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Saturday Night Live

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About This Episode

We’re celebrating 50 years of Saturday Night Live from a GenX point of view. From groundbreaking sketches to unforgettable cast members and musical performances, we look back at how SNL became a cultural touchstone. Whether you’ve been watching since the very first season or just discovered it, this milestone is one worth laughing along with.

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown Up Podcast listener to this, the Backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up Podcast.
Jon I am John. Joining me as always, of course, my buddy George. Hey, man.
George Hey, how’s it going, guys?
Jon It was not a show without Mo. Hey, Mo, how you doing?
Mo Hey, how’s going, everybody?
Jon In this episode, we’re celebrating 50 years of Saturday Night Live from a Gen X point of view. From groundbreaking sketches to unforgettable cast members and musical performances, we’ll look back at how SNL became a cultural touchstone.
Jon Whether you’ve been watching since the very first season or just discovered it, this milestone is one worth laughing along with. And ah George, you said in the last episode, when we tease this backtrack, we cannot possibly comprehensively cover Saturday Night Live in one episode.
Mo Mm hmm.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon So this is our perspective, some of our favorites and our favorite memories on it And we’re going to give you a little history, too.
Mo No.
Jon It’s just so broad. There’s so much to talk about.
Mo yeah
George They couldn’t even comprehensively cover it in their own 50th anniversary season celebrations.
Mo Anniversary show.
Jon Fair point. That’s right.
Mo I mean, you’re talking almost a thousand episodes.
George but
Jon Yeah, exactly right.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo you know They’re approaching here. There’s just no way. Yeah.
Jon And so many bits of it have become like absolute milestone television. It was just so much stuff and seeped into pop culture. We’re going to get into all that.
Mo Yeah.
Jon All of that. were As much as we can. First, though, it is time for some fourth listener email. The three of us are here. Anybody else writes in, you are the fourth listener. And the fourth listener for this episode is Paul P. He dropped us a line. The subject, ice cream backtrack.
Mo Wow.
Jon All right.
Mo Okay.
Jon Here’s what he has to say. Hi, guys. YouTube member here. Just listened to the back track, and it brought back so many memories. The jingles are something that is so much a part of the ice cream man, as we called them.
Jon No need to be gender neutral back then. Ice cream man. But after a certain time in the evening, due to noise pollution, they weren’t allowed to play the jingle, so blew a whistle instead.
Jon Really?
Mo interesting
Jon I heard that. Yeah. To this day, if I hear a whistle, I get that Pavlov reaction of wanting a pokey hat as we call the ice cream. Oh, a pokey hat. Oh, I see. To this day, if I hear a whistle, I get that Pavlov reaction of wanting a pokey hat as we call the ice cream cone.
Jon Never heard it. Pokey hat. I never heard about the whistle or pokey hat, but I like it.
Mo I’m learning something new.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, due to now being diabetic, it needs to remain a memory.
Mo Ugh.
Jon Oh, well, I guess we do need to grow up in some ways.
George yeah some bullshit too i’m with you on that one pal
Jon Yeah. No, we have to. Yeah.
Mo Yeah, sorry.
Jon yeah Yeah. You have to grow older. You don’t have to grow up. That’s the point. You just have to stop eating ice cream if you’re diabetic.
Mo Yep.
Jon ah He wraps it up saying another great pod. Thanks, guys. Paul P. We appreciate you, Paul.
Mo Awesome.
Jon Thank you for writing in. Glad you enjoyed that backtrack about the ice cream truck. Listen, fourth listener, if you have heard something on the show you want to talk about, tell us what you think. It’s easy. Just fire off an email to podcast at genxgrownup.com or read every one that comes in. And most of them, like Paul’s, eventually makes its way to the show. So just drop us a line and let us know.
Jon All right. With that good business behind us, it’s time to jump into the body of this insurmountable SNL backtrack as best we can right after this quick break.
Jon Here we go as best we can tackling the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. And really, I suppose how you engage with Saturday Night Live and when you watched it and what your relationship is to it is going to kind of shade what you think of the show. Maybe you watched it when was brand new in the 70s or maybe didn’t pick up on it until the two thousand s or ah So really looking at it from our point of view, from a Gen X perspective, like we do we We’re really looking at it from our point of view, a Gen X perspective, like we do pretty much everything here on this show.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon But I thought to that end, we should start with a quick round robin question. I’m curious from each of us, how much did you watch SNL? What’s your familiarity with it? You know, how and when did you watch it? Were you allowed or not allowed to watch it? Let’s start with you, Mo.
Jon ah what’s your What are your memories of SNL?
Mo Well, as the elder statesman of the group, ah you know, I was about eight, I think, when it first came out.
Jon Yes, yes, certainly.
George Yeah.
Mo um And plus, I had three older brothers, you know, by like six years difference.
Jon o There go.
Mo So I started watching right from the first season when it started. Now, I did not stay awake through all of it. ah again you I definitely fell asleep at some point during every episode. But um I…
Jon Well, you’ve been up since 5 a.m. m watching cartoons.
Mo ah especially Saturday.
George yeah
Mo Yeah, absolutely. So, but I always try my best to stay up because I wanted to be like my brothers, you know, and stay and watch the show that was like at the time, you know, like, Ooh, Saturday Night Live was like the thing everyone talked about the next day.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo So I definitely try my best. So I do have memories of like that first season of the show.
Jon you?
Mo And plus they did do reruns of the first season after like, like back in the day, they did do reruns, you cause only did so many episodes.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo So I get, did get opportunities to see them again later.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell you, for me, i i only ever was aware of SNL through, I’ll call it water cooler talk. It was lunchroom talk, whatever, when you were in school, you know, is the next day.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon out with people. Did you see? Did you see? did i like, what are you talking about? You know, and it wasn’t easy and to go back and see it because there was no YouTube or, you know online streaming or anything. And so… I started to have that fear of missing out because they would talk about it in school.
Jon And though I didn’t know that I would be interested in it because I didn’t know what my affinity would be for comedy and comedians and things like that back then, I would end up watching like out of self-defense just to make sure I knew what was going on. So whatever funny sketch they would talk about the next day. And then through the course of doing that,
Jon Well, then I kind of fell in love with the show. And it’s something that I don’t watch regularly, but I’ll certainly, even now today, I’ll go back and, you know Sunday morning, watch highlights they post on YouTube and stuff. Because does anybody watch it live anymore? I don’t know if that has happened so much with it this age of streaming, but I still enjoy it.
Jon George, what about you?
George Yeah, I think I probably started watching the episodes live in middle school, so around like 9, 10, 12, somewhere in that age. um
Jon Yep. Yep.
George So that would have been around the mid-early Yeah.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George i Again, just similar to you, people were talking about it in school, and so I wanted to start watching it myself. It was oddly enough mostly of the Dungeons & Dragons group that I hung out with that were the ones watching it, not so much the athletic group that I would hang out with.
Jon Oh, yeah.
George um But I remember enjoying it um quite a bit. I did see a lot of the reruns. I assume they were reruns um and maybe some of them were new.
Jon Yeah.
George I honestly don’t remember what was live, what was reruns at that point, which always kind of like as I got older, I always question like, can you call it Saturday Night Live if it’s a rerun?
Jon Right.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah, right.
George But they did anyway.
Jon It was, right?
George um
Jon Yeah, it was live.
George um remember some of the early cast members that, or not early, but early for me because that’s when I first started watching it that I really enjoyed. I don’t think I got heavy into Saturday Night Live though until probably near the end of high school age.
George So around the late 80s, early 90s.
Jon and Okay.
George And I think there were some really, really good stuff going on at that time on Saturday Night Live that we’ll get into a little bit later.
Jon Yeah.
George But yeah, um I think I watched it pretty regularly. um Didn’t have a problem staying awake because I was kind of a night owl person anyway, so.
Jon Yeah. Yep. Okay. All right. So we have a baseline. So in this first segment, why don’t we talk a little bit about the origin of the show, how it came about? I know there was a pretty cool kind of a pseudo documentary dramatic retelling recently that I, we saw, but why don’ we jump into talking about how it came about? Mo, you want to get us kicked off?
Mo Sure. um It’s funny because a lot of the origins can be traced back to Johnny Carson, of all people. It was ah because back in the day, um at this time slot, ah they used to show Johnny Carson re ah Tonight Show reruns on Saturday late nights.
Jon Hmm. Sure.
George Oh, yeah, because he was Monday through Friday.
Mo because he was Monday through Friday.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo And back at, like he said, 74, Carson asked him to stop doing that because he wanted to take more time off. So he wanted to save those reruns so that they could air them when he wasn’t available to do the show during the week.
