Hey 19 (th of February)

The SNL 50th Anniversary Celebration

One can certainly make the argument that the buildup to SNL’s 50th anniversary has come with an awful lot of overkill. Not just the special itself, but all of the ancillary stuff - the Peacock documentaries, the Radio City concert, the ubiquity of former cast members all over NBC in the weeks leading up to the celebration. Fair enough, but 50 years is a pretty impressive milestone. The show has earned this victory lap.

In reviewing the special, I’m not exactly looking at it with an unbiased eye. This is a show that has been a crucial part of my life for almost my entire life. While fully acknowledging its many faults as well as the drastic ups and downs that have occurred over the years, I will always defend it. So, even if not all components of the special worked, so what? It had the feel of a high school reunion that just happened to be shown on television.

As is the case with all of other retrospectives that led up to this evening, even with a running time of almost 3 1/2 hours, it’s not possible to cover everything. It is notable that the show’s producers chose to focus largely on alumni and bits from the second half of SNL history. There was a limited amount of focus on the pre-Will Ferrell era. Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall made a good point; the earlier SNL faces had their moments in previous anniversary specials. This time a different generation had their moment in the spotlight. In 10 years when there is a 60th anniversary special, Ferrell and Amy Poehler can sit in the audience Kennedy Center Honors style and watch Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong dominate the evening. Circle of life.

With that in mind, it’s still a slight disappointment that the original cast - a group so groundbreaking that they were dubbed the Beatles Of Comedy - were largely kept in the background. 5 of the 7 are still with us (Bill Murray did not join until season 2) but Chevy Chase (perhaps thankfully) and Jane Curtin remained in the audience until the closing goodbyes. In a nice touch, Curtin and Laraine Newman held up a photo of Gilda Radner. Dan Aykroyd stayed home.

Only 2 of the OG Not Ready For Prime Time Players had roles in the show, and I’m actually cool with the fact that those were Newman and Garrett Morris. They had a Professor and Mary Ann - an “all the rest” afterthought - position in the hierarchy. I liked the fact that they had their moments in the sun during this high profile evening. Newman appeared in a digital short in which she enjoyed some quiet alone time in the studio to reminisce. Her solitude was spoiled by a stagehand, Pete Davidson’s Chad character, and it turned into a sweet melding of the generations bit. Morris introduced an airing of the classic Schiller’s Reel film, Don’t Look Back In Anger. That was the piece which would soon become tragically ironic; an aged John Belushi visited the cemetery where his former cast mates are all buried. It ended with him literally dancing on their graves.

That film was the sole vintage sketch shown in its entirety. There were only 3 montages in the special, seemingly selected at random. The first was a compilation of physical comedy clips, running the gamut from Belushi & Farley displays of acrobatics to multiple instances of blood spurting to the famous Steve Martin/Gilda Radner Dancing In the Dark piece. Later, there was a sampling of the show’s greatest commercial parodies. Ad parodies have been a standby since episode 1, and they have produced many of SNL’s most fondly remembered moments. I can attest that of all of the life lessons that I have learned, none has been more important than this. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Tom Hanks introduced the final montage, which seemed to start off as an In Memoriam piece. Instead it was a compilation of bits that have not aged well. Hanks sternly lectured the audience for laughing at these sketches in the first place. We saw a litany of offensive ethnic stereotypes, sexist moments, and a shockingly large number of moments in which the actor’s faces had to be pixelated because they were in blackface.

I mentioned that the majority of alumni appearing on stage were from the last 25 years or so, but there were a few old friends there as well. It was comforting to hear Phil Hartman’s voice introduce a new edition of Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey, as well as seeing G.E. Smith back to perform during John Mulaney’s latest musical. The most moving moment of the evening came as a surprise to me. In my recaps of classic episodes I am about to reach the beginning of the Adam Sandler era. I was never much of a Sandler fan, but I have noticed this recent tendency of his. He has tapped into his sentimental side. (I can relate, I am roughly the same age as he is, and I have gotten increasingly mushy in recent years.) Sandler performed a song which paid loving tribute to cast members from the past, both living and dead. I’m not gonna say that by the end of the song I was feeling as if it had gotten a bit dusty in my apartment, but then again I’m not not saying that.

