Tonight, I will be spending three hours watching the 50th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live. SNL has spanned the vast majority of my own life, and surely no other show has had a greater influence on American culture over the history of television. Here’s the entirety of the first episode, broadcast in October 1975:
Here is a hodgepodge of thoughts I have about this episode:
- The list of Not Ready for Primetime Players was obviously too long, and I was curious why. The reason: George Coe (who!?!?) was listed on the first episode, although quite obviously it was temporary, and Michael O’Donoghue was as well, even though he was more a writer and would properly not be included on the Mt. Rushmore of the original cast.
- I also noticed Dan Pardo mucked up the announcement when he called them the “Not for Prime-Time Ready Players” or something like that.
- George Carlin, Slope’s patron saint, was amazing, of course. He had some bits I had never heard before, and since they were still figuring out the shoe’s format, he had four discrete appearances as opposed to just an opening monologue.
- The cast was a little rusty, such as when Chevy Chase interrupted himself during Weekend Update.
- The sketches, ironically, were the weakest part of the show, and one of the bits (with a grown man trying to arrange a sexual meeting with a girl so young she couldn’t’ even read yet) was gross.
- It was amusing to see Paul Simon ask people to please watch next week, and almost as a throwaway, he mentioned he’d be doing a little reunion with Art Garfunkel. It seems like such a nothing event, but obviously these days Simon and Garfunkel could decide to do a single night performance, charge $10,000 a ticket, and still sell out an arena.
- I was surprised how the show’s DNA was pretty much 95% already in place. Except for getting rid of the Muppets (!!!!!!!!!!) and trimming the appearances of the host, it’s pretty much the same SNL (except these days the Weekend Update clowns spend a lot of their time laughing at their own jokes, which is why I stopped watching about thirty years ago).
- Chevy Chase’s desk was tiny! The set now is about ten times as big.
- Just to show how much times have changed, it’s interesting to see some of the items offered in 1975 as being incredibly laughable and preposterous being absolutely normal today, such as the bit with Chevy Chase and Michael O’Donohue being a married couple (two men? Whaaaaaaaat!?!?) and a company selling a triple bladed razor.