Jon Oh, during the week when he’s off.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon I see. Yeah.
Mo So then all of a sudden they were left with this gap in programming.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo You know, where do we put Saturday eight at 1130? Oh yeah.
Jon Yeah. Well, the president was what Herbert Schlosser and he went to the vice president of late night programming who will come up again in this story, Dick Ebersole and said, I need you to create a show to fill that time slot because Carson didn’t want you to do that anymore.
Mo oh yeah
Jon yeah. The reason they were running Carson there is they had a pretty weak Saturday night lineup and they were just stuffing it with whatever they had before they went off air at the, at the end of the night. And honestly, the networks didn’t really have an interest in filling.
Jon It was all about prime time. It was, what do you air in from like five to nine or 10 PM on the weekdays?
Mo Yeah.
Jon Weekends were not something they were really interested in until we kind of got into the mid to late seventies where this story kind of picks up.
George yeah You know, you talk about Dick Ebersole there, John. I never associated him with Saturday Night Live at all. For me, he was also he was always the creator of NBC Sports and the Olympics coverage on NBC.
Jon Right, right, right, right, right.
Mo Oh, sure.
Jon Yep.
George That was really where I knew his name from the most.
Mo Yeah, yeah. It’s huge.
George But… ah He did approach Lorne Michaels, and they talked about it for a few weeks, and then Michaels came up with the idea of a variety show that would have high-concept comedy sketches, political satire, well along with some musical performances, which everybody knows.
Jon There we go.
Jon Yeah.
George You always get two musical performances now with SNL, to try and attract a big demographic that they were going after, the 18 34-year-olds.
Jon Right.
George Late night, you’re not going to get your 50 to 60 year olds. They’re already in the bed, right?
Mo Nope.
Jon but
George Like John’s watching it on YouTube Sunday mornings now because he can’t stay up.
Jon the They had the blue plate special at six. They’re in bed. That’s right.
Mo you know And then, ah so when they decided to go forward to show, you know they based it on the now iconic 30 Rock that everyone knows about, you know the Studio 8H, which was funny because that was actually a converted radio station studio, whereas they actually used to do like the ah election and Apollo moon landing coverage was done from there, which is hilarious.
George Oh, wow.
Jon Wow.
Mo But they revamped the studio for the amazingly high cost of $250,000, which back then was probably a big amount of money.
Jon Yeah.
George In 77. Yeah. wow yeah
Jon Oh, sorry. Stop.
Jon So Michaels had this concept and initially it was gonna be called NBC’s Saturday Night. And it wasn’t necessarily at that point, all that revolutionary. It was gonna be a typical variety show.
Jon The live concept hadn’t come into play yet. And it was, it was, it quickly built into something great. The early years of SNL, you probably know, have a couple of LPs that I picked up from this early cast. It’s that initial cast, the people that set this, and we’re gonna talk about some of them in a little while here.
Jon They were known. I’m sure you’ve heard this, the not ready for primetime players. That’s how they introduced that cast.
Mo That’s the best name.
Jon but it’s so And it fits. That was the whole point. They’re not on primetime. They didn’t belong there. They’re kind of weird, kind of kooky. And so many of you have your Belushi’s and your Chase’s and they were not ready for primetime.
Jon They were, so they were relegated to this Saturday time slot that quickly went from the concept is no longer variety show.
Mo Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jon Let’s try it live, which is kind of how it shifted.
George That makes sense. And that first episode premiered on October 11th, 1975. Oddly enough, not oddly enough, but coolly enough, hosted by George Carlin, one of the greatest standup comedians of all time.
Mo yeah yeah
Jon Oh, how perfect.
George i I think that um I know earlier I talked about 77 and 75. I think the dollar was probably very similar to 77, but $250,000. two hundred fifty thousand dollars That’s got to be like million and a half today.
Mo Millions. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Jon At least, yeah.
George Something like that.
Jon Yeah. no
George But they were taking a risk financially on something that Johnny Carson’s like, I just want to take more time off.
Mo Mm
Mo hmm.
Jon Yeah. Right.
George And they were pouring all this money into this thing, not knowing if it was going to be successful.
Jon So how big of a deal was Carson? That that tells you how big a deal Carson was.
George Yeah.
Jon that no Whatever you want, Johnny.
Mo Oh, he can pretty much name his own terms, you know, don’t lose Carson.
Jon Whatever you want.
George Yeah.
Jon Yep. Right.
Mo yeah It’s funny in that show that they allude to, and I’ve heard on many, many interviews from the original cast, that these were like very young, very… non-traditional comedians and lot, most, I think all of them were standup based and, you know, drugs were like a huge thing.
Mo um You know, you hear stories about Belushi and like the cocaine and all the, you know, Lorraine Newman had a drug problem at the end of this and, you know, Jude Gilderoy, all of them.
Jon Yeah.
Mo um But they said it actually became like kind of part of the, the working process, ah believe or not. I mean, they, cause they usually did most of these things. They were completely stoned when they did a lot of the writing, when they did a lot of the performing.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo Which guess it kind of showed sometimes, but it was just part of the culture is that back then, too.
Jon and
Mo I mean, this is how about the late 70s.
Jon yeah Didn’t we talk about when we yeah spoke about the Blues Brothers film that like there was a there was cocaine in the movie budget like that was part of the creative process.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah.
George Sure.
Jon Despite the fact that it was an illicit substance, those artists had become accustomed. That’s how they worked, which tells you how how hooked they were on it. You know, coming out of SNL, which is one of those blood Blues Brothers came out of SNL. So, yeah. Now, Lorne Michaels created it.
Jon He actually left. I didn’t know this before. He left the the show in 1980 and. they had this other guy run it, Gene Domanian, don’t know, for a year. Yeah.
Jon Then Dick Ebersole, the guy who, you know, Georgie said associated with all these other shows. He ran it for a couple of years, but then it was just a little while. 85, Lorne Michaels came back.
Jon That season was kind of shaky, but he brought in a new cast. He brought in people like Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman. And really, i think it started out as a novel idea. was on shaky ground to get started.
Jon Then it went through creative differences and the creator left. And it was kind of that 85, 86. When I started paying attention to it, that it started finding its footing. And it’s had its ups and downs, but man, did it really take off after Lorne Michaels came back and helmed it like he’s continued to do ever since.
Mo Yeah, I mean, i say after he left in 80, like the 81, 82 years, I mean, i don’t think anyone can remember who was on the show. you know, I mean, because it was just not the same show. The original cast, it pretty much all left except for one or two of them.
Jon Let’s
Mo it It was really a kind of a sad, sad time for the show back then.
Jon see how I’m going to get out of this.
Mo ah How do we get out of Oh, I got something I throw in here.
Jon Okay. Yeah, um I’m just looking. Okay. Because our cast is next.
Mo So, um you know, something really funny, I think I’ve told you guys this, but in 85, I actually got to see it perform.
Jon Okay.
Mo I actually went and saw Saturday Night Live recorded. and it was the epi oh yeah And it was the episode with Eddie Murphy.
Jon Did you tell us that? I didn’t know that.
George Yeah.
Mo um Nick Nolte was supposed to host, but he got sick. So Eddie Murphy wound up hosting the show, even though he was a cast member.
Jon Okay.
Jon Cool.
George Nick Nolte got sick on all the cocaine that was in the budget.
Mo Yeah, probably.
George That’s what Nick Nolte got sick off of.
Jon He was fine until he got to the green room and then he absolutely got too slammed that he couldn’t go on.
Mo and
George Then the green room became the rainbow room.
Jon Maybe
George Yeah.
Mo and then the he talk about ah so i then you talk about um dating us here.
Jon for him.
Mo Guess who the musical guest was on that?
Jon Oh, no.
Mo Lionel Richie.
Jon Ooh.
George uh 85 police sting no lionel richie yeah makes sense
Mo Yeah.
Jon Ooh.
Mo yep No, Lionel Richie. He did Truly.
Jon It’s quality? Yeah.
Mo He sang Truly on there. I just remember a part where like they had like a camera over Lionel Richie so could see his hands on the keyboard.
Jon Uh-huh.
Mo And Eddie Murphy comes out and he’s like, what if that shit falls in his head? And then you see him pull the camera back.
Jon The camera? right
Mo And they’re like, yeah, we’re not going to that.
Jon Well, the cast has rotated quite a bit over the years, we said. It went up and down and and lots of memorable, except maybe that down year in 81. We’ll see. But when we get back, we’re going to highlight some of our favorite cast members. Stick around.
