How Saturday Night Live became a TV phenomenon – but then lost its way

Reitman’s film predates all of this, as SNL writer Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) tries to describe the show to a confused NBC network executive. “It’s postmodern, it’s Warhol,” she says of sketches in which an expressionless Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun) lip-syncs to a recording of the theme from the children’s cartoon Mighty Mouse. The humor Was Postmodern, bordering at least in part on performance art, and a radical departure from the creaky musical variety shows that flooded television at the time. But the avant-garde inevitably becomes the establishment, and over the decades SNL has become the kind of show that people complain is bad but watch anyway, mostly out of habit.

The loss of his cutting edge

Perhaps because it’s so deeply rooted in popular culture, it still has some relevance – but in the age of social media, SNL seems to be reacting to the culture rather than being at the forefront and forward. When Kamala Harris announced that Tim Walz would be her running mate, social media exploded with speculation about who might play him on SNL. People had wish lists of living and dead possibilities (comedy director Paul Feig wishes it could have been Chris Farley). The near-lookalike Jim Gaffigan was among the most plausible, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when he appeared in Saturday’s opening sketch about Harris and Trump’s opposing rallies.

This opening sketch was the highlight of the premiere before its long downward spiral. Gaffigan’s brief appearance was little more than a nod to the rolling dad joke memes that have been online for months. Maya Rudolph was brilliant as the sympathetic Kamala Harris, a role she has played before. She captures the dancing, the laughter and the toughness behind the lively energy of the “funny aunt,” as the fictional Harris calls herself. But the comic gem was the surprise appearance of Andy Samberg as “second gentleman” Doug Emhoff. He came in and did a silly dance that we haven’t seen the real Emhoff do yet, but we can definitely imagine him doing it. And Samberg nailed every sentence, especially when he spoke enthusiastically about taking on the traditional role of first spouse. “I for one can’t wait to decorate the White House for Christmas,” he says. “The theme will be Hanukkah.” This was the kind of sharp, funny and unexpected moment that viewers hope for and rarely get.

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What gets lost in the mists of the past is that these moments existed always rarely. SNL is known for its political humor, but for any depiction that seems so effective that it resonates with political reality — Tina Fey’s scathing Sarah Palin segment, which tweets, “I can see Russia from my house,” came Palin’s brutally close to his own mishap abroad Politics when running for vice president – there are dozens of toothless caricatures like Alec Baldwin’s tight-lipped Donald Trump, more an imitation of a cartoon Trump than a satire.