Tag: shane gillis

Every so often, I come across a story about a former celebrity whose star has fallen so far they might be asking you whether you want to super size your combo meal as you ask that all important question, “You’re still alive?” This past week, I had a similar feeling about a long-running TV show, “Saturday Night Live.”

See, comedian Shane Gillis delivered a monologue that…how can I put this…pissed off a lot of Leftists because he made some disparaging comments about how some women dress in gyms. As a result, SNL got mentioned in the news after being a news, talent, and entertainment void for decades.

Consider me jumping on this bandwagon, but with a lot more humor than the subject.

Saturday Night Live

What the Left thinks it means – an exceptionally funny and well-written show that pokes fun at the powerful

What it really means – an occasionally funny show that should have been cancelled years ago

I wasn’t that old when Saturday Night Live started, but I caught up quickly as I got older. They weren’t the cutting edge of comedy at the time; they were leagues beyond it. Early hosts like George Carlin and Richard Pryor brought a lot of eyes to the fledgling show from controversial appearances, but it was the steady hands of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players that kept people watching. The men and women who made up the regular cast all had comedy chops and weren’t afraid to push the envelope more than a postal worker working straight commission.

After the original cast left, there were some lean years, but the core of what SNL was remained the same. They weren’t afraid to take on raw topics in the cultural zeitgeist or poke fun at politicians regardless of party. Even if you winced at how the cast skewered your side, there was still some solid writing that you could appreciate.

And don’t get me started on “Weekend Update” that gave us absolute geniuses behind the desk from Jane Curtain and Gilda Radner to Dennis Miller and Norm Macdonald. I would wade through sketch after sketch just to watch SNL’s take on the news of the week because, well, I was a nerd and had the time on Saturday nights because I had no social life.

And that’s why I was in therapy for so long.

Anyway, when it was firing on all cylinders, nobody could touch SNL. Oh, there are some who tried, like ABC trying to upstage SNL with their show “Fridays,” but it didn’t last long. Even coming on a day earlier didn’t help. Saturday Night Live was an entertainment juggernaut.

Then, things changed. Oh, the format was the same, but the material started losing its bite. Gone were the days when Democrats and Republicans would get smacked around with something resembling equal time. Some topics (including the President in Briefs, Bill Clinton) weren’t being covered as savagely as before. The comedy was hit-or-miss (or Ms. if you prefer). What made SNL so entertaining got muted by ideology and status.

When SNL started, it was the comedy counter-culture. By the mid 90s, it was the culture. And with their reputation preceding them, the competition just ran syndicated shows in the hopes “Baywatch Nights” or “VIP” could peel off even a couple of viewers. That made the powers that be comfortable, which made them complacent.

The cracks really began to show during Norm Macdonald’s turn behind the Weekend Update desk because of his frequent jokes at the expense of O. J. Simpson. And really, all he did was kill his wife and a waiter in a fit of rage. Who could hold that against him?

Norm did. And he did it very well.

Which brings us to the figure I think is the touchstone for the fall of SNL. His name was Don Ohlmeyer, who at the time was NBC West Coast president at the time. Oh, and he just happened to be close personal friend of…O.J. Simps0n. Apparently, “the Juice” couldn’t take Macdonald’s jokes on Weekend Update and called Ohlmeyer to complain. Naturally, Macdonald was told to stop, and just as naturally, Macdonald refused. As a result, Macdonald was fired from the show, only to return to host the show a year and a half later and deliver quite possibly the best monologue in the show’s history.

Sure, it’s no Alex Lifeson’s acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it’s up there.

Comedy works best when there are no sacred cows. By picking and choosing who gets mocked, you limit your potential joke sphere, which in turn defangs its bite. Comedy is supposed to be the great equalizer because we all do funny shit.

And Ohlmeyer forgot that rule, if he ever knew it at all. After all, that pindick fired Macdonald for not being funny. Humor may be subjective, but there was no doubt Macdonald was a comedic genius.

Once the heads of the network got to determine who could be the butts of jokes, SNL truly lost its way and, with a tiny handful of exceptions, no longer became a must-see for people on Saturday nights. The sketches got predictable and safe, Weekend Update was the show’s version of Mitch McConnell, and not even the musical guests could salvage what was left of SNL’s bloated, unfunny corpse.

But instead of picking up on the fact their show sucked ass, they kept on doing what they were doing. People still showed up for the live audience, the critics almost universally praised the show’s comedic chops, and nobody was the wiser.

Except, you know, for the people who understand comedy is supposed to be funny.

I still catch SNL clips every so often, but it’s not something I go out of my way to find. It’s more like a notice of an impending IRS audit; I know it’s there, but I try to put it out of my mind before I get anally raped.

Even by the most liberal (figuratively and literally) standards, SNL’s brand of comedy makes Hannah Gadsby look like Dave Chappelle. And if you don’t know who Gadsby is, consider yourself lucky, but I can give you an idea of how she approaches comedy.

She sneaks up on it, is about to pounce on it, and then gets distracted by a shiny object, thus allowing comedy to hop away unharmed.

SNL doesn’t even try to approach comedy so much as it shops for it at Whole Foods, but only if it’s free range cage-free cruelty-free organic comedy because they have an image to maintain. Even their edgier jokes these days have all the edge of a Nerf ball.

And it shows in the ratings. They’ve had some high points since 2022, but most of the time they’ve struggled to consistently get 5 million viewers. Even longtime fans, such as your humble correspondent, are turning off SNL in droves.

That’s why I think they asked Shane Gillis to host. If he entertained people, it would be successful and SNL would get positive press for putting on a good show. If he offended people, SNL could (and did) disavow his performance and would get positive press for not standing for offensive humor. It’s a win-win situation.

And who cares if the show sucked otherwise!

The thing is SNL doesn’t seem to care anymore. It is a legacy show, so it will have a spot in the lineup for as long as NBC wants to keep it on the air. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good show. After a while, even the best shows get trite and as predictable as a mystery novel written by the Socialist Socialite. (Spoiler Alert: the oligarcy did it.) “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and “Friends” all got boring for me after a time because the jokes and plots got predictable.

And Saturday Night Live has been that way for the better part of two decades with no signs of changing anytime soon. In the meantime, if you want to reminisce about its heyday, see if you can find old episodes on steaming services or YouTube, or check out old episodes of MadTV, which had more of the old SNL vibe than anything since the start of this century. At some point, they’ll have to get the hint that they aren’t the cultural phenomenon they once were. Instead of thumbing its nose at The Man, it became The Man.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for Halloween. The trick or treaters are bound to make me laugh more than Saturday Night Live has.