Mo Again, as the probably only one who was old enough to see it when it first started, um I do remember the the original cast. And here’s a little known weird fact. You know, they always did the cast in alphabetical order when they announced them.
George Oh, really?
Mo Yes, by last name.
Jon thought of that.
George Yeah, they still do that today.
Mo Yep, they still do that to this day.
Jon Oh, okay. Okay.
Mo It’s always alphabetical last name.
George Yeah.
Mo So, yeah, exactly.
Jon Well, that’s very fair. I’m sure that the, you know, the acroids of the world are thrilled about that, but the yeah people start with the with a Z don’t care so much for that.
Mo It’s very neutral, right?
Mo Right, the rest of them.
George All right, Gilda Radner’s like, this bullshit!
Jon Oh, yeah, right.
Mo and so And the original cast, I mean, the key members of the original cast were Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morse, Lorraine Newman, and Gilda Radner.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Now, there were two other people, Michael O’Donohue and George Coe, who were, they were like, today, they were like the secondary people. Like, they see sometimes, they were extras.
George Like the featured things.
Jon Like extras or something that are part of fleshing it out.
George Yeah.
Mo They were mostly writers. They helped with a lot of the writing.
Jon Okay.
Mo And they were like in a, but they weren’t like part the initial cast that they announced during the beginning of the show They were not in there.
Jon All right.
Jon Okay. Yeah.
George Gotcha.
Mo You know can’t like they still do that today. Like there’s some people you see like in one or two skits and then don’t see them anywhere else.
George Yeah, it’s always ah special guests and they have them listed after the feed after the main players.
Mo Yeah. they say and You know, also including, you know, ah those folks.
George Yeah, yeah exactly.
Jon Aha.
George Yeah.
Jon Those folks. Yeah. but We have so good.
Mo But yeah. would say, but I mean, but just talk about just the
Mo the stand-up talent back then, because these were all like people at their, at their top of their game as far as doing stand-up. And these were all like pretty much well-established comedians at this point. um You know, and just to be able to pull this kind of crew together was, I think, pretty phenomenal.
George Well, and weren’t they also pulled together in a way that kind of developed that whole live mentality because they were used to doing the whole um like sketch comedy stuff, not stand-up traditional writing, the live improv kind of thing, not I wrote a script and I’m going to tell 12 jokes and get off stage kind of people.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Right, live improv.
Mo The stage, right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Aykroyd and Belushi and all those guys, I think they were mostly part of that scene, right? The improv comedy stuff?
Mo Oh yeah, they were part of this just the ah second city and all that stuff too. I think they were involved with too back in Chicago.
George Sure.
Jon Yeah.
Mo So yeah, for sure.
Jon Yeah. They kind of, yeah I, from what I have read and seen that they, uh, SNL, Warren Michaels kind of poached some SCTV talent that was already doing well.
Mo Oh yeah.
Jon Uh, and, and look, you can look back on it and go, Oh, you poached these people, but what did you create out of it? Perhaps that evil was worth it for evil is an exaggeration, but yeah, kind of sketchy.
Mo Right, really?
Jon And it just, and they continue to, it was We could take a whole podcast just listing all the cast members and not even talk about them, Riley. But which we just each kind of picked some of our favorite and notables that we look back on and enjoy.
George o
Jon One that was big during the time when I watched SNL the most in the mid-80s, late 80s, was Chris Farley. Now he has a tragic story in how we lost him far too soon.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George oh yeah
Mo Tragic, very tragic.
Jon But he was like a… He was like a ah modern John Candy. When John Candy was still around and doing well, I mean, but he was like this next level John Candy. This oversized actor who played into his, the funniness of he’s kind of a big guy and he just,
Jon Led with it. He’s like, oh you want me topless to dance around with Patrick Swayze? I’ll do that. Whatever crazy thing you want.
Mo Right. Yeah.
Jon You want me to be a guy screaming about the van down by the river? I could do that. He was so manic in a way that almost Jim Carrey-like, but in a more grounded way for me.
Jon I always found Chris Farley to be fun to look at.
George I would say he was more associated with Jim Belushi.
Mo yeah
Jon i can see the Jim Belushi connection there.
George I mean, especially because he even foretold his own death a little bit, saying he was going to go out the way Belushi did, and then he kind of did.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo ah John Belushi, not Jim. Yeah.
Jon You know? Yeah.
George Or, yeah, John, yeah.
Mo this
Jon Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. John Belushi.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah. They had a similar trajectory of course in there. Yeah. For me, I, I equated him to be just another of, and I guess Belushi was too, just another kind of a big guy who leaned into the comedy of being the big guy in a cast of just average size guys, but with a bigger than life, uh, sense of humor and a way to convey that on the screen that just, he stole every scene he was in as far as I was concerned. Chris Farley is just a great talent.
Mo Oh, yeah. And then there’s people like, you know, Amy Poehler. I mean, she’s and the kind of the early 2000s, later 2000s.
Jon Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.
Mo But man, talk about career. I mean, she went off and did and Parks and Recreation. um She’s done written a whole bunch of movies.
George Mmm. Right.
Jon Yep.
Mo She’s done so much. I mean, again, she she’s one of the people that seemed like I never heard of until the show. But I can’t you can’t not see her anymore after this show ya from her appearance on it.
Jon Right.
George Ha
Jon And just launches her into like, oh, here’s what you’re capable of.
Mo Yeah.
Jon just had to get a shot. And she did.
Mo Yep.
Jon And look where she’s gone. Wow. Wow.
Mo Yeah, and I mostly remember from doing the news. You know, that’s this seems like the part where i seem to most remember her from. Like, not so much sketch, like particular character sketch, but just from her mostly anchoring it.
Jon Hmm.
Mo But that’s, again, but she did a whole bunch on the show, though.
Jon Yeah.
George You know, you talk about one of the ones who nobody expected to do anything that has turned out to be one of the A-listers of all time comedy film and TV shows is Adam Sandler.
Jon Hmm.
George So this guy, there’s a story and I recently watched it recently. There was an interview with Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler where brad adam sorry Brad Pitt is telling his favorite Adam Sandler story that when Adam Sandler was in college, he had an acting coach take him out for a beer and tell him, look, son, you’ve got all the heart and all the drive and everything, but you just don’t have it.
Jon Okay.
George You need to consider another profession.
Mo Really?
George Of course, Adam Sandler goes on to MTV, that game show, Remote Control, and then he ends up on Saturday Night Live from that, and he becomes the Adam Sandler.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo and
George Well, after he was big and blown up and hitting his biggest paydays, he’s out with some of his friends, and he sees that professor at a bar.
Mo Oh, my God.
George Now, everybody on the planet would say, didn’t have it, huh?
Mo That’s what you wish for.
George You know what Adam Sandler does? This is where he gets his Keanu Reeves kind of nice guy image from this kind of story. He walks up, he introduces that professor to all his friends, and then he tells all his friends, hey guys, this is the only professor that ever bought me a beer.
Mo It’s class.
George justist Just pure class, super nice guy.
Jon Yeah.
George He does movies,
Jon With so many other avenues you could have taken. Right.
George Yeah, he buys cars for all of his co-stars just to say thank you for being in the movie. He’s beloved, but he got a lot of his hard comedy chops and his dedicated work ethic from Saturday Night Live because that is a grueling program to work on.
Mo Oh, it is. Absolutely.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo Yeah, for sure. um When somebody else who’s kind of close my heart is Tina Fey. ah One, because she was the first head female head writer Saturday Night Live ever.
George Hmm.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo um
Jon Oh,
Mo Yep. I heard there’s rumors now that she may be taking it over. you know, i don’t know if that’s gonna be true or not, but they think they think she may be the one taking over the reins.
Jon oh wow. Like if Michaels retires?
Mo Yep.
Jon Really?
Mo They have her take it over.
Jon i I think that’s a good fit.
Mo I think it’s a great fit.
George That’s not bad.
Mo know, she also did 30 Rock, a whole show that was based loosely on a show kind of like Saturday Night Live, sort of, kind of, you know.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Right? Yeah.
George Yeah, right.
Mo um But the thing I have to give her props for is that on the final episode of 30 Rock, she actually calls out my aunt’s bakery on the show.
George Oh.
Jon Is that right? Oh, yeah.
Mo Because she’s like, they’re doing a lunch and she says, get done of the the and get desserts from Make My Cake. You know, because she used to, she actually went, used to go there. They have a signed autographed picture of her up there.
Jon Great. How cool.
Mo So for that, I will always love her.
