Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Live, from New York... it's Saturday Night!

I bought Mrs. Wormer the first season of Saturday Night Live (75-76') for her birthday and we've been slowly working through watching the discs. A few impressions--


  • The show was nowhere near as funny as I remember it.

  • The show was very music-centric, with multiple musical guests and musical sets taking up about half the show.

  • The show was very focused on the guests. When George Carlin hosted the first show he did five or six stand up routines during the course of the show. When Paul Simon hosted the show almost the entire show was taken up with his music and his reunion with former partner Art Garfunkel.

  • In the first few episodes you barely see the famous cast of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, etc.

  • The bee thing still escapes me. The original sketch with the male bees pacing around a waiting room to see if the're going to have a drone, worker or queen is pretty lame. Did they keep bringing the bees back just because they had the costumes.

  • OTOH Andy Kaufman singing "Mighty Mouse" is still pretty hilarious. He looks like he's going to crawl out of his own skin.

8 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Worth at least at Netflix, though?

I haven't these (obviously) in years, but I remember the bee skits and I never found them funny either.

ladybug said...

Well...I'd say you'd need to give'em a couple years...I always thought the later '70's were better..

Don Snabulus said...

interesting...I second the Netflix idea.

Arkonbey said...

Looking back, I do wonder what percentage of SNL was actually funny.

Ubermilf said...

I can't believe my parents let me stay up to watch that, considering I was like 7 or 8 at the time. Wait... 6 or 7.

Geez, have another gin and tonic, mom!

Lockwood said...

I guess I started watching during 76-77 (senior year in HS). I liked Monty Python better, but I still thought SNL was pretty good. The Killer Bee skits were uneven, and I think depended on the viewer's mood at the time more than anything else.

ThoughtCriminal said...

I recall really liking the Muppet "Land of Gorch" skits. I think I read somewhere that the SNL cast didn't like it.

Distributorcap said...

it didnt get good until bill murray and gilda radner hit their stride a few years later - and when chevy chase left