Emails from Dad - “Sat Night Live; Sunday Evening: What a Disappontment”
I thought for posterity sake every once in a while I’d post email I receive dealing with commentary from my soon to be 84 year old dad. Some of his insights are uniquely his, or possibly generational. We’ll start off with my inbox this morning… I did not watch this “Special” but you can tell my father definitely had an opinion as he does on most things.
Gang,
NBC spent a month building up Sat Night Live's 50th Anniversary broadcast today, Sunday. I got excited, having lived those 50 years and remembering some of the fabulous humor skits. I looked forward to seeing those again, laughing at Beluchi cutting the table in half, the Nazi soup guy, 'Jane, you miserable slut,' Sarah Paylin and Tina Fey in a their mirror skit where they passed each other, Fey, playig Paylin, saying she could see Russia from her house and the media picking that up as coming from Paylin, etc. I looked forward to 3 hours of fun
Saturday night NBC had done 3 hours of Sat Night Live music over 5 years in a very entertaining professional way. From the first show at[fter 9/11 with police, firefighters, first responders all on stage while Paul Simon sang then Lorne Michaels asking Mayor Guliani (spelling) if they can now be funny and he responding something like, 'That would be a first,' and the show was on! And the show was clips of the famous singers who had been on the show over 50 years. Fabulous!
But tonight it was live and lousy. No historical clips, songs by artists you either couldn't understand (like almost 100% of their current signers), skits that fell flat, etc. in front of a star packed audience. The look on Lorne Michaels face at the end told me he realized he had a flop. We'll see what the reviews say but it certainly wasn't what anything close to a review of its past 50years!
And if you tuned in you probably have a different opinion but here it was a disappointment 1st class.
Dad
We have not seen the Special yet, we’ll watch it on streaming later (on Peacock!). BUT he is 100% right on the Special based solely around SNL music performances. The opening edit is so perfect. I’ve watched that intro alone probably 5 times. And it brought back so many great memories. Elvis Costello stopping the original performance to sing the “controversial” ‘Radio Radio’, John Belushi convincing Lorne to let hard core punk band FEAR perform with a full blown mosh pit (insane!), Sinéad O’Connor tearing up the photo of the Pope, and so many other moments both newsworthy and just plain fun.