Jon that’s That’s cool. And that’s, I had not heard about her maybe taking over when Michaels retires, but I guess it would make sense.
Mo Yeah.
Jon You want to pick somebody who has a history with the show and is a proven, and she’s both.
Mo but And has respect too.
Jon She’s both.
George but also stays really close to the television industry.
Jon I’ll be damned.
George Some of the other people have just moved on to big movie, and that’s their career now, but yeah.
Mo Mm-hm.
Jon Right. Have not moved on. Right. That’s a decent fit. Yeah. um One of my favorites, Will Ferrell. Now he came around in the mid nineties, I guess was when he came around.
George e
Mo Oh my
Jon So it might’ve been in the window when I wasn’t paying attention. So he snuck up on me, but
Mo god.
George That cheerleader routine. Ha ha ha!
Jon he’s yeah so right.
Mo ah my god yeah
Jon There’s so many, so many memorable sketches, the cheerleader thing. And beyond Saturday night life, he’s in so many of my favorite sketches. That’s what, and we’ll talk about some of our favorite sketches later on in this episode, but also the things that came out of Saturday night live, you could talk about the flops that came out of SNL and we’ll get to talking about those.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon I’m sure, but he’s in so many good things that came out of it. Anchorman talent. Well, not out of SNL, but his fame Talladega nights, blades of glory. Just so many things that he has become a movie star in his own right.
Jon Teams up with his buddy who voices wreck it. Ralph, my man, hold on, drawing a blank. What’s his name?
George John C. Reilly.
Jon Yep. He teams up with his buddy John C. Reilly in so many things like Talaga Dagonites and Step Brothers and things like that.
George Stepbrothers.
Jon It’s just he is another one of those. He’s a self-deprecating comic. He’s not afraid to look foolish. He’s not just trying to be funny.
Mo Yeah.
Jon He is funny.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And then when he then does something funny as a funny person, it doubles up and somehow he’s able to. You can see him working hard, but also looks like he’s not doing anything because he just is that funny. It’s this weird dichotomy of things.
Jon he’s hes He’s a unicorn. like I haven’t seen anybody quite like him. and I know some people get and stand him because he’s so dopey-goofy, but I appreciate that in Will Ferrell. He’s always been one of my favorites.
Jon I’ve got to thank SNL for bringing him, like Tina Fey and Adam Sandler, giving them a career they might not have otherwise had.
Mo Yeah.
George You know, big part of that revamped 85 cast that Mo talked about a little while ago absolutely has to be Phil Hartman, probably the most stoic, straight, funny man on the show’s history.
Jon Oh, wow.
Mo oh
Jon Yep. Yep.
George And of course, just like ah Chris Farley and just like John Belushi, you know, tragic end
Mo Yeah.
George I think in no fault of his own, he was, you know, murdered by his wife.
Jon Ah, damn it.
Mo No, not this one.
Jon No, no, no.
George Um, just tragic loss at the time.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep.
George I think he was doing news radio, which was a very popular show with another famous improv guy, Dave Foley. They were doing that one together.
Mo Thank you.
Jon Right. Mm-hmm.
George yeah, Phil Hartman, his character work on Saturday Night Live, it’s not where he was the star of a sketch that he showed the best talent. It was when he was the secondary character in the sketch.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I’m going to talk about one of my favorite sketches when we get to that part. And he is not the star of that sketch by any stretch of the imagination. Someone else is. but the way he delivers the lines and keeps the star and everybody else in the scene on track, it’s like a father making sure his children get to the vacation that they’re trying to get to.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Well, that’s the unsung role of being a straight man like that. Not that he wasn’t funny, but he would often be the more straight laced, the more responsible character because he was so good at it.
Mo Oh, yay.
Jon And then it’s how he reacts to that, where the humor often comes from.
George Yep.
Jon And his reactions as that supporting character led to him being so beloved. He did for me, I’m sure.
George it was just It was just that wry, sly look at the camera he could do.
Mo c
George like Just like, yeah, I’m straight, but you guys know what I’m fucking thinking right now.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George He was just brilliant at delivering that unspoken moment. I thought he was great with that.
Jon Yeah, it is. Oh, yeah.
Mo oh yeah You know, and it’s funny, going through the list of all the different people who’ve been inside it live, I was, there’s a whole bunch of people who were actually cast members that were only on for one season, but people may not know it.
Jon Oh, what a loss.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Like Robert Downey Jr. was on for a season.
Jon That’s right. Yeah.
Mo Anthony Michael Hall was on as well.
Jon Did he?
Mo Yep.
Jon I didn’t know that. Okay.
Mo ah Joan Cusack, another one who’s on there.
George Yeah, 100%.
Jon Huh.
Mo And even Damon Wayans was on. so up for before the living color, just for one season, you know, it’s, it’s like, and I think at the time they were trying to get like, they were experimenting with getting actors instead of comedians.
George Before In Living Color.
George Yep.
Jon hu
Mo You know, to to see how that worked differently.
Jon Sure. Yeah.
Mo um They quickly went back to comedians. You know, I mean, the actors, I mean, there’s some really funny actors, they don’t get me wrong, but the skills of able to do a live show and do this kind of stuff, you know, it it takes a certain type of person to do that.
Jon Different muscles. Yeah.
Mo Yeah, exactly.
George Yeah.
Jon Different different abilities. Right.
George You know, we talked about the unsung cast members that Mo just brought up, the people who you don’t realize were a part of the show, but there’s one person in particular that if you talk to somebody about Saturday Night Live, you will catch them swearing up and down that this person was one of the original cast members from that very first season, and that’s Steve Martin.
Jon Yeah.
George We know he wasn’t an official cast member, but he’s hosted it more times than anybody else, I think, at this point.
Mo You would think so.
Jon Right.
George And… some of the work that he did with the Saturday night live hosting duties and sketches and everything. I mean, it goes back to what most talking about needing a standup comedian, as opposed to an actor, which granted Steve Martin is kind of both really at this point, but I mean, he was so good at it that people retroactively Berenstain bared him back into the cast of Saturday night live.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, he is.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, big time. It was funny, that one episode that I actually went to see, it was funny, at the very end of the e skit of the show, he came running out on the stage, Steve Martin did, and he’s like, I was available!
George Oh, yeah.
Mo Why didn’t they call
Jon He may have never been officially ah cast member, but he’s just inextricably linked to the early early history of SNL. And so, I mean, I know you’re right. And I know that at times I used to think Steve Martin is it. When when was he a cast member? Go to look it up and can’t find it. and yeah
Mo This is
Jon And we know that now, but. it’s like an honorary cast member. It’s like, yeah, you weren’t tech. You didn’t have a Jersey. You didn’t get a ring. We were on the championship, but you were on the team. Really? You know, like he was such a part of that. Cause he was the go-to and every time he was on, he killed.
Jon he he He brought his comedy chops. He brought his deadpan, like clueless wit to the, to the, ah to his monologues and stuff like that. And it, some of the most, some of the best monologues to watch are going back and watch those Steve Martin monologues.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon Cause he just got so good at it. He was so comfortable there.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon You
George And I think also, I mean, he’s one of those people that was never a cast member, but he gets brought in to just do a sketch out of nowhere. Like he’s not the host that night, but he just pops up in a sketch and everybody’s like, holy shit.
Jon Right. Yep.
George And the crowd goes crazy and everything.
Mo Goes crazy, yeah.
George He might have done that more than almost anybody else. I mean, I know we’ve got other ones like Christopher Walken, who has done that a whole bunch of times.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Awesome. Yeah.
George but it felt like he just kind of hung around 30 rock, right? Like he was just always in the area.
Jon Yeah. huh
George Like Bo said, he runs out on stage. I was available. He probably, you know, like he walks in on a Wednesday night and they rewrite a whole goddamn sketch just because Martin says he’ll be there Saturday.
Mo Why did they call me?
George Yeah.
Jon Sure. oh ah we Okay. We’ve touched on some of our, as we’ve talked through these, these, these great artists of of which we’ve left out hundreds, a hundred at least.
Mo There’s just so many.
Jon ah We also touched on some of our favorite skits and sketches. We get back. We’re going to talk about our favorites. Stick around. There go. And as always, i didn’t jump anybody, right?
Jon Now, as promised before the break, we’re going to talk in this segment about some of our favorite, most memorable sketches. Now, just like when we talked about the great talent and cast members, we can’t list them all.
Jon So we each tasked ourselves with picking a couple of favorites.
Mo That was so hard. Woo.
Jon And some of us cheated, which is okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I might be one of them. That’s all right. But I want to start with you, George. What’s your first pick as one of your most memorable and beloved sketches?
