SNL 35.1 Megan Fox / U2 post-mortem.

I thought I'd do something different for my SNL reviews this season; rather than do a sketch by sketch analysis, I thought I'd just to a shorter summation of my impressions of last night's show.

Tonight was the season premiere of the 35-year-old show, which has received renewed notice  thanks in part to Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression.  Although they didn't quite sustain the momentum from the pre-election shows, last season was the most solidly enjoyable year since Will Ferrell left in 2002.  This, plus the two teaser Weekend Update Thursdays that ran so far this season built up expectations for the season premiere. 

During the summer, news broke about two featured players being fired (the horribly misused Casey Wilson and the solid Michaela Watkins) and being replaced with two new females, Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad; as well as speculation that Darrell Hammond and Don Pardo were both gone.  As well, SNL continued with its tradition of booking a not particularly promising host for the season opener by selecting Megan Fox, the bargain basement Angelina Jolie, to kick off the year; they did try to compensate by pairing her up with musical guest U2, whose previous two appearances provided instantly memorable moments such as Bono spontaneously running around the studio and reducing some of the female SNL cast to tears.

The show was particularly weak.  Pardo was back but Hammond was gone.  There was one particularly notable moment (which I'll get to later), but overall the writing wasn't there (aside from Weekend Update).  Megan Fox wasn't absolutely terrible as anticipated (she was at least better than Michael Phelps), but she wasn't another Anne Hathaway: she did not add anything to the sketches she was in and did not really seem to have an innate comic sensibility or even much of a game-for-anything vibe that less funny hosts have been able to coast by on.  The phone chat and Grady Wilson sketches were the biggest laughs of the night (maybe Transformers too, cheap as it was), but the sketches about the airplane and the Russian bride didn't go anywhere, and they found it necessary to dilute an otherwise strong WU with an appearance by Kenan Thompson's awful Jean K. Jean character: it wasn't funny the first time and it wasn't funny the 43 times they've done it in the following 18 months.   Even U2 was somewhat underwhelming: aside from a big video screen and Bono swinging a bit on his microphone for "Ultraviolet" (a song almost 20 years old) during the goodnights, it was a pretty laconic performance.

I've learned long ago that the season premiere of SNL is usually not one of the stronger shows of the season.  What this show is going to be remembered for, though, is the mistake that happened at about 12:40 am in the otherwise unmemorable Biker Chick Chat, a showcase for new featured player Jenny Slate.  The main gimmick of the sketch was the constant use of the euphemism "frickin'", but when a script repeatedly uses a word clearly intended to take the place of another you can't say on network TV, and combine it with someone new to live network television, something's bound to happen.  And that's precisely what happened.

This is not the first time an f-bomb was dropped on SNL, as three cast members and a number of musical guests already broke that taboo long before.  It was also a clear accident and not premeditated.  What makes this notable, though, is that this is Slate's first SNL, and despite appearing a few times last night, Biker Chick Chat was her first speaking role, let alone first sketch where she played the lead.  There is speculation on the internet about whether this spells the end of her SNL tenure (if fired immediately, she would be tied with Laurie Metcalf and Emily Prager for shortest SNL stint), but if the self-appointed guardians of morality cause a huge outcry over the accidental use of a four letter word that has been said on network TV before, and after midnight to boot, they really need to get over themselves. 

I'd be more concerned that Lady Gaga will try to outdo Slate on the October 3 show by changing every other word in her song to the c-word and then mark the 17th anniversary of the Sinead O'Connor incident by shaving her head and tearing up pictures of multiple popes.

SNL: Live vs. Rerun

There are a number of reasons why I'm a SNL fan, including an appreciation for sketch comedy in general as well as the massive cultural impact the show has had over the past 35 years.  It can be hit or miss, and some seasons are definitely more 'miss' than 'hit', but when the show is running at its peak in terms of cast, writing, and cultural relevance, it's really something.