The #1 star of the evening was another returning champ from an earlier time, that of course being Eddie Murphy. I’m hard pressed to name the single greatest cast member of them all, but if you force me to select a Mt. Rushmore I would likely go with a Big 4 of Murphy/Aykroyd/Hartman/Hader. Murphy made a tentative return to Studio 8H at the 40th show, but he was in all of his glory this time. A big SNL tradition is to have someone do an impression while standing next to the person that they are impersonating, and this evening Murphy did a pitch perfect Tracy Morgan impression in a Black Jeopardy sketch. He returned later on to join Kenan Thompson in a Scared Straight sketch. (This is another example to show how long Kenan has been on the show. When this sketch was in the regular rotation two of his frequent costars were the then impossibly young Andy Samberg and Bill Hader.)

It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure that the show would be bracketed by performances from the 2 Pauls. Paul Simon opened by duetting with Sabrina Carpenter on Homeward Bound. When Simon appeared on Questlove’s recent special, it was apparent that his speaking voice has gotten considerably weaker with age; his voice was barely recognizable. It stands to reason that his singing voice is no longer what it was either. Still, I’m not gonna hate on him. What’s important is that he was there. Paul McCartney closed the evening with the Abbey Road medley. He struggled to hit the notes on Golden Slumbers, but he got considerably stronger as the tempo increased in the latter portions of the medley and he was in full blown rocker mode by The End.

I could be wrong but the show steered clear of replicating sketches that were revived in the 40th anniversary show, instead going with a whole different batch this time around. Once again an array of classic recurring sketches appeared with an emphasis on the sort of sketches that had large casts so that as many A-list stars as possible could get some screen time. A lot of those names were covered by the obligatory Q&A with the audience, and later on the show added the aforementioned Mulaney musical. I liked the fact that at one point the action moved to the audience as two costumed characters sang with Jenna Ortega and Kevin Costner sitting between them. Based on Ortega’s facial reactions she looked like she was supposed to join in on the song, but no, she was simply an audience member who happened to have been seated where the action was. Costner on the other hand had a sour puss on his face that would have done Tommy Lee Jones proud. Lighten up Kevin, you’re at a comedy show.

There are so many recurring sketches in the show’s history - 50 years in case you hadn’t heard - that I can only imagine how tough it was to decide which ones to include. My thoughts on the choices? I know it’s a one joke premise, but I can’t help myself. When Kristen Wiig’s Doonice pops the bubbles with her tiny hands in the Lawrence Welk sketch I can’t help but laugh. I can never have enough Amy & Maya on my TV, so it was a treat to see them host Bronx Beat. They fawned over Miles Teller, and then after an offhand reference to wanting coffee Mike Myers as Linda Richman joined in for some Coffee Talk.

By the very nature of the special former cast members were going to have more prominent roles than the current cast, but it’s worth noting who did and did not get much screen time. Most of them appeared in the latest chapter of the Domingo saga; this one introduced Pedro Pascal and Bad Bunny as his brothers Reynaldo and Santiago. Setting aside Kenan, who is an institution, the current cast members who had the biggest roles all came as no surprise. Marcello Hernandez, Sarah Sherman, and Bowen Yang all made multiple appearances. Part of me believes that Bowen is already becoming a big enough star outside of SNL that he might be starting to get wanderlust, but Marcello and Sarah are both clearly the future of the show. I was a little surprised to see that James Austin Johnson was reduced to a blink or you’ll miss it cameo.

The Weekend Update section brought back Cecily Strong as the Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Gotten Into a Conversation With and she incorporated her real life pregnancy into the bit, revealing that the father of her child is none other than Drunk Uncle. (I like Bobby Moynihan, but Drunk Uncle never did it for me.) No modern Update can go without someone messing with Jost, and in this case it was Bill Murray coming on to reveal his list of the 10 greatest Update anchors. Spoiler alert, Jost was nowhere to be found. Seth Meyers later joined in and introduced one of the lesser known Update pieces that I always liked, Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen as childhood friends of dictators. The dictator this time? Lorne Michaels.

In the show John Mulaney noted that there have been more than 800 guest hosts over the years, only 2 of whom murdered people. (O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake) Even with that many there are still plenty of mega stars who have never hosted. Two of them were in this show. Jack Nicholson, who has largely stepped out of the public eye in recent years, introduced Sandler’s song. (I should also acknowledge that in her first public appearance since the suicide of her husband Aubrey Plaza introduced the musical performance from Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard.)

There was another huge star making an SNL debut on this stage. There was a new edition of the alien abduction sketch with Kate McKinnon’s unfortunate Colleen Rafferty once again describing her experiences that were not as pleasant as those of her fellow abductees (Pascal and Woody Harrelson.) Colleen mentioned that her mother also had a close encounter, and that mother was Meryl Streep! Streep was so at home in this atmosphere that I now demand she must host the show before season’s end.