George Yeah, you know, oddly enough, I didn’t cheat. This was the one time where I played it straight and picked a single skit for each one of my choices here.
Jon It’s weird, isn’t it? Strange.
Mo woo
George I was going to cheat, and I was going to say the totality of the weekend update, because to this day, I don’t necessarily need to watch the entire episode, but I will…
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo so yeah
George always watch Weekend Update just because I feel like it’s one of the best parts of the show.
Jon Yep.
George It is always topical. They’re always talking about something that is happening in the world today. And I love that they don’t pull any punches. I mean, if you go all the way back you know to the early days, there’s been some great skits.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George You talk about the Dennis Miller stuff in the 80s that was so popular, it ended up putting him on Monday Night Football as a goddamn co-host. I mean, he was that big at that point. Norm MacDonald through the late 80s, early 90s was just so irreverent and fuck you to everybody with his stuff.
Mo yeah
Jon Yes.
George It was great.
Jon Yep.
George But I got to go back to one of those original cast member sessions. Weekend Update, Dan Aykroyd and Jane. Jane, you ignorant slut.
Mo we Oh my god, I remember the first time I heard that.
George So this was a point counterpoint segment, which was popular in news discussion programs of the day.
Mo I was like,
Mo Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George It was set up like a debate where there would be a topic that was important going on in news and one anchor would pick the pro and one would pick the con.
George It’s no wonder that I was drawn toward this when I first saw it later on in reruns.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Uh, but, they’re talking about an actor who today’s modern audience, they won’t remember at all, but he was going through a divorce with his wife. And,
George In that divorce settlement, she wanted a whole bunch of his money, but she had cheated on him like 40 times.
Mo he
George And so Jane sitting there talking. She’s delivering the woman’s viewpoint of the thing. Like, there’s always a strong woman behind every successful man and this, that and the other.
George And then Aykroyd just hits her with the deadest cold line in history.
Mo Yeah.
Jon so
George Jane, you ignorant slut.
Mo yeah
George And he just lambast not only the wife, but Jane as well.
Jon but
Jon It’s great.
Mo Yeah, it’s like all personal is like totally a personal thing.
George It is awesome. I hope that we’re putting links for YouTube videos where we can find them in the show notes for this because…
Mo oh yeah.
George Hearing me talk about it doesn’t matter, but it is very important for you to go watch some of these sketches because, oh my God, it’s, I think it’s like maybe four five minutes.
Jon it’s great
George It’s well worth 20 minutes worth of time if they did that much, but holy hell, Jane, you ignorant slut.
Mo Oh, absolutely.
George I know how that plays in today’s culture. It’s still fucking funny.
Jon Yeah. It’s still funny.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon It’s it’s hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. It is so unexpected. It comes out of left field. You’re waiting for the, the educated intellectual rebuttal.
Mo yeah
Jon And it’s just this bam, this it crazy disc. You’re like, Whoa, hold on.
George What was that one line? He said, you hopped for more beds than some electronics partner or something.
Mo yeah yeah
George And I was just fucking on the floor.
Jon Okay. All right. All right. Let me, I kind of compete with that. We’ll see. This was, this was my cheat. This was my first cheat and it was rather than, I will pick a single and it’s Dick in a box, but in general, the digital shorts.
Mo Yeah, they’ve they’ve gotten so good.
Jon They’re so good. And I first became aware of them with Lazy Sunday, which was Samberg and Parnell.
George Mm-hmm.
George Okay.
Jon And they’re going to see Narnia like as this hardcore, absolute gangster rap about the two of them meeting up to go watch the legend of Narnia in the movie.
Mo this is
Jon Right. And but and like the Lonely Island, Samberg’s ah band kind of came out of these digital shorts because they’ve been around a while as kids and they did like on a boat and on the ground and stuff like that.
George Right.
Jon We’ve seen things like ah Shy Ronnie and Natalie’s rap and stuff like that.
George Oh, Natalie’s rap. Yeah.
Jon Right, right, right.
Mo Miss.
Jon With Natalie Portman. And it’s just so whenever the title card comes up, you know, you come back from a break and it says an SNL digital short. You’re like, oh, damn, here we go.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Because, you know, it is a well produced, well thought out, hilarious, extended gag. that either subverts your expectations or, you know, and I’ll keep coming back to Dick in a Box, which is just so funny because it’s like these 80s hip hop guys.
Jon Not hip hop. You know what I mean? the They’re smooth. They got the big rope gold chain and the turtleneck and everything. And then they’re singing about the most ridiculous thing that makes it so funny.
George You know, it’s it’s those pre-recorded segments. And even though it’s Saturday Night Live, they have to intersperse pre-recorded segments because they got to do set changes, costume changes, all that kind of stuff.
Mo Yeah. 51,
George It’s virtually impossible for them to move from one thing to another without having something in between. For me, the modern day equivalent, which I just found out for this upcoming season, has been discontinued.
George The Please Don’t Destroy group, that’s
Jon Oh, no, those guys are cool.
George Based in this there. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George One of the guys is a main cast member now, but the other two guys are gone, which is sad ah for season.
Mo yeah
Jon Oh, it’s too bad. Yeah.
George I guess what is a 51 now? Right.
Mo fifty one yeah
Jon Yeah.
George um
Jon Yeah.
George But I love those prerecorded segments. The thing that the digital shorts did better than almost anyone, though, was the juxtaposition of what they started off presenting and what it became.
Jon Right.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon It takes a turn midway through usually.
George Right. Right. Exactly.
Mo thinking like, oh, this is nice.
George The little, you the Shyamalanananan twist that they did so much better than he does were brilliant.
Mo You know. Yeah.
Jon What a twist. All
Mo Oh, my God. All right. Yeah.
Jon right, Mo.
Mo I had a tough time.
Jon Give us your first pick.
Mo Yeah, I had a tough time doing this. So I slightly cheated. I said Jeopardy. which means Black Jeopardy and Celebrity Jeopardy because they’re both hilarious.
Jon I like it.
George There’s a lot of Jeopardy’s. Yeah.
Mo the um I mean, to me, one of the funniest one, though, is when they did Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks. don’t know if you ever saw that skit where it’s like, you know, he’s like a country down down home guy.
George Oh, ah yeah.
Mo And and all of a sudden, they start realizing the things they have in common, which was the best part, you know, you know, like of the things was like, you know,
Jon Yep. yep
Mo well, he’s like, a skinny woman or something like that, and he’s like, it’s good for nothing. yeah And the woman’s like, ah yeah, yeah, yeah. I like a woman with little bit of heft on her. And they’re like, oh, you’re right. you know I mean, it was just it was just so funny. Then they finally they said, like, yo,
Mo the ending skit was like okay let’s talk you know this is Black Lives what and he’s like I have thoughts on that like yeah yeah yeah we’re gonna stop there we’re gonna move on because we’re not gonna talk about that but just those skits and the celebrity ones too were just oh my god this one’s that you can put on just watch through all them and you’re gonna be dying the entire time
Jon Yeah, well, some of my favorites were the ones with, when they had Sean Connery.
George Right, yeah.
Mo you
Jon of A fake Sean Connery.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo yeah yeah yep
Jon And he was always, and Will Ferrell would be Trebek. And Connery was always mispronouncing.
George e
Jon I’ll take a bone apetit. ah That’s bon appetit. You know? ah just, he was always misunderstanding. I’ll do the rapist.
Jon All right, therapist for $200. Yeah.
Jon so They had so much fun. And it wasn’t about the game. It was about whoever. It was usually Celebrity Jeopardy or Black Jeopardy, like you said, that kind of thing.
Mo yeah
George Right.
Jon Always funny. and And they were live, you know, unlike some of those others. You said before, some of those pre-recorded. They had to post-production and stuff. But the Celebrity Jeopardy ones, another one of those. The best part live sometimes was watching people.
Jon They couldn’t take it when it was so funny and they’d crack up.
Mo Yes, they could keep a straight face. Yeah.
Jon And a lot of that happened on the Jeopardy.
Jon You got another one for us, George?
George Yeah, so I had a really tough time on my second choice because we all agreed to just doing two.
Mo Yes.
George And as Mo pointed out, that’s nearly fucking impossible.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Yeah, I know.
Mo Yes, it is.
Jon I know. Yeah.
George when you’re talking about your favorite favorite Saturday night live sketches. Um, I, I was very close to doing the Beavis and butthead that came out just a couple of years ago because that was hilarious, but it wasn’t hilarious because of the skit.
Mo Oh my God, that was so funny.
