Laura Occasionally Blogs

Netflix now has episodes of SNL going back to the first episode in 1975. Paul showed me select sketches from the first three episodes. I expected it to be pretty bad, because SNL is kind of bad, and variety shows from the 1970s are bad, but it was kind of good! Sure, there's a lot of stuff you can skip through, making each hour-plus episode approximately 20 minutes long, but that is true of the current iteration too.

What's striking is just how similar it is to the current version. Don Pardo announces; "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night" (the original name of the show); the opening credits with a jazzy house band tune (conducted by Howard Shore!) and a New York montage; commercial parodies; Weekend Update; everyone standing around waving over the credits. It is a weird little time-warp show, isn't it? You forget watching it now that there were probably a hundred shows like that back in the day.

That said, I understand that the practice of changing hosts each week was an unusual one even for the time, and perhaps that's the key to its longevity. Had it been "Saturday Night with Albert Brooks," I doubt it would be on now. No star to step down means no logical endpoint. Maybe that's the key to immortality.

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Resource: SNL Transcripts