To celebrate the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” it’s not enough to cram 90 minutes of live television into six days (an already Herculean feat). Plus, the venerable variety show is flooding the zone with spectacles of its pop-cultural power. Following Jason Reitman’s hagiographic film “Saturday Night” and preceding next month’s three-hour broadcast from Studio 8H comes the four-part docuseries “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.”
Executive produced by Oscar winner Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Roadrunner”), the show is the latest step in NBC’s marketing campaign to celebrate the anarchic experiment turned established institution. But 50 years later, the legend of Lorne Michaels’ merry circus has already been celebrated — many times over. (The 40th season also had a star-studded anniversary party, giving this round of toasts a distinct sense of déjà vu.) “SNL50” adds little to this half-century of anecdotes, oral histories and archival material. Instead, it embellishes the edges, making use of gimmicky formats and the access that comes with helping a corporate PR campaign dress up old chestnuts.
Stars: Fred Armisenm, Al Franken, James Downey
Each chapter of “SNL50” is meant to stand alone as a mini-documentary in itself. Though Juaquin Cambron is the showrunner for the entire series, each episode’s director oversees his own project. Robert Alexander’s “Five Minutes” is a look at the audition process; Marshall Curry’s “Written By: A Week Inside the ‘SNL’ Writers Room” is exactly what it sounds like; Neil Berkeley’s “More Cowbell” is a 49-minute exegesis of a six-minute sketch; and Jason Zeldes’ “Season 11: The Weird Year” recaps an infamous interlude that nearly sank the show.
The common thread throughout the show is the packed schedule of talent made available to the producers. Michaels himself doesn’t sit down for an interview, but virtually everyone but him does, from talent bookers to prop masters to, of course, the stars. So many stars: Virtually every generation of cast members beyond the original Not Ready for Primetime Players is present and accounted for, from the beleaguered ’80s (Joe Piscopo! Terry Sweeney!) to more nostalgic eras (the ’90s’ Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon, the 2000s’ Bill Hader and Andy Samberg) to the present day (Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang speak for the current cast).
What “SNL50” adds to the packed canon of 30 Rock lore is a direct result of all this enthusiastic participation. “Five Minutes” is structured around one performer after another watching and reacting to their own audition tapes, stored in a vault but made available to Alexander’s team for free. The device wears thin when repeated ad nauseum for more than an hour, but it yields some endearing gems: Maya Rudolph’s childhood classmate Gwyneth Paltrow recommended her to producers; Hader made the notoriously impassive audience laugh with his Al Pacino impression; Jennifer Coolidge, Kevin Hart and Jordan Peele didn’t make the cut, but we get a glimpse of the alternate timeline in which they did. “Written By” also indulges our benign sense of voyeurism with a front-row seat to Ayo Edebiri’s first gig as a host in February of last year, showing the half-baked introductions and last-minute chops behind the finished product.
The problem is, if you’re the kind of comedy nerd inclined to watch a docuseries about “Saturday Night Live,” you’ve almost certainly figured out what it’s meant to reveal. Did you know that Lorne and his assistants almost never laugh during tryouts? Did you know that Tuesday is when everyone stays up all night to write skits, and on Wednesday there’s a table read that determines the lineup? Those intrigued by a show called “SNL50” can probably say “yes,” because they can already access even more comprehensive resources like “Live From New York,” the tome by journalists Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. Miller appears in a talking head in the final episode, as if summoned by echoes of his own essential work.
At just four episodes, “SNL50” is also stranded between a generalist survey and a niche deep dive. “Five Minutes” and “Written By” are sweeping overviews that transcend the era of the show’s staples. (“Written By” includes testimonials from previous writers like Alan Zweibel, Larry David and John Mulaney to flesh out its main footage.)
Comments
Post a Comment