Jon That was genius. Yeah.
George It was hilarious because of the break, right?
Mo Yes, the actually had the reactions.
Jon Yep.
George When the, when the cast member broke, that was what made that skit huge and viral and everything.
Mo Yes, absolutely.
Jon Yeah.
George I then almost settled on Shweaty Balls, the Alec Baldwin NPR skit, because that also had breaks, but it was a really well-crafted skit.
Mo I can see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon I’ll be bald one. Yeah.
George It was beautiful. But…
George I finally decided on the one that John kind of highlighted and talked about earlier, Matt Foley down by the river.
Jon Oh, there we go.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George So ah this is Chris Farley at his absolute best.
Jon Sure.
George I mean, I could have gone with a Patrick Swayze, Chippendales audition, but
Mo i thought about that one.
Jon sir
George I like ah Van Down by the River for Chris Farley a little bit more than that one. So first of all, it’s Chris Farley, David Spade, Phil Hartman, like I talked about earlier.
Jon ye
George He was the father in this segment. Julie Sweeney, who also did the It’s Pat stuff.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George um And then the host for that night was Christina Applegate. So David Spade and Christina Applegate played the children.
Jon Yep. yep
George ah Julie Sweeney and Phil Hartman played the parents, and they were trying to get their children to start doing better in life. So they brought in a motivational speaker, which was Matt Foley, who he had sat down in the fucking basement all day drinking coffee.
George Chris Farley comes bounding up the stairs, and he does some of the most outlandish movements and mannerisms to highlight what he was trying to say.
George and then there’s the part that everybody remembers where he falls face first into the coffee table and destroys it.
Mo Yeah. Oh
George That was unplanned. David Spade, Christine Applegate, nobody knew he was going to do that.
Mo um my god
George He just chose it in the moment. That’s part of the beauty of live TV.
Jon who That’s Chris Farley.
George And then everybody forgets the rest of that segment because table busting is what you remember. It’s like chest bursting in Alien.
Jon Oh.
George Nobody remembers what happens in the rest of that scene sometimes. But at the end of that, Hartman has to contain and corral Farley because Farley’s like, I’m going outside to get all my stuff to move in and keep motivating these kids.
George They do do a couple more of this skit later on, but…
Jon ah
George Hartman has to contain the whole thing and bind it all together. And Farley still just kind of going off on his thing. And it’s just a beautiful skit.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George It may be one of the best of all time for Saturday night life.
Jon Yeah, it’s got my man in it. He’s hard to go wrong.
George Yeah.
Jon And that’s one of those things we’ve mentioned. Living in a van down right by the river has become like ah eat my shorts. It’s a saying. but You might not even know the sketch, but you understand what that reference is.
George Yeah.
Jon You know, oh, if you don’t do things right, here’s what’s going to end up to you. Right. its one of those things has become ingrained in our culture.
George Yeah.
Jon Came out of that ridiculous sketch.
George Well, another thing that came ingrained out of SNL that’s in our culture now is the one that you’ve got to talk about, John.
Jon Oh, you’re damn right.
George i I would have picked this one, but you already had it on the list.
Jon Well, you’re welcome because it’s going to be highlighted. So this has my man, Will Ferrell in it, playing Gene Frankel, who was a yeah fictional and yet very passionate cowbell player for Blue Oyster Cult.
Jon In the more cowbell sketch. Now this had Christopher Walken.
Mo my god.
Jon Again, we mentioned he kind of popped in ah playing a Bruce Dickinson is supposed to be.
Mo Oh my god.
George Yeah.
Jon I’m just like everybody else. I wear my pants, put on my pants one leg at a time. But once I have my pants on, I make gold records. so He’s advising the blue oyster cult band as they’re recording.
Jon ah Don’t fear the Reaper.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon And Farrell is the one with the cowbell that we is in the song, but he’s so overly enthusiastic about it. And it’s got ah ah Chris Kattan, Parnell, Jimmy Fallon is in there.
Jon And he’s playing the cowbell right next to Kattan’s head, like right, just right in his ear. And they keep stopping the song.
Jon And I go, hey, ah Bruce, can you come out? Can we talk a little bit? ah Babies, what are you doing? This is ah this was a beautiful thing. Why did you wreck this take? I’m wondering about the cowbell. Yeah. i would More cowbell. We’re going to need more.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And then they try it again, and he’s dancing around. He stops it again, calls Bruce in. Yeah, you’re to dial back some, not too much, because you’re going to want that cowbell.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon And they have this big tough the tiff, and they’re back and forth, and finally the band comes around and says, let’s lay it down together. Let’s do all the cowbell. Bruce Dickinson’s the man, but that just, I got the fever. The only cure is more cowbell.
Jon which It’s so, so funny.
George To me, I think the funniest part of that sketch, you take away the crazy performance from Farrell, the Chris Walken delivering the, the like so passionate.
George I’ve got to have more cowbell stuff.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Will Farrell midriff in that scene, that shirt that he picked out was fucking perfect for that character.
Mo Oh.
Jon See, right. Not afraid to embarrass himself.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Right.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And lean into that.
George No, no, he’s done the nudity thing in a lot of different shows and movies, Taligate and Nights, as you talked about earlier, when he’s doing the tighty-whity run around the track and everything.
Jon I love that. Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep. Yep.
George He’s not afraid to be naked, old school, running down the street anyway. But still, that midriff, that shirt that looks like it was picked out by his mother when he was 14 years old, and he’s 6’5″.
Jon About three sizes too small. Yeah. Yeah.
George Yeah, oh my God, that was beautiful.
Jon And he’s banging the cowbell over his head and it’s riding up over his belly.
Mo No. Oh, and I think that
Jon But he doesn’t fix it. He’s into the cowbell.
Mo no
Jon He’s into it.
George Yep. yep
Mo oh and i think
Jon Let him wail, Bruce says. Let him wail.
Mo Yeah, I think it’s one of the things that also the beauty of Saturday Night Live is that you get these hosts that you would not think are funny or think would not be good. But then you get like Christopher Walken. He was hilarious on Saturday Night Live, you know.
Jon Yeah, of course. Yep.
Mo And so you get these actors who on there. You’re like, oh, he’s kind of like a normal straight actor. But then you I guess they have these comedy instincts in them that you never knew they had. And you get some of these amazing performances from these people that you least expect it from.
Jon Babies, yeah you’re going to want that cowbell.
Jon All right. I can talk about that for another hour, but Mo, why don’t you round this out? What was your second pick?
Mo All right. So ah i I’m pulling a sketch from the original season, the first season.
Jon Oh, oh, deep cut.
Mo Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase.
Jon All right.
Mo It’s just the two of them.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon Oh, OK.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon Now remember.
Mo It’s the word.
George Yeah, there’s only one skit that qualifies with that.
Mo It’s the word. Yep. It’s the word association sketch. And people, I’m to do my best to describe it, but I cannot. And if you go watch it, I’ll put a link. You’ll see why I cannot go into a big detail on this.
Mo But you know Richard Pryor is applying for a job, you know and um Chevy Chase the interviewer, and he’s asked, to say okay, like we’d like do a little psychological test and you know a little word association. thought word. You tell me the first word pops in your head.
Mo And Richard Pryor is like, yeah, okay. And it starts off with just like normal dog, cat, you know house, you know mom, or whatever. And then out of nowhere, Chevy Chase…
Mo There wasn’t a racial slur. Just says it like it’s nothing.
George Yeah.
Mo Just like it’s nothing.
Jon Yeah.
Mo And Richard Pryor’s face, because he was brilliant. He’s just like confused. He’s like, he says, what? What? And Chevy Chase just looks down his paper, says it again. Just calmly.
Mo Yeah. And then Richard Pryor throws back a racial slur back at him. Just calmly, you know?
Jon ah
Mo and And it escalates. They keep going.
Jon yeah
Mo They keep doing worse and worse and worse. So finally, Chevy Chase drops the N-word.
George e
Mo And Richard Pryor’s response to that was hilarious.
Jon but
George Well, because he was set up with a prior one because he said the slur back in the prior one and then he added to it.
Mo Yeah.
Jon yeah
Mo Oh, yeah.
Mo Yes.
Jon yep yep we won’t spoil it for you you gotta watch it we we cannot do a justice here yeah oh
Mo And… Yeah, you gotta watch this one because again, i because YouTube, I mean, they will totally ban this thing from being on YouTube or whatever just because we say these words. But, well, one thing it shows me is it the show back then was fearless.
Mo Like, they would do skits about anything.
Jon yeah
George Sure.
