I had written before about how the repeats of Saturday Night Live are different from the live shows before (in an earlier blog post as well as a piece for Splitsider.com about segments cut from reruns), but one thing I've been thinking about lately is how there really isn't any detailed information in the major SNL episode guides about the repeat-only segments, although sometimes there would be information added to the trivia section of the TV.com listings.
Part of it is that some of these bits are so rare and unaccounted for (such as Gilda Radner's segment in Aviva Slesin's "First Love" series), and part of it is that if you're going to compile a list of those segments, you might as well compile a list of the segments that have major changes between live broadcast and rerun, including dress rehearsal substitutions and fixed errors. The amount of effort that would go into it wouldn't really be worth it, unless I were actually getting paid to do this (and you know Broadway Video / SNL Studios must have all this information on a private file somewhere). It still seems like an interesting project, though.
Here are but two examples of the many dress rehearsal changes that have become the "official" version of segments in reruns, syndication or streaming. Both come from the heavily edited 1985-86 season, which is notable in itself for the amount of technical issues fixed and canned laughter added in the rebroadcast versions.
"You Can Call Me Al" (Catherine Oxenberg, Paul Simon / Ladysmith Black Mambazo, 05/10/86)
The dress rehearsal take can be quickly differentiated from the live version by the color of Paul's shirt (pink in dress, blue in live), but the performances themselves turned out quite different. The dress rehearsal version is pretty straightforward: Paul sings the song, then introduces himself before delivering the "Live from New York" (which is a slight variant on the usual line this time around). The live show version is somewhat of a disaster: part of the problem is that the audience gives Paul an extended burst of applause at the very beginning, which delays his cue to start singing. All through the first verse, Paul struggles to keep up with the music (a backing track that the musicians are miming to) and gives up part of the lyric so he can sing the chorus in time. He seems a little thrown all through the song, but another big gaffe happens later when the director cuts to the SNL band after the "palindromic bass solo": the horn line begins but one of the players obviously doesn't have his instrument at his mouth.
There’s a podcast called The Loudest Girl In The World, hosted by Lauren Ober. The show concerns Ober’s autism diagnosis at 42, as well as her experience dealing with this information and opening up to others about it. When I listened to it last summer, I related pretty heavily to what she was talking about. I’ve also started to make peace with how my own brain works in the last few years. It’s been a rough road, though.