the show once was.
But Bill and his compatriots created the paradigm. It was like seeing a new act create an album each week.
Now it's like going to an oldies show. You might enjoy the new SNL episodes, but they're not going to titillate you, thrill you, because it's all been done before.
And watching it was clear that the show was the true star. You could be in people's living rooms every Saturday night for years and then you could disappear from the radar screen. Even if you became a star in movies. Because you can't be in a new movie every Saturday night.
But that's show business. The talent is fungible. Talent is the engine that makes the whole enterprise fly, but no single performer is necessary to make it all work. You can be replaced.
And some stay in the game and some don't.
It's hard to make it, it's even harder to sustain.
And those of us at home... These SNL stars embodied our dreams. We wanted to do it their way. Making fun of the status quo, performing for millions and partying until dawn.
But now we're older and our lives are set. We are not going to become famous, we are not going to be on TV.
So despite the new skits, this show was pure nostalgia. But we like nostalgia, because it gives us context for our lives.
But today's nostalgia means nothing to tomorrow's generation.
Furthermore, the younger generations are never going to have this experience, of everybody being on the same page.
But it was that way in 1975. Actually, it wasn't until the spring of '76 that most people caught on. But when they did, they didn't let go. It was like buying a new Beatles album, you had to.
And you remember those old songs, but...
That was a long, long time ago.
Watching tonight's program just reinforced how much time had gone by.
But that's the experience if you live long enough, if you don't pass prematurely through misadventure.
SNL isn't threadbare, but it's close.
Yet tonight we were reminded of what once was.
But that was in the past and it's never coming back.
Live from New York, it's...
Oligarchs and exclusivity? Living in Manhattan is like being selected to slip past the velvet rope at Studio 54. All of us nobodies have been pushed aside, we're not even thought of.
But once upon a time we had a program all our own, that started at 11:30 PM, when our parents were asleep.
Oh, what a great memory that is.
We were reminded tonight.
But SNL and exclusivity are moribund. Today the hoi polloi create the content, and you can reach anybody online.
We're all in it together, but never have we been more disconnected.
The dream is over.
Long live the dream.
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