Live, From New York, it’s Reinvention!

A new season of NBC’s durable comedy juggernaut, “Saturday Night Live” has me reflecting on the show’s inspiring longevity and executive producer Lorne Michaels’ uncanny ability to remain relevant through continued reinvention. Specifically, I’m thinking about their unprecedented 45th season, in which the show hit high points that both harkened back to their glory days and blazed new trails in current cultural relevance.

If you’re reading this then it is likely that you, like me, grew up on SNL. You probably have a favorite cast - my theory is that everyone’s favorite cast is the one that was on during the season that they were first old enough to stay up and watch. Being allowed to watch “Saturday Night Live” is a rite of passage. Watching the show with indulgent parents, siblings, or older friends is a kind of preview of coming attractions for future adulthood. “SNL” plays in the background of parties in college and keeps us company in our first apartments. However, eventually a lot of us leave the show. Not so much a drastic breakup, but a kind of ghosting, when our mid-20’s lives become too busy and too interesting to watch TV on a weekend night. In that separation, some of the show’s flaws become evident: the “questions from the audience” monologs are kind of lazy, the catchphrases become cliche. You change and so does the show. You mature and your cast is replaced; everyone moves on.

But maybe, again like me, you watch those every-five-years anniversary specials and the glow of nostalgia warms your affections again: there’s Todd and Lisa Lubner! The Coneheads! Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood! Wayne and Garth! Opera Man! Matt Foley! Mom Jeans!… the list goes on. The montage of the musical guests remind you how hip the music can be. And your heart feels a little heavier with a sense of loss when you see John, Gilda, Phil and Jan. Often, after I’d watch a special, I always think: ““Saturday Night Live” is a real institution, I should start watching it again.” The following Saturday, I turn it on, and… well, some of it is funny, some of it isn’t and… you know the drill.

But the truth is, “Saturday Night Live” actually is an institution. The show continues to refresh, recycle and reinvent. New casts bring new characters and new chemistry. I am of the opinion that the current cast is actually as strong a cast as they have ever had. I’m not going to fight you on this, everyone has their opinions, arguing about the merits of the SNL cast is part of the experience. Where else on television can you find such talents as Kenan Thompson and Cecily Strong, each as versatile and reliable as the great Phil Hartman, giving you comedy every week? (I was lucky enough to work with Kenan Thompson one funny day in Tampa when I was working at the Hub Network. He was as wonderful and as professional as you would imagine).

As the show has evolved, old elements have been reimagined by new talent: ‘Weekend Update” is an obvious example. From Chevy Chase to Norm MacDonald to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and so on, each “anchor” makes their mark on the show and the culture. Another example are digital shorts: Andy Samberg and Lonely Island revitalized a show element that was actually present in the first season when Albert Brooks and Tom Schiller made their comically strange short films in the 1970’s. The sensibilities change, but the elements are constant and available for whomever has the ideas to take them into a new direction. In fact, part of the success of the show is that the format is such sturdy framework that elements can change drastically, but SNL always looks and feels like SNL. (The format is so well-established, “Saturday Night Live” in Korea even recreated Grand Central Station.)

But last season, their 45th, was different. The year began with the promise of political sketches tracking the race for a democratic presidential nominee, the Trump administration was continuing to stoke political news, and there was a brewing impeachment, all ripe for satire and commentary. Election years have always been good for SNL, and the 2019-2020 season was looking to be a doozy.

When the Eddie Murphy episode rolled around, it seemed like that episode would likely be the season’s high point. Murphy’s long awaited return to the SNL stage for the Christmas episode exceeded expectations. During his monolog, Eddie Murphy referenced that not only was his the last show of 2019, but also that he had not been back since 1984. (Upon rewatching, it feels like another 35 years had passed since the end of 2019.) This episode had everything one could want from “Saturday Night Live.” Murphy is one of those players who is so good that his presence ups the game of the other players in each sketch. He also brought a sense of performative danger to live TV with his signature ability to milk a character’s anger for laughs, evident in his first sketch of the night, a visit to “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood.” Murphy pulled from his character catalog of greatest hits including Buckwheat and Velvet Jones. The most high flying of these oldies-but-goodies was his turn as Gumby on “Weekend Update”, where he insulted current anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che and prolonged his appearance by refusing to leave (probably causing consternation for the people in the control room watching the show clock). Murphy demonstrated his chops in new sketches too, particularly the last one of the night. He took one of the show’s current go-to conceits of a “breaking news” story, this time a fire at Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, and he supersized it. Like the pro he is, Murphy knew that the final sketch is a place to play and he turned up the energy and clearly ad libbed embellishments through out. The episode was a master class in what has always made “Saturday Night Live” great: electric performances and a little in-the-moment risk to maximize laughs. It was a show that drew on SNL’s legacy with moments sure to make the grade for future primetime specials where people would say “Hey, I remember that!”

