The Replacements
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Oddly enough, the two longest running weekly shows on television – “Saturday Night Live” and “60 Minutes” – couldn’t have more divergent attitudes about casting their central roles. Unlike the CBS newsmagazine, where 87-year-old Mike Wallace still contributes regularly after 37 years, the cast of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” changes often and for good reason. In the eternal quest for the youth demographic, savvy programmers understand that audiences relish change. The youngest of adult viewers, like the children they were until recently, bore easily.
At no time did “SNL’s” commitment to change seem more vivid than in the 1980s, the years immediately following the show’s first, now-legendary cast of performers. That’s the era NBC tries to celebrate in its new documentary, “Saturday Night Live in the ’80s: Lost and Found” (airing Sunday night at 9 p.m.), but instead diminishes by its deadly, earnest approach. Borrowing variously from the styles of E! Entertainment Television and Ken Burns, NBC has managed to mangle what might have been a compelling and hilarious retrospective of 10 very funny years.
Yes, it turns out that the 1980s were an amazing and innovative stretch in the show’s history, not that you’d know it from this dull pastiche of interviews and clips. Most people expected the show to disappear soon after the departure of the Belushi-Aykroyd-Murray crew; the original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” transformed television and Hollywood with their stoned-out, semi-improvisational style that evolved from years of training at Chicago’s Second City. No one wanted to believe that those beloved performers could be replaced, and when NBC turned to Jean Doumanian – a producer most famous for her friendship with Woody Allen – to reshape the show after creator Lorne Michaels walked away, the network handed critics and audiences good reason for their cynicism.
But to Ms. Doumanian’s credit, she found two stars amid the rubble – Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy – who went on to define the show’s success for much of the 1980s. This documentary’s failure to showcase more than a line or two from those two men’s most legendary sketches is just one of its multitude of sins; it’s almost as though the documentary wants to mirror Ms. Doumanian’s own ignorance of what she had at her fingertips. In the producers’ defense, Mr. Murphy has never participated in any “SNL” retrospective, but Mr. Piscopo, and other less-fortunate cast members, always turn up for these nostalgia fests. It wasn’t until after Ms. Doumanian was fired by NBC that the show essentially handed Mr. Murphy control of the airwaves; by 1983, he appeared in nearly every sketch and was on his way to a lucrative Hollywood career.
The documentary plods through the cast evolutions with no sense of humor whatsoever; it’s like sitting through a History of Comedy class at the University of Chicago. Only the occasional use of 1980s music as an interstitial device will keep even the most devoted of students from nodding off. (Whatever happened to the Fine Young Cannibals? I guess they’re the Fine Middle-Aged Cannibals now.) Even after Mr. Murphy’s eventual departure, the show managed to find extraordinary talent among young comedians riding the comedy wave created by “SNL” itself. Among them were performers – including Martin Short – from the cult Canadian comedy show “SCTV” and the stand-up comic Billy Crystal, who quickly stood out quickly among lesser mortals like Gary Kroeger and Brad Hall. If your idea of fun television is watching those guys recall their glory days – with no hint of humor – then you’re in for a treat.
This obsession with turning memory into legend has turned television into a medium far too concerned with itself. I mean, really – were the 1980s so long ago that we need to reflect somberly on them already? There’s nothing wrong with replaying for us the great humor bits of television’s past, and I enjoy the regular availability of “SNL” reruns as much as anyone. Besides, for those who seek a little scholarship, plenty of books exist to study the backstage chicanery at “SNL”; journalists have devoted years of their lives to collecting interviews and inside dope about the early days of this legendary show. But do we really need NBC to add a second-rate documentary to the mix? Of course we don’t – but hey, this isn’t about us, it’s about NBC honoring itself and its legends as a way of distracting us from its lack of forward movement. Even a two-hour prime-time special with the current cast of “SNL” would have made more sense – and probably more money.
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I know, I know – I was the guy who called Aaron Brown “America’s Most Annoying Anchorman,” back in 2002. But Brown-bashing eventually became so popular a pastime that I found myself flipping over to “Newsnight” out of guilt, and staying out of amazement at how much he’d grown on me. Like any familiar television face, Mr. Brown had earned “regular” status and thus a kind of acceptance. I liked his wraparound, or whatever he called it – wait, I think it was “The Whip” – and he always asked smart questions. You can’t say that about most television journalists. I’d be surprised if he didn’t find a home somewhere on the cable dial; it turns out he’s a worthy and intelligent newsreader who just needs to dial down the whimsy and smugness a little.