WHY HAS SNL GONE SOFT?

PUTTING THE LIVE BACK IN Smuxr Him.

BY ANDREW MILNER
hate jumping on the | anti-Saturday Night I Live bandwagon. I really do. Everybody knows how bad the past season was, and there have been lots of negative stories in New York and Entertainment Weekly and US detailing just how bad. But simply saying "SNL sucks" for the umpteenth time won't make the show any better. It's important not to simply repeat that the show is terrible, but to ask "why." Why has a show that, during the late 1970s, defined a generation, now become so painfully lame? I've spent enough time watching the pitiful last few years of SNL and enough time watching its glory years to offer a few reasons: 1. Contempt to-| wards the audience At its early,! manic best, SNL\ warmly welcomed] viewers in as part of an intelligentl clique. "You know! what this show is about?" Gilda Ra-1ner asked during her heyday. "Telling secrets." The| show's writers an< producers foughtl numerous battles! with NBC over content, maintaining that their audience was sophisticated enough to understand skits on controversial issues. The 5.VL of treaie-i fa with respect. The SNL of this past year absolutely did not. Most of its skits were devoted to one of the following topics: the OJ. trial, Newt Gingrich, bodily fluids and gay sex. There was next to nothing about relationships, jobs or family. Don't get me wrong: I don't mind idiotic humor, I just mind nothing but idiotic humor. It'd be one thing if the SNL people were just making fools of themselves. But it's become clearer and clearer that they consider a sizable number of their audience to be fools as well. Chris Farley said in an Inquirer article that dumb-guy humor allowed the trailerpark members of the audience to say, "At least I'm not as bad as that freakin' idiot." New "Weekend Update" anchor Norm MacDonald (who, okay, has been very funny) said in the Daily News that if you named the funniest 100 people in the world, you wouldn't find one woman; the highest compliment he could pay to Roseanne was that she was funny enough to be a man. When the people on a show like SNL start by perceiving most of their viewers as stupid and or/inherently unfunny, the performer-audience relationship can only deteriorate. 2. Turning away of

talent Even during SNL's golden first years (197580), the show alienated such contributors as Albert Brooks, Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, all of whom left and went on to enormous, uncompromising success in standup, TV and the movies. (Watching the recent Kaufman tribute on NBC, seeing those brilliant bits once more, I realized that Andy Kaufman, dead as he is, is a hell of a lot funnier than Saturday Night is, "live") And during the tumultuous 1980s such earlier SNL contributors as Harry Shearer and the late Michael O'Donoghue returned, only to get fed up once again with the show'is format and bitterly leave a second time.

Adam Sandlef (1) and Chris Farley (R) of Saturday Night live

This past season witnessed the fall of Janeane Garofalo, who arrived from The Larry Sanders Show and Reality Bites to make her mark. She never did. Whether her colleagues thwarted her (according to her account) or her own personality did (according to the staff's account), we never saw her develop a character or appear in a sketch as tough and funny as she is. She was reduced to doing a commercial parody with a trained monkey. Sadly, Garofalo's brief involvement with this disaster of a season might haunt her for a long time in the industry. "She was on SNL that really lousy year," I envision a future Hollywood producer saying. "How smart can she be?' 3. Counterproductive internal politics Chris Smith's stark New York article on the show revealed a staff concentrated on backstabbing and relentless jockeying for favor. Above all, everything centered around kissing producer Lome Michaels's posterior a philosophy utterly antithetical to the improv group ethic of teamwork. Smith also highlighted the desultory writer's meetings, which appear calculated to humiliate and frustrate ability. Juxtapose this with the images of Sid Caesar's manic writing staff in the 1950s, as enshrined in the Neil Simon play Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the film My Favorite Year and The Dick Van Dyke Show. The writers on those shows were just as insane and neurotic as the SNL writers seem now Caesar's writers included Simon, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks and a young Woody Allen
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IN View May 27 - June 2 1995