I kept on trying to identify as many people as I could whenever there was a crowd shot, particularly of people whom a lot of people may not remember were briefly in the cast. Look, there’s Rob Riggle! There’s David Koechner! And the mob scene on stage during the closing farewell makes me want to look at it again and do a frame by frame examination as if it were the Zapruder film. I see you, Melanie Hutsell. And Finesse Mitchell. And Terry Sweeney.

Finally, another major difference between this special & the 40th anniversary is that they didn’t lay the praise on Lorne Michaels quite as thick as they did last time. Audience shots of him were at a minimum. In contrast, there were several moments in which long time crew members received their rightful praise, such as the cue card guy, the wardrobe lady, the staff nurse, etc. A show can’t last 50 years and counting without their contributions.

For a guy who loves SNL and who loves nostalgia this was a perfect way to celebrate the show. What comes next? According to IMDB, there has been a total of 983 episodes up to this point. I can’t imagine there being a splashy celebration of episode #1000 so close on the heels of this, but I wonder if NBC has plans to acknowledge that milestone. In the meantime, bravo to all.

The Oscar Mulligan - 2003

Best Picture: The Lord Of the Rings: The Return Of the King

Other Nominees: Lost In Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side Of the World, Mystic River, Seabiscuit

No reason to bury the lede; I agree with the choice that the Academy made by essentially treating the entire LOTR trilogy as one movie and saving the honors for the release of the finale. I still can’t decide which of the 3 is actually the best, and I find it unfortunate that of the 3 years this is the one in which it faced the strongest set of competitors. There are 2 movies on the list that would have made for a great choice in a different year, but alas winning or losing a big prize is often a matter of timing.

Seabiscuit almost feels like a lab-manufactured attempt to create a movie destined to finish in 5th place in the Oscar race. A period film that uses sports as a metaphor; a race horse captivates Depression era America, it is exactly the type of film that makes a splash upon its release but gradually fades from memory over time. Master & Commander had a puzzling fate. Adapted from one book in a series of popular novels, it was intended to be the first of a tent pole series that should have been Peak Dad Movie. It was successful, but not enough to justify the high budget so there was never a sequel.

Mystic River was a great one; a gut wrenching story filled with great actors doing some of their best work. The fly in the ointment is that it was such a downer that it’s not the sort of movie that people are anxious to rewatch, but it was magnificent and easily could have won the prize. So too with Lost In Translation, a movie that does merit multiple rewatches. A story of two lonely souls temporarily finding comfort in each other’s company while they are halfway around the world from home, it is the ideal platonic love story. There is no sense that there would be a romance between the two, and the age difference would have been a creepy thought anyway. There are so many lovely moments in the movie - the karaoke sequence, the mystery of what exactly Bill Murray whispered in Scarlet Johansson’s ear. It really is a near perfect movie.

But there is no other choice than LOTR:ROTK. Peter Jackson tackled an ambitious project and he succeeded on every level. I say this with all due respect as a nerd myself, but nerds are a notoriously demanding audience and I would bet that Jackson’s depiction of the assorted locations in the epic matched what the devoted fans of the novels had hoped for. The special effects were astounding, yet they did not overwhelm the story. These were characters that we quickly grew to care about, and we were happy to accompany them on their journeys.

Everything paid off in the final chapter. The characters were separated over the course of the first two movies, and it was not only thrilling to see the various factions finally reunite as the battles reached climax, but it was also heartwarming to see the way that Gimli and Legolas found common ground. And Eowyn’s “I am no man!” declaration was a thrilling moment. Do I need to mention again how astonishing it was to see Gollum for the first time and realize that we were in a whole new era when it comes to motion capture?

The closing part of the trilogy was not beyond fault, however. At times one could almost call it The Never Ending Story. Beyond the fact that the audience shared Sam’s frustration - damn it Frodo, throw the ring into Mt. Doom already - the closing portion really dragged. While it’s true that the ending(s) of the movie remained faithful to the ending(s) of the novel, nothing would have been lost had the movie faded to black earlier. The moment at the wedding when Aragorn led the humans into kneeling before the 4 hobbits would have been an ideal point to end the series on an emotional high.

That’s not close to being a deal breaker. The LOTR saga was a triumph, and The Return Of the King was a deserving winner of the Best Picture Oscar.

Closing Laughs

I tried to restrain myself from going too overboard in sharing clips from the SNL special. How did I do? Thanks as always for indulging me. Have a great day and I will see you again on Friday.