Save SNL

The Sketch They'll Be Talking About on Monday?

Clearly the runaway favorite moment from Saturday's Alec Baldwin episode of Saturday Night Live was the "Awkward Carpool" sketch.  And since NBC.com likes to showcase SNL videos on their site I cruised on over to watch it again. 

The highlights from last night's show available online do not include this sketch.  And don't even bother checking their new Dotcomedy.com site either.  They barely have any SNL stuff.

Is NBC afraid of a Bobby McFerrin lawsuit or are they really that out of touch with what the homerun sketch of the night was?  People are already making up T-shirts with the phrase "Bobby McFerrin raped my grandmother" on them.  As twisted as the line is, it is the most quotable thing SNL has produced since the Cowbell sketch. 

Embrace it NBC.  People want it.  Give the people who so desperately want to support you what they want.  After all the hoopla about the cameos dies down, that's the sketch people will remember.  It's what they'll be talking about on Monday.  And the people who missed it have no options.

Save Dana Carvey II

Dana Carvey will be the headline entertainment at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) banquet on Thursday, November 2 at 7:00 pm in the Hilton Center at the Las Vegas Hilton.

The SEMA Show is the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world. It draws the industry's brightest minds and hottest products to one place, the Las Vegas Convention Center.  As part of AAIW, the SEMA Show attracts more than 100,000 industry leaders from over 100 countries for unlimited profit opportunities in the automotive, truck and SUV, marine and RV markets.

Dear lord!  The SEMA show for pete's sake?!?!

Listen to me now, dear readers.  If any of you are in the Las Vegas area, get to that show and save Dana Carvey.  Get his attention, get in his ear, do something.  This just isn't right.

I'm sure it's a great gig for a stand-up comic.  But he's more than that.

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Save Dana Carvey

Save Dana Carvey

Last week, former Saturday Night Live superstar Dana Carvey hosted the International Echo Direct Marketing Association Awards in San Francisco.

Yes that's right... THE International Echo Direct Marketing Association Awards.

How could Carvey's career get to this point?  He was the face of SNL in the late 80s.  He was the man.  When you tuned in to SNL you tuned in to see the Church Lady or the McLaughlin Group or George Bush or any number of his other characters.  Yes, there were plenty of other high points from other cast members during his era, but let's face it, he was the star of the show.  And now he's hosting the International Echo Direct Marketing Association Awards.

He made SNL a lot of money during his time there.  And SNL should really offer to give back in situations like this.  Instead of on occasion bringing back former cast members when they have something to promote, why not throw them a lifeline when their careers are sagging a little? 

You can't tell me that Carvey hosting SNL this season would be a disaster or a distraction or anything else but an entertaining 90 minutes of television.  People would definitely tune in, including many who've tuned out over the last few years.  Seems to me like it would be a win-win situation. 

Carvey can bring the funny, and SNL can definitely use some of that these days.

Tinkering

Last weekend's SNL was a rerun of the season premiere (Ben Affleck/Nelly). There were two noteworthy changes in the show, however. First, during Weekend Update, Affleck's commentary on Matt Damon was changed to the dress rehearsal version. Why? Who knows. There was seemingly no difference between the two, but the change was definite. Someone just likes to tinker.

But the most notable change was the inclusion of the dress rehearsal version of the horrible Debbie Downer sketch. Now, for what I believe is the first time on a non-DVD release of SNL, they put a title card on screen before the sketch saying "The following is from dress rehearsal, simply because it worked better." Keep that phrase "worked better" in mind.

So what spills out on screen is what always seems to happen in dress rehearsal... the sketch is one big gigglefest. No one can contain the hilarity that is Debbie Downer! So, what SNL is telling us is that "worked better" means that the material isn't funny unless the cast cracks up all throughout it. The sketch, as written, is garbage. That's proven true by the non-response the live audience gave. But get the cast to laugh and it's comedy gold! So if this is true, why not just replace EVERY sketch that bombs with a giggle-filled dress version? Why is Debbie Downer the only one worthy of "working better"?

This weekend skips the Queen Latifah rerun and heads straight to the Jude Law/Ashlee Simpson debacle. It'll be interesting to note what changes are made there.

NBC Programming Pinheads

Look, I know I trash "Saturday Night Live" on a semi-regular basis, but it is what it is, and over the past 30 years it has given me a a great deal of joy. Sure the show sucks every now and again (mainly now), but the comedic memories it has generated more than make up for any current suckitude.

But despite it's raging popularity and time capsule-ish quality, "Saturday Night Live" is the most tinkered with, tampered with, edited, changed and mangled show in television history.

The reason the show is live is because someone thinks that the "anything can happen" quality is appealing. The thing is though, if anything does happen, it'll usually be replaced with the dress rehearsal version both when the show is fed to the west coast and in all subsequent airings.

Then there are the reruns that first aired on Comedy Central and then on E!. Some bonehead decided to sell those networks on the idea of hour long reruns instead of just using the full 90 minute shows, which leads to all kinds of stupidity in the editing room, including the omission of monologues and even taking the opening sketch and moving it to the middle of the show and lopping off the "Live from New York..." line.

But I ran into something this weekend that absolutely made me furious. If I could meet the executives in charge of this decision I'd go Ron Artest on them.

Now I'm archiving my library of SNL tapes, because I know that for whatever reason this show will never be released on DVD season by season. Often this means I'm stuck with the hour long rerun versions, since that's all I've had access to since I've been taping things religiously. However, NBC has been running full length "classic" SNLs overnights on Saturday, which has allowed me to upgrade both the quality of my old tapes as well as regain the missing footage.