Mo Like, you couldn’t do that skit today. would not fly.
Jon oh no
George No, this was live network TV that they got this past the sensors on somehow.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Right. You know?
George Like, I feel like maybe the sensor wasn’t given the script ahead of time or given an alternate script.
Mo I’m thinking not… Yeah, I’m thinking not too. And by then, because they didn’t have the tape delay.
Jon down version, perhaps.
Mo Yeah, they didn’t have the delay button back then.
George yeah
Jon Oh, sorry. That was an ad lib. We didn’t know they were going to do that. Ha ha. Right. They planned it all along.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Probably. Right.
George Right?
Mo But it’s it’s had become like it’ now become like a classic skit from back then.
George Hmm.
Mo Like you said, I mean, that’s, you J.J.
Jon Oh,
Mo ignorant slut. All these things that they, today, like you said, it would be, people be screaming at them if they did stuff like that today.
George Oh yeah, it would get the show canceled.
Mo You know?
Jon Yeah. A little too sensitive.
Mo Yeah. Which is not really fair because I think they were making fun of the fact that
Jon Of course they were.
Mo like They were poking fun at say the problem.
Jon Right.
Mo you know And instead of avoiding it, they’re just hitting it head on with a sledgehammer, which I think really liked.
Jon Of course.
Jon That’s what good comedy and parody does.
George Yeah.
Jon And some people don’t see that.
Mo Yeah.
Jon They don’t see the forest for the trees.
George It’s kind of like the reaction that Dave Chappelle got whenever he did his blind KKK member.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George skit on the Dave Chappelle show that got a lot of ire and a lot of people were mad as hell about that. But he said, look, I’m showing how dumb this mentality is.
Mo Right.
George That’s what I’m trying to prove. Hmm.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, watch it.
Jon All right.
Mo I won’t subscribe it.
Jon Oh, we will. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll watch it again. Yep. All right. We get back from this break. We’re going to talk a little bit more about the lingering and lasting impacts SNL has had on other pop cultures. Stick around.
Jon All right. All right. This is the laundry list of stuff to run through.
Mo Yeah.
George Should we say what they said for the people who are going to listen in the edit or for part of a
Jon I’m not getting canceled. i
Jon and I mean, I will say dead honky if you want me to. I’ll say that.
Mo Yeah.
George Right.
Jon That’s okay. Right. Dead honky.
Mo Honky honky.
George That was what was great because he had said honky in the previous line was his previous response.
Jon All right. dead honky
George Honky.
Mo It did.
George Dead honky.
Mo I think there’s the twitch die twitch.
George Yeah.
Mo He’s like, yeah, get the job.
George oh
Mo Your mama.
Jon all right
Mo Yeah.
George I think that skit is why they don’t do that interview technique anymore.
Jon Okay, anybody want to so just pick who’s going to grab these and just run through the same sequence just so we know.
Mo but
Mo Yeah, that’s fine.
George ah I’ll do kids in the hall.
Jon Okay, grab that.
Mo I do live in color.
Jon i’ll talk but
Mo Unless you want to.
Jon I’ll talk about the movies briefly at the end. They’re in living color. I’ll do Mad TV. I watch that plenty.
Mo I didn’t watch it that much. I did watch Fridays a little bit.
Jon I don’t know what Fridays is Did you?
Mo Yeah, I did.
Jon I don’t know anything about that. Oops.
Mo It was the ABC tried to compete against Saturday Live.
Jon And…
George i can I can briefly talk about Whitest Kids You Know just because i had heard the term.
Jon Okay.
George I never watched the show, but that’s a modern thing.
Jon All right. All right. And ill I’ll do SCTV, I guess. I’ll do that. um’ I’ll move it. But it actually started around the same time. i’m going to move it up, I think. It started around the same time. I’ll move these sort around little bit like that.
Jon Does that work?
George That’s fine. Whitest Kids You Know is like 2007. I don’t know if you want to go in chronological.
Mo you
Jon I just want to make sure SCTV was first because it was like 75. seventy five It was like right at the same time, kind of.
George Right.
Jon yeah
George Gotcha.
Jon Okay.
George Cool.
Jon That seems fine. Yeah. Do that and then get out.
Jon Excuse me. I want to pop this open.
Jon Damn it. Excuse me.
Jon Okay.
Jon Where did my list go? There it is. Okay, that’s fine. Okay, last segment. In five, four, three.
Jon Yeah, five, four, three.
Jon We have touched on the best you could do with such a large scope, ah Saturday Night Live, some of our favorite cast members and scenes and moments and stuff, memories from Saturday Night Live.
Jon But looking backwards at that, looking forward now beyond Saturday Night Live, it has had a lasting and ongoing impact on the pop culture landscape, not just in phrases like down by the river and more cowbell and things like that,
Jon But in other shows and media that’s come out, around the same time that SNL came out, Second City Television, SCTV, I think it was like 75, 76, right in the same little window there.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It also started. That was up in Canada. And it had… A whole other cast of amazing people like Eugene Levy and John Candy and um or O’Hara.
Mo yeah
Jon People came out of that. Another huge raft of actors. Now, it didn’t have the the long life that SNL has had. And it was not live. It was sketch comedy. But the same flavor of kind of irreverent late 70s sketch comedy.
Mo Yeah, and the other thing is it came on after Saturday Night Live, so it was really late. You
Jon yeah ah Yeah, when it came on. Right. When it came ah in in the U.S.
George Right. Yeah.
Mo know, so like you had to be really dedicated to see it, but it was funny.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Jon yeah
Mo They say it was is not quite the production value of Saturday Night Live, but but, you know, again, it was it was a lot of famous people.
Jon Sure.
George Well, they didn’t have the Dick Ebersole sports budget behind them, so…
Mo That’s true.
Jon Was that Johnny Carson money?
Mo yeah
George Right.
Mo yeah mean And I mentioned Damon Wayans earlier, but he went on to a whole other Scotch comedy show in Living Color. And Scotch.
Jon What?
George Well, what’s a Scotch comedy show?
Jon You said Scotch.
George Is that one that’s in Ireland?
Jon He’s…
Mo Scotch. Yeah, that’s ah that’s when they’re drinking too much.
George that…
Jon he just hitting it
Mo right. So that one again is another blooper for you um or just use it, whatever. up So I mentioned ah Damon Wayans. He was in another sketch comedy show in Living Color, which I know I watched that one.
George Yeah.
Mo And that had a whole bunch of famous like, well, all the Wayans, like all of them.
Jon yep Yeah.
George The whole Wayans family.
Jon it didn’t ah Jim Carrey came out of that, right?
Mo Jim Carrey came out of that, you know, um and that was like and that’s also a show I think was great because it.
Jon Was he in Living Color?
George Jim Carrey.
Jon Right, yeah.
George Yeah.
George Tommy Davidson.
Mo Yeah, and it pushed, it also like pushed things too, which I liked because Saturday Night Live for a while wasn’t doing that.
George Yeah.
Jon The envelope.
George Sure.
Mo And I think they kind of saw that gap and sort of filled in and says, okay, we need to do something really edgy here. and that’s not what they did.
Jon Yeah, good.
George Yeah, absolutely. Now, this is a more modern ah version of the show, and it’s i it’s not still on anymore. It only lasted for five seasons, but it’s called The Whitest Kids You Know.
George ah it started in 2007. None of the people in it are people that you would recognize by their name, but it was a fun TV series. um they They had a lot of different sketch comedy stuff going on, but it was…
George It wasn’t live, ah you know, not, it was all prerecorded sketch kind of stuff, kind of like SCTV, ah just higher production value because it’s a more modern film, but it’s still worth noting just how ah SNL has created a format that,
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George that other shows have emulated in the future. I think the SNL influence on these types of shows are in their pre-recorded segments that I talked about earlier that are so integral to Saturday Night Live after the first season.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George You really can’t get away with doing that show without them.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. Now another one that came out in the, well, Whitest Kids was like mid 2000s, right? Like the, yeah.
George Yeah, 2007.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah. In mid nineties, we got Mad TV. Now another one prerecorded, but clearly in the flavor of that irreverent sort of,
Mo yeah
Jon We’re going to do sketch comedy that makes fun of everything that’s currently going on in pop culture. And they also had like a lot of those people that you now think of who, like David Herman, Phil Lamar, ah Nicole Sullivan, Deborah Wilson, people like that.
George Will Sasso. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, Will Sasso, I love him.