One thing about the show that fascinates me is that a rerun of a show that plays either on the network or on cable may not necessarily be the same thing that aired from 11:30 pm to 1:00 am ET the night of the original show.   When I was building up my collection I noticed that the sketch rundowns of the shows I taped off the Comedy Network didn't quite match the order listed on the episode guide; sketches would often be shuffled around and, on occasion, something would be dropped in favour of either a sketch from another show or material that never made it to a live broadcast.   On these shows you could see a disclaimer run at the very beginning:

Most of the reruns I taped were pretty representative of the original show that aired, but when it turned out there was a big omission in the rerun, it could get pretty annoying.  There are still a few holes in my collection that I haven't been able to fill just because rerun versions of SNL are so much easier to come by than original airings: by default, any episode aired after the live air date is the rerun version unless none exists (usually the weak and controversial shows would fall into this category).  

Older reruns sometimes substituted bits for segments from other shows: a lot of material added to a rerun also appeared in a show without the rerun disclaimer; if a show without a disclaimer turned up in the rerun package, it usually meant the show was not repeated on NBC.  Later reruns were a little more unusual in that the content that replaced what was cut didn't seem to be from any other episode.  Sometimes it would be a live sketch done in the studio with the same host and cast, sometimes it would be a short film or commercial.  One of these bits was actually the Roberto Benigni segment of Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes".

The reruns from the last 25 years or so (from the point where Lorne Michaels returned to the show after his five-year hiatus) have some more subtle changes.   Fans with sharper eyes and ears than mine had mentioned in various places online how the reruns sometimes replaced sketches from the live shows with performances from dress rehearsal.  The differences were usually very minor, not really noticeable unless you made a point to look for them or if they made the change to remove something offensive.  I did notice, though, the clock on the main stage with no other purpose but to show the time in the studio would sometimes visibly show it was a point earlier during the evening during monologues and musical guest introductions. 

From what I guess, the strategy is to make the best possible rerun: if something went better in dress, then that's what they'll use.  As well, because a new episode of SNL is live, it's more prone to technical screw-ups, miscues, and awkward "dead seconds"; reruns give a chance to fix some of that.  The audio is also remixed a bit for the rerun, which often includes a faint bit of 'sweetening' to the audience response (just a few extra laughs mixed in).

I'd heard of all these things from different sources and noticed a few things here and there when I watched reruns of shows I'd seen when they aired live, but it didn't come together until the night I finally saw a recording of the live broadcast of the first show of 1985-86 hosted by Madonna.   This episode is probably the most extensively edited SNL rerun; the most well-known change being that reruns remove the cold opening about Brandon Tartikoff getting urine samples from the cast for drug testing, giving the impression that the show just went straight into the opening montage.  Other changes include a second Simple Minds musical performance added to the later part of the show, the replacement of the original Sarah Charlesworth "collage" opening montage with the filmed "limo ride" used from the fifth show of the season on (as well as all bumpers to keep consistent), dead seconds removed, hot mics were fixed, the Weekend Update title card was changed to the one used for the rest of the season, and Don Pardo's line "Two Junkies be located..." in a commercial parody was removed (probably for the same reason the drug testing had to be taken out).

The thing about that live show that really brought everything together for me was the opening seconds of the Weekend Update segment: usually, when the bit starts and Pardo announces "Weekend Update with Dennis Miller", the audience cheers and applauds.  On this first show there is no response whatsoever.  Miller actually sarcastically quips, "Thank you, Don Pardo, for whipping them up into a frenzy".  I didn't remember the audience being dead when I saw the episode before so I checked my recording from Classic SNL, and sure enough, there were cheers and applause (and Miller's comment was left in, dethorned by the editing).   It became clear to me how much of a do-over the rerun really is. 

What's better?  The rerun version seems to be the final product judging by how prevalent these are in SNL packages and how much is done to ensure these are the strongest product.  But part of the show's title is that it's live: it's still live in a sense that the sketches were performed in front of a studio audience, but a lot of what's done to the rerun is essentially cheating.  Part of the appeal of watching the live broadcast is that anything can happen.  Something may not go right.  Actors may break character.  Somebody might drop a "shit" or "fuck" or tear up a picture of the Pope.  You lose the unexpected aspect with a rerun anyway, but the extra editing only takes it further away from being "live".