Then, as we all know, a few months later everything changed. By March, the SNL season, just like the rest of our lives, was thrown into limbo. When the show returned in April, production had adapted to social distancing and quarantine and it looked and felt different than it ever had before. If the early vibe was a version of the adulthood you dreamed of as a kid, this was the adulthood you were living right now. The actors were Zooming in from home, and they looked as unsure about how any of it was going to go as the rest of us had been in our own lives, whether it was for work, school or family.

In my opinion, the three “at home” episodes that rounded out the truncated season were among the best, funniest, and most poignant work Lorne Michaels and his team have ever produced. They were also prime examples of how far the show could change and adapt to the moment. Elements of the format and framework were still there. Two of the three shows had hosts: Tom Hanks from his production office in LA, Kristin Wiig from her bedroom. They still had musical guests: Chris Martin and Miley Cyrus each put on remote and intimate performances. Even the show open was re-envisioned as a clever parody SNL’s traditional main titles, with living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and back porches replacing scenes of Manhattan nightlife. The bumpers in and out of commercials were made up of the things found around the house.

Through all of the at-home three episodes, the sketches were somehow not only more personal but also weirder. Aidy Bryant’s meditative affirmations, Kyle Mooney’s multiple-character dramas, and Ego Nwodim’s Magic Marker make-up tips were among the sketches that captured the sense of life in quarantine. Cats, dogs, and children turned up in episodes. There was also a slightly voyeuristic thrill from being invited into the cast’s homes: Pete Davidson lives pretty much where you expect him to live, in his mother’s basement. While others were more surprising: “Hey! You mean they don’t all live in New York?” and “What is with all the Southwestern decor?” All along, the show reflected the zeitgeist as directly as it ever has in its broadcast history.

Big crowd pleasing sketches took on a different energy. A perennial favorite, “What’s Up With That?”, always loopy good fun, became loopier and more surreal when its signature chaos was divided into screen boxes. The comedy became more inventive as performers had to make do with what they have on hand. Surprise celebrity guests and appearances by former cast members, a hallmark of the show over the past few years, gave the episodes an “all-family-members-on-deck” feeling.

But always, the feeling of isolation permeated the show. They could edit people to appear in scenes together, but we could never forget that they, like we were from our friends, were apart from one another. Perhaps because of that, SNL became unusually poignant and the show wore their metaphorical heart on their sleeve. With the weight of the pandemic and the daily rising death toll ever present, the cathartic desire for the laughter was at its most essential. Humorous moments were underscored with a new sense of sincerity: Brad Pitt played Anthony Fauci for an opening sketch, but when it ended he removed his wig and addressed the good doctor directly and thanked him. The final at home show, the Mother’s Day episode, which has long been a big deal on SNL, took on extra meaning with Boys II Men’s socially distant performance of “Song for Mama.” Sincerity doesn’t always work in comedy, especially on a show famous for an attitude of hip detachment, but in theses episodes it did.

The show itself was touched by loss. In that first episode back, Michael Che told us he lost his grandmother to Covid. But nowhere was the sense of history, sadness, and family more evident than in the tribute to long time music producer Hal Willner who also died of the disease. The segment, accompanied by the several of the former female cast members singing Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” via Zoom, was part wake and part reminder of what was happening “out there.” When the SNL closing theme song began to play, as the episode ended on a shot of the empty stage devoid of the usual revelers celebrating another show completed, it felt mournful and celebratory all at once.

In a show that has successfully invented itself every few years, last season was the biggest reinvention of them all. With the Eddie Murphy episode, we saw the foundational elements of what has always made the show fun to watch. But in the at home episodes we saw the sprit that has always made the show great and the new way that Lorne Michaels and his cast and crew were able to address the times.

In college, I had a brilliant professor named Barry Sanders who taught a class about humor. Grey-bearded, yet impish, he was versatile in Greek, Latin and Hebrew and turned word etymology into a kind of performance art (really!). He once diagramed how the word levity came from the Latin word levis, meaning “light.” The word “gravity” also came from Latin, from the word gravis, meaning “heavy,” which evolved to become gravitas, meaning “serious.” He went on to explain that without levity, or humor, you lose the light and get pulled down by gravity, or seriousness. “If you lose too much light,” he told us, “ you wind up in the dark of the grave.”

In the 45th season, “Saturday Night Live” was a beacon of light in a world of news that was weighing us down. SNL was more vital, current, and urgent than it had been in years.

As Paul Simon sang, in the second show of the first season, way back in 1975, they are “Still Crazy After All These Years.” The fact that it is still on, occupying a fixed place on the television schedule, is one of the few constants we have left in this crazy world. For about nine months of the year, on most weeks, “Saturday Night Live” will be there to comment on whatever happened on any given week. I for one am looking forward to see how they take what they learned from last year and how they move forward to respond these strange times.

How have you responded to the changes over the last year, how will you change to take your life and business forward? I’ve worked on many rebrands, part of the challenge is always how to answer the times.  Please check out my work and CV to learn more about my background and experience. How can we work together to leverage your formats and frameworks to stay relevant and current to navigate a time of change an uncertainty?