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Jones & Jury Current Affair News (R) Jerry Springer Leeza Scheduled: the dan- News (CC) Woman sues (CC) (CC) gers of raising children in Holher dentist. lywood. A News (R) AM Philadel- Puerto Rican ABC World News Now (Joined in Progress) (CC) **s ABC World News(CC) Q (1987) "Gardens of Stone" (CC) phia: A Sec- Panorama James Caan, Anjeflca News This WPVI Huston. ond Look (R) Morning (CC) Late Late CBS Up to the Minute (Joined in Progress) CBS Homing CBS Morning Cops A E3 Show (Live (CC) News CC News WCAU Phone-In) A Consumer Valley Forum K-Copeland Tale Spin * * "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (1 983, Adventure) Head Clss. [Strangers Amen A WPHL Consumer Black Forum T.J. Hooker "Blind Justice" Community Paid Prog. This Is Day Bots Master WTXF Jon Stewart Night Court Paid Prog. {News (R) Home Shopping Spree Home Shopping Spree Shepherd's Chapel HD "The Little Princess" Profiles [Toby Terrier News S Richard Bey {Ml in Family High Tide "Killer Wave' (R) H'mooner {H'mooner Dennis P. S. Powter Business *** "Merry Christmas, Mr, Lawrence" (1983. Dfarra; Dava Sows. A&E Evening With Lena Home House on the Waterfall (R) Law S Order "Confession" Caroline's IstMstke * ** "The Price of Fear" (1956) ** "State Fair" (1962) Pat Boone, Bobby Darin. ** -Stock AngeT AMC "River of No Return" Larry King Live (R) (CC) Crossfire (R) Overnight Overnight Showbiz Daybreak Busi ness Day Sports CNN Call-Sports {Sports Paid Prog. Or. Katz Pro. One Night Paula Poundstone Paid Prog. Paid Prog. Paid Prog. Paid Prog. Paid Prog. COMD Saturday Night Live Sports c*"r- 5""S :T~"S' Racehorse Sportscenter Up Close (R) Strnley Cup Playoffs: Conference Semifinal Game 7 - Teams TBA ESPN Extreme Games 101 M.T. Moore Taxi Bob Newhart Van Dyke [Dragnet [Superman [Lucy Show Launch Box Mr. Wizard Fpper NICK Lucy Show |F Troop Prime Cuts 2*%i--t On the Bench Major League Baseball Chicago Cubs at Philadelphia Phillies. From Veterans Stadium. SCPH Talk Hollywood: Dream Factory ** "Easy to Low" ** * "Twenty Million Sweethearts" TCM "Thousands Chew" (1943) ** "The 25th Hour" (1967, Drama) Mayberry Mayberry Mayberry Our Gang {Bugs Berry * * "Deadly Game" (1 977) Andy Griffith, Mltzi Hoag. TNT * * "The Girt In the Empty Grave*^ Pak) Prog. Business B. Buddies B. Buddies Facts of Life Paid Prog. USA Tennis French Open -- Second Round. From Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. (R) (CC) Tom & Jerry Scooby Doc Jeffersons Corner Pyle News {CHiPs WTBS + * * "PT 109" (1963, Drama) Cliff Robertson, Ty Hafdin, Brooklyn Paid Prog. Artsbreak Paid Prog. BRAV [South Bank Show (The End of Old Times" (1992, Comedy) Josef Abrtiam. (Still Life-Penguin

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TELEVISION
reruns on the Saturday night between new shows. 3. Devote the last 10 minutes to... live improv. Have the home audience choose subjects through an 800 number and/or the Internet. Allow these wellpaid comics a chance to think and perform on their feet. If it's good, it's great. If it's bad...at least it's interesting, and it beats another unfunny 10-minute O.J. sketchGiving the audience the chance to participate might help rebuild a bond between SNL and the public. More than SNL could i healthy canfaMam. A halfway like ABC's l shows and drew lousy Nielsens. .ABC an; have long conceded the 11:30 Saturday mrfa time slot to NBC result S\L's racings air still decent, against i Starstr

but those humorists were able to either put aside their problems when necessary or f>ette- >et translate them mto effective skeu.-.;c e^ question all is abuzz with now B, 'How can SATpreserve its legacy?" Allow me to raise an unsettling question of my OTI: WH/TS/VL legac> ? Doctor Detroit! At: :w4S Hours? Caddy shack. 21 The Chevy Chase SfcoH-? If I wanted to, in fact I could argue that overall SNL has had negative influence on TV comedy. For each of the six seasons or so where the show was superb, there have been at least two where it's been lousy. Especially this one.

lfs early; manic best, SNL warmly webmd viewers in as part of an intelligent clique; "You know what this show is about?"

ft SNL is to be salvaged, maybe less is more. A few modest proposals: 1. Cut the show from 90 minutes down to 60. The late-night talk shows haven't been 90 minutes long since Johnny Carson's peak. Do six skits a week instead of nine.

2. Head writer Jim Downey has said that SNL puts together in seven days what would normally take fourteen days to deliver. Fine put the show on every other week. Give them the extra week to produce a high-quality broadcast. NBC could just as easily run