Usually it just seems like some kid in the tape vault is picking these shows at random, because they rarely seem to have any relevance to anything going on at any given time. But a few weeks ago, it seemed to make sense. It was the weekend before the 2004 election, and the rerun was from the same time period of the 1984-85 season. Michael McKean was the host, and it was the weekend before the '84 election.

Here's where it'll stop making sense. The show had been entirely restructured and re-edited, including the total omissions of TWO political sketches as well as a commercial parody and the second musical number from Chaka Khan. In their place were "classic" Eddie Murphy sketches (who was not even a cast member that year) and other moments from the 84-85 season. So what was the point? Where was the relevance? Why seemingly show an episode with a direct relation to current events and then delete all mention of said events? Is Walter Mondale suddenly a taboo topic?

To make matters even more infuriating, two of those deleted sketches appeared in the Comedy Central rerun of the show. So you can't argue that maybe the sketches were offensive or just flat out terrible... they were approved to run in the mid-afternoon Comedy Central one hour best-ofs. No, this was just someone at NBC going all George Lucas with something that they really have no right to dick around with. They even recorded and edited in a new introduction to the open with Don Pardo saying "with special appearances by Eddie Murphy".

The weekend after the 2004 election, NBC aired the subsequent episode from 1984-85 (George Carlin/Frankie Goes to Hollywood). This time the political sketches are kept, but the second musical number and two other sketches were cut, again replaced by Eddie Murphy sketches and other 84-85 season bits.

Each episode of "Saturday Night Live" is a snapshot of the culture and hot topics of the time. If NBC is going to rerun them and continues to choose rather insignificant episodes, then they should show some principles and air them in their original form. If NBC would rather highlight the best of SNL during this time slot, then put on one of the thousands of "Best of SNLs" that are already in the can. This constant meddling is completely and totally unnecessary.

The Escalator Sketch

In the last couple of days, people all over the web keep muttering that they've seen that Escalator sketch from last weekend's "Saturday Night Live" before. Discussion has ranged from it having been an actual SNL skit from years earlier or even a ripoff of a "Fridays" skit (the ABC late night show from the early 80s).

Here's one place you can see it, on the web site of an comedy troupe called Last Call Cleveland.  You decide if SNL ripped them off or not.

A while back I plowed through the great book Live From New York, which is a collection of interviews with nearly all of the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live. One thing from the book that stuck in my head was how after the show airs live on the east coast, it is then edited and revised for the west coast airing and for future reruns. These revisions will include replacing material from the live telecast with footage from the dress rehearsal. This means that something that happens on the live show might never be seen again.

Now recently I've been recording SNL reruns on E! nonstop, in order to catch up on the shows I've missed in the last 10 years or so. I get to the Rob Lowe episode from 1996-1997 (infamous for Norm MacDonald accidentally dropping the "F" bomb during Weekend Update), which is a show that I also have the live version of on tape. So I decide to do a side by side comparison of each sketch to see what's different. Sure enough, there are trims, cuts and total replacements throughout the show.

The main change in that show between the live broadcast and the E! rerun is the Joe Pesci Show sketch. The entire opening, up until the first guest comes out, is entirely different... the rerun obviously using the dress rehearsal version. Then, the rerun completely cuts out Chris Kattan as David Spade, jumping straight to the introduction of Lowe impersonating Eric Roberts.

What's the point of all this? It's just annoying to think that if you miss the live broadcast of SNL, you may never see certain material again. It's also annoying to me, being the completist that I am, knowing that my DVD transfers of these shows now require twice as much work to put together the most complete version of the show possible. Even if NBC gets off their ass and starts putting SNL seasons out on DVD, you just know they won't include both versions of things.

I really wish they'd just drop the whole "live" thing and put the show to tape. That way you assure the audience the best product possible.

Seducing the Babysitter

I started work on a Chris Elliott-on-Saturday Night Live DVD set last night, and eventually got to a sketch that for years has been a shining example of the absolute worst SNL has had to offer.

The scene stars Elliott and Mark McKinney. In it, McKinney is playing a youthful female babysitter and Elliott's character is driving her home. Elliott's character then has sex with her, and is thrown in jail, screaming that given the chance he'd do it again and again.

That's it. That's all it is. It's a porno setup at best. But SNL tries to play this "getting a teenager drunk and having sex with her" scene for laughs. And amazingly, there is a smattering of laughter heard from the audience throughout the scene, despite the fact that there are NO JOKES! Then when the non-comedy is over, the lemmings in the audience cheer wildly as the applause sign is illuminated before the commerical break. I would have thrown my shoe on stage.

Now this is something that I have mocked with my friends for years and years, and it had apparently gotten so deep into my subconscious that I actually had a dream about it months ago. A dream I didn't remember until last night.

In the dream, I'd traveled back in time. Time travel seems to be a recurring theme in my dreams, by the way. Also part of that recurring theme is time travel for the most ridiculous purposes ever, and in this case, I'd found myself back in time around when that sketch was conceived. Now I'm not entirely clear on the rest of the details, but either it turned out that *I* was the writer for that sketch (cue "Twilight Zone" theme) or I was trying to persuade the writer that the sketch would be a bad idea and was somehow convinced otherwise.

Many (if not all) of my dreams are bad "B"-movie plots.