George yeah
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon Again, people that came up in this that that went on to have a career that might not have otherwise, but now have become… universally known as either voice talent or getting all kinds of work. I, I swear, I see Phil Lamar in so many things and I still think back to seeing him mad TV.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It was, he’s, who
George I’m shocked that you’re not talking about the two most influential people of today’s media landscape that came out of Mad TV.
Jon are talking about?
George Key and Peele.
Jon Of course. Right.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon They weren’t the first season.
Mo key and peel
Jon I think and they came along after, but they were huge breakouts. Yeah.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah. tryma And we talked a little bit about MADtv in our episode about MAD Magazine.
Mo Magazine, yeah.
George Right, yeah.
Jon But here’s that here’s that confluence of a couple of our topics we’ve talked about before. it’s It’s one of those that clearly inspired by the success of SNL. And again, with the same model, we’re going to bring out, find this amazing talent you didn’t know was out there, put them in all these great sketches and watch them shine.
George Well, you want to talk about ah a group of people coming together to create a show. This one was done slightly differently. So in most of those other cases, it’s a producer-director gathering together a cast. In this case, it was a cast gathering together to create a show, Kids in the Hall.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George So kids in the hall, you know, led by people like Dave Foley, just fucking brilliant.
Mo That was so funny.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Oh.
George We even had some interviews with ah Kevin.
Mo All of them.
George Was it Kevin McDonald? Was that his name?
Jon Kevin MacDonald?
Mo Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah, we did an interview with him um when he was doing a Shakespeare play of all things ah that we were invited to interview him for.
Jon Yeah, we spoke with him. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George that That short-lived show was maybe just as influential as ah some of the other ones that we’ve talked about here, like In Living Color or MADtv.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I would put it as…
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George almost as influential as even SCTV and SCTV. I’m not saying the show was influential, but the people that came out of it were.
Jon yeah no
George And I would say that, uh, kids in the hall absolutely was like in the nineties, which one of Gen X members that you were friends with didn’t know squishing your head.
Jon Oh yeah, of course. He squished your head. We had Mark McKinney came out of that, who was the the boss in Superstore that I love so much.
George Right.
Jon Yeah.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep. Yep. Long lived careers coming out of that.
Mo Oh, man. So do you guys ever remember a show called Fridays?
Jon I remember it. I’m not sure if I watched it.
Mo So it was it came out.
Jon Okay.
Mo It had three seasons. It came out 1980. It came 80, 81, 82. It was ABC’s, I guess, counterpart to hit the success of Senate Live was hitting.
Jon Okay.
George Oh, it makes sense. Yeah.
Mo Okay, so it was a sketch show.
Jon Okay.
Mo They musical guests. They had guest people on it. mean, they had a new segment. I mean, it was, and I think, and the mistake they made is they copied Saturday Night Live.
Jon Wow.
Mo That was the biggest mistake I think they made because everyone compared everything they did to Saturday Night Live and how they did it.
George And you’re just not going to do it as well if you don’t have that cast and crew behind it.
Mo Exactly. Now, they did have some people who were on like Rich Hall.
George Yeah.
Mo He was a Saturday Night Live person. ah Larry David.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo Michael Richards was on it. um
George Oh, okay.
Mo And it was, i thought it was kind of cool because at the end, um because they got canceled and at the end of the season, ah Dick Ebersole gave all the Friday’s cast members, he said they could come join Saturday Night Live.
Mo they all got when the show got canceled.
Jon Oh, damn.
George ah
Mo um Only a couple of them did, like you know Larry David did and Rich Hall did. you know And a whole bunch didn’t take him up on it i’m sure they’re kicking themselves for now. At least I hope they are, because that was a mistake.
Jon Yeah.
Mo But um yeah, and it was they said it was ah it was a funny show, but they and at the end, it got to the point where they were trying to push the envelope so hard that they kind of crossed that line, where they actually had some skits that couldn’t air.
Jon Oh, wow. Huh.
Mo They had like zombie dinner party and they’re like, nope, not going to happen.
Jon That’s all you get.
Mo know, so it was an interesting show. It was a good attempt. I think it trying to do Oh, actually, maybe it wasn’t that good attempt. They did get a bunch of talent.
George I was going to say, it’s not like we didn’t see that coming. Michael Richards being a main cast member and what he did to his career after Seinfeld, I mean…
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Oh.
Mo Yeah, so you said it was it was an interesting show, if nothing else. But again, ah the mistake was it’s like these other ones tried to do something new and original. and As far as sketch comedy, they were just trying to be an SNL clone and that just failed.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Well, we had a lot more come out of SNL itself, too. ah It wasn’t uncommon after a while. In 1980, they went, hey, you know, Aykroyd and Belushi do this Blues Brothers thing.
Jon Maybe we could spin that into a movie.
Mo yeah
Jon And so they did.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon And they’re like, well, now we can do no wrong. So in 92, they did Wayne’s World. Amazing.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Amazing.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon And it didn’t always go so well after that. They kept trying to duplicate that.
Mo no
Jon They had two great films that came out of it. Coneheads, It’s Pat, Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, The Ladies’ Man, MacGruber, which probably, that was not too bad.
George Yeah. Yep.
George yeah
Jon actually that’s pretty good. And they’ve they’ve fed MacGruber back into the series, ah ah the show too, even though it did didn’t take off so well as a film. It was not terrible.
Mo yeah
Jon its And so many of them were…
Mo it
Jon Some of them were like, oh, let’s take the sketch and try to make it an hour and a half. And it didn’t work.
Mo Yeah.
Jon The ones that did work was let’s take what people loved about the sketch and flesh it out into a world like your Wayne’s world, your Blues Brothers. I think those are the better approaches. But it was interesting to see him try no matter what.
Mo Yeah. You know, one that a lot of people pan on that actually I kind of liked was the Conehead movie.
George I liked that movie.
Jon Yeah, it was all right.
Mo Yeah, I did too.
Jon It’s OK.
Mo i thought it was like, cause it had had some heart in it and it kind of expanded that.
Jon Yeah.
Mo it it gave them more dimensions than just like what you saw in the sketch. And I just thought it was like just a funny, enjoyed that movie. I know lot of people like, oh it was terrible. I was like, I thought it was pretty good actually. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, it was okay.
George Yeah. I mean, I enjoyed almost all of the SNL movies for one thing or another. Now, not all of them, but I did watch them and I would enjoy parts of all of them.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I’ll say, I think the biggest miss that they had was Adam Sandler because we know Adam Sandler is now a list movie star extraordinaire.
Mo Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George He went to Michael’s to try and do some movies with SNL stuff And Michaels was like, nah, that’s okay.
Mo yeah
George Because he had not been successful with some of these others, I think.
Jon Yeah.
George And, i mean, boy, you talk about the biggest swing and miss. I mean, can you imagine if Lorne Michaels had a piece of Adam Sandler’s, you know, Happy Madison Company?
George Holy hell.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. Which, and to his credit, he’s set up a company doing movies with his friends and getting paid for it.
Mo Yeah.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Good for him.
Mo Yep. Oh, yeah.
Jon Good for him. Right. oh And all right. Shall we get into our two of Saturday night live? No, it’d be, we could redo this episode and not repeat anything and have another episode.
Jon You know what?
George Sure.
Jon Pick different cast members, pick different sketches and still have just as much fun and talk about just as amazing stuff.
Mo he yeah
Jon But I think it’s a good spot to button it up. I’ve had a good time. Thank you guys for sitting down with me before I leave. We’re to take a second to thank another brand new patron who’s joined us over at patreon.com.
Jon I want to thank Paul P. Yeah. The same one who was the fourth listener up the top of this episode, YouTube member, also now a supporting patron.
Mo Yeah. Oh, cool.
Jon Thank you, Paul. We so much appreciate that. You’re willing to put your money where your mouth is. Yeah. We love Gen X grown up and we want to make sure they succeed. want to help them out. you to do what Paul did, it’s so easy. Just head over to genxgrownup.com slash Patreon.
Jon Open up your heart and your wallet. Set up a regular recurring pledge for as little as a dollar a month. That’s all it takes. you certainly would be appreciated and you’d be joining a roster of amazing people that already do that for us. So thanks again, Paul. We appreciate you and thank all of you who do that regularly.
Jon That then is going to wrap it up for this as best we could cover Saturday night live in the hour that we have got. Thank you guys for being so stuck.
Jon Sometimes get here. to that That’s going to wrap it up. over
Jon Don’t worry, though. We’ll be back in two weeks with another backtrack. Next week is the standard edition of our show. Until then, I’m John. George, thank you so much for being here.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know, i appreciate you, man.
Mo Always fun, man.
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you. We all appreciate most of all. We cannot wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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