SNL finds itself in state of flux over course of its 40th season


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People like to declare SNL done. As was joked about in the 40th anniversary special a couple of weeks ago, it’s only a matter of time before someone dusts off the old chestnut of a headline “Saturday Night Dead,” for a piece about how the show has declined past the point of no return. But it usually comes off as a bit ridiculous. Any show that has been around for 40 years will have its ups and downs in quality. Right now, the show is in a state of flux. In the last year, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers and Fred Armisen all left the show to pursue bigger projects, leaving a cast of relative unknowns to carry the torch.

A new cast is an opportunity to incorporate different talents to produce fresh material. Despite some bright spots, however, the latest season of SNL does not have the excitement that comes with new blood. It has a strange dynamic to it. The cast members all are talented, and that shines through. But, unfortunately, the material itself is largely uneven.

When SNL was born 40 years ago, it was on the cutting edge. When Lorne Michaels introduced the world to the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, they were a rebellious bunch of upstarts. John Belushi, Chevy Chase and the rest of the players were supremely talented, but they were also extremely cool. They pushed the envelope and were the most dangerous thing on TV.

In the very first episode, unsuspecting viewers were treated to a tiny bit of subtle genius by the legendary Andy Kaufman miming along to a recording of the Mighty Mouse theme. George Carlin, another comedy legend, followed by providing a bit of his incendiary stand up. There simply was nothing else like it on TV at the time. There was also not much else on TV in general at the time. In October 1975, there were only four channels — ABC, CBS, NBC, and sometimes PBS — on people’s TVs. The majority of programming was fun but light stuff. Happy Days was in its third season, M*A*S*H was in its fourth. In that landscape, SNL was a firecracker of fresh material.

It continued to be one for many years. There were many ups and downs in terms of quality. That is to be expected in a show with such a fluid cast. For the 40th anniversary, Rolling Stone did a ranking of all 141 people who have been on the show’s cast over the years (Robert Downey Jr. came last, Belushi came first). While reading through the list, after getting past some very questionable rankings (Really? Norm Macdonald at 135?), what emerges is the sheer volume of talent that went through Studio 8H. It is impressive stuff, but it also makes the reasons behind the highs and lows in the show’s quality over the years very clear.

It is difficult to bring a team together, especially one filled with talents and egos. Anyone who has followed the NBA over the last few years can attest to the growing pains that supposed “super teams” have gone through before finding their groove. It takes time to get all the pieces come together. With the yearly turnover in talent, there often wasn’t time to get everything together, even when great talents were present. SNL washouts include Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman and Downey Jr. All are clearly great talents who flourished afterward, but they washed out after only one season on the show. Sometimes it clicked and everything came together at light speed, and sometimes it didn’t.

What was pretty much a constant, however, was Lorne Michael’s ability to spot talent. There are some famous misses — Jim Carrey being the most notable one — but for the most part Michaels was able to bring together an absolutely stellar collection of talent. Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray and Will Ferrell were some of the electric talents that graced the stage, but even when there wasn’t transcendent talent in the roster, the overall quality of the performers was rarely less than incredible for a show that, again, went through cast members like most people go through socks.

This is the case with this season’s cast. There are some genuinely gifted performers out there. Kate McKinnon is a gem, and she will be joining with Melissa McCarthy and SNL graduate Wiig in the hugely anticipated Ghostbusters reboot. Leslie Jones will also be joining them, which is exciting as the rookie is already one of the most compelling talents on the show. Jay Pharoah, Michael Che and Pete Davidson are extremely talented, and Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett, a pair of USC alumni, have introduced a hilarious new spin on the digital short. There’s no Murphy or Murray, but the talent is there. So what is the problem?

The most likely culprit is the nature of our pop culture. A major network show simply is not positioned to be cutting edge these days. NBC, despite being much maligned as the eternally struggling major network, is actually better than its competitors at pushing boundaries as Parks and Recreation, Community, and Hannibal have recently shown. Unfortunately, SNL relies on current events for its content, and that is just what scares a big network like NBC the most. Offending the wrong group of people is the nightmare for the Jack Donaghy types calling the shots. SNL is too confined by the pearl-clutching bigwigs at NBC to compete with the excellent slate of comedy a viewer can find on Comedy Central or HBO. By the time SNL hits the air, Jon Stewart has already squeezed most of the comedy out of current events on a near-daily basis, often leaving sketches toothless. And when SNL does push the boundaries even further, the backlash can be huge, again the curse of being on a major network. When Dakota Johnson appeared on a sketch involving ISIS this week, the Internet was up in arms that SNL would even consider joking about ISIS, even though Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver had already been doing just that for months.

SNL is not done, and it is far from dead, but the 40th anniversary show was a stark reminder of how golden the days used to be and how very difficult it will be to reach them again given the current TV ecosystem.

Daniel Grzywacz is a senior majoring in anthropology and neuroscience. He is also the lifestyle editor at the Daily Trojan. His column, “The Showbiz Must Go On,” runs Mondays.