Live From New York...
It's every kid of a certain temperament's childhood dreams
I was fifteen when SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE celebrated its 25th anniversary, which is pretty good timing, all things considered. Besides the fact that fifteen might be the perfect age to watch SNL, 1999 was the year I discovered my love of classic cinema, became obsessed with comedy, and my parent’s cable package started carrying Comedy Central, which was airing reruns of SNL multiple times a day. Caught up in a wave of vicarious SNL nostalgia, I dove head-first into the program's history. By the time the 26th season came around, I had formed definitive rankings of my favorite cast members, could recite specific sketches verbatim, and could perform, let’s call them unfortunate, impressions of my favorite recurring characters.
My relationship with SNL would wax and wane over the next 25 years. There were years where I watched every episode live, followed by even more years where I watched the show on Sundays from my DVR, followed by yet even more years where I caught up with whatever sketches floated to the top of my YouTube algorithm on Monday mornings. Even during the wild years when I had trouble recognizing every cast member (if you put a gun to my head and forced me to tell the difference between Brooks Wheelan, Alex Moffat, and Mike O’Brien, there’s a good chance I’m taking a bullet), I still held a special affinity for the show.
The comedy is undoubtedly a big reason why I love SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Is every sketch funny? No, but the batting average is pretty high for me, a guy who laughs his way through Garfield comic strip collections and issues of Mad Magazine. I’m a fan of dumb humor, especially weird dumb humor, and Saturday Night Live is frequently a Golden Corral buffet of jokes that are simultaneously brainy and brainless. The real reason I love SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, though, is for what it represents - success.
As a kid, being a cast member of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE seemed like the highest achievement somebody could achieve, just under hosting an episode of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Even as the actors debased themselves in service of a joke week in and week out, the level of cool needed to be a part of that show seemed so out of reach. Anybody could be President (this was the era of George Bush, remember), but to be a Not Ready for Prime Time Player? That took a level of talent and luck that seemed like something out of a fairy tale. I’d be just as likely to find a magic beanstalk than have my name called by Don Pardo during the opening credits of SNL. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was a dream that seemed out of reach, but I was nonetheless obsessed with. Blame it on the New York City factor.
As a kid growing up in South Texas, New York City was the ultimate dream destination for where I hoped my life would take me. I’d watch SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and dream of living in the Big Apple and running into Jon Lovitz at a bodega. New York City is where my favorite Marvel superheroes lived, alongside the Ghostbusters and King Kong’s corpse. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I felt I’d discover it in New York City.
To address the elephant in the room, yes, I never made it to New York City (besides a handful of trips over the last twenty years), and yes, I’ve mostly made peace with that fact. I came close - I was offered an internship at Wizard Magazine out of college (a dream job if one ever existed) but had to turn it down when I discovered the internship would be unpaid, and I had no savings account to speak of. In the end, I made the right choice. If I had moved to New York City, I wouldn’t have the career I have now, nor - more importantly - would I have met my wife. And let’s face facts - I was never going to be a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE cast member. A writer? Maybe, but also probably never in the cards.
It’s OK, though. I’m content just being a fan. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s 50th anniversary has proven to be the excuse I was looking for to let my inner SNL fanboy out again. My wife and I have made watching episodes this season a weekly tradition, and we enjoyed the recent anniversary specials and documentaries released. As we counted down the week to this past Sunday’s official 50th-anniversary celebration, I enjoyed introducing my wife to some of my favorite sketches and SNL cast members. I didn’t even get my feelings too hurt when she barely cracked a smile at the Hamm and Bublé sketch.
The usual spiel is that a person’s favorite SNL cast is the cast they watched growing up. And that’s true, to some extent - especially since I’ve spent the last twenty-five years slowly growing up. Honestly, the whole cast kind of blurs together at this point. For example, I was surprised this week to learn that Will Forte and Chris Kattan were on the show together for a year. It was like discovering that T-Rexs and Sabertooth Tigers shared a drinking pond. And that’s the way I like it. In my mind, the SNL players are all enjoying one big after-party - Belushi, Wiig, Samberg, and Rudolph all co-exist in the same plane of reality, separated only by small distances of time. It's kind of like the last season of LOST.
Who knows if SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE will still be around in another 50 years? Who knows if America will? I’m grateful, though, for having had the show and New York City in my life for the last 25 years - giving me a reason to keep dreaming of a day when I might find myself on stage at Studio 8H, shouting “Live from New York … it’s Saturday Night!”