saturday night sunday morning
NYT:
Veterans of "S.N.L.," as well as longtime fans, wonder whether a show that once built skits around Chevy Chase's impression of Gerald Ford or sui generis characters like Gilda Radner's Emily Litella can still be regarded as dangerous or inventive when it now takes aim at sitting ducks like Britney Spears. "It's such a safe, wishy-washy target, as opposed to going after the powers that be," said Adam McKay, an "S.N.L." writer from 1995 to 2001, and its head writer from 1996 to 1999. "We always knew that the No. 1 reason the show exists is to do impersonations of the president, our leaders, the Donald Trumps of the world - the people who need to be made fun of. And the show works when you do that, and it doesn't work when you don't do that." By emphasizing broad comedy about celebrity culture, Mr. McKay said, "S.N.L." had ceded considerable ground to popular rivals like Comedy Central's "Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
This is old news, of course, like maybe four or five years old.
The tippping point following the last hight arc for SNL - say, 1997ish to 1999ish, a really good run - was after Norm McDonald's firing; in the months to come, you could tell the show was moving into territory far more bland than it already had been with the quality of the musical guests, which has never been all that great to begin with.
Nevertheless, if you were a regular viewer, you could tell there was a lot more going on than comedy and some decent tunes when the boy bands and the teen pop sluts started doing music and sketches: it celebrated, again and again and over and over the very personalities and fads SNL should have been ripping into.
McDonald's firing also coincided with an all-around decline in political humor as well, and the low point for all that hit right around the joint Gore/Bush appearance in 2000.
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