SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is a four-part docuseries, overseen by executive producer Morgan Neville, that takes a look at four interesting aspects of Saturday Night Live‘s history as the show approaches its 50th anniversary. Instead of being a comprehensive history of the series, the four episodes are more like four short films, helmed by different directors: Robert Alexander, Marshall Curry, Neil Berkeley and Jason Zeldes.
SNL50: BEYOND SATURDAY NIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Tracy Morgan sits as a film crew sets up for his interview. “I’m gonna open up,” he says. “Man, you’re gonna know about everything, man,” he says.
The Gist: In the first episode, entitled “Five Minutes,” director Robert Alexander interviews a number of current and former cast members, as well as writers and staff, about their auditions to join the show. The cast members are then shown their auditions; many are seeing them for the first time, and they tend to get either emotional (like Heidi Gardner did) or they cringe a lot (mostly everyone else). SNL stalwart Kenan Thompson is shown going well beyond the five-minute limit the auditions are supposed to have. Seems to have worked out well for him, though.
In the second episode, “Written By: A Week Inside The SNL Writers Room,” director Marshall Curry does exactly what the title says, as well as interview a number of the show’s best-known writers, from Alan Zwibel to Tina Fey to Robert Smigel to John Mulaney. The third episode, “More Cowbell,” is more or less an oral history of the famous sketch from 2000, with director Neil Berkeley talking to most of the people involved in it, including Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon (but not Christopher Walken).
In the final episode, “Season 11: The Weird Year,” director Jason Zeldes examines the 1985-86 season, when Lorne Michaels came back to the show after five years away and put together an entirely new cast. But, the show bombed from the start, despite having talented actors like Robert Downey, Jr., Randy Quaid, Damon Wayans, Joan Cusack and Anthony Michael Hall in the cast. It was also groundbreaking due to the presence of Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay cast member, and Danitra Vance, the first Black female cast member. Finally, it also launched three cast members who ended up starring in the superior cast that started in Season 12 (the Carvey-Nealon-Hartman cast): Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn and Dennis Miller.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There aren’t many docuseries that can pick and choose moments from a show that’s been on the air for a half-century.
Our Take: It’s a bit of a creative move to not try to incorporate the entire history of SNL into a four-part docuseries, but the way SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night approaches that task made for a much more satisfying viewing experience.
A comprehensive history would have inevitably left people, events and seminal sketches out. But to examine specific aspects of the show’s run lets the episodes’ directors take a deep dive into the topic and not feel obligated to try to interview anyone and everyone.
“Five Minutes” feels like the most comprehensive-seeming episode, as almost two dozen current and previous cast members are interviewed — though none from the original cast. We also thoroughly enjoyed “The Weird Year,” because that season debuted when we were teenagers, after the memorable Billy Crystal-Martin Short-Harry Shearer-Chris Guest cast of “ringers” that then-EP Dick Ebersol brought in for Season 10. We vaguely remember Season 11 because, like most people, we stopped watching after the first few unfunny episodes. Looking back 40 years, though, it was a fascinating case study in how Michaels tried something different upon his return to the show, and the lesson he learned there was pivotal to the show becoming the institution it is now.
We would love to see more episodes of this series, perhaps released 30 For 30-style, about different quirky or memorable aspects of SNL. An episode about the aforementioned Season 10 would be fun, as would an episode about how the show almost got canceled when Jean Doumanian took over for Michaels in Season 6. Who wouldn’t want to see a “Debbie Downer”-centric episode, or one centered on “Celebrity Jeopardy”? We would also love to see an episode about the rise of women on the show after decades of them having trouble breaking through due to institutionalized sexism. And these are just a few of hundreds of examples of what could be done with this series.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: We see a montage of cast members say “thank you” during their auditions.
Sleeper Star: In the “Five Minutes” episode, we laughed a lot at how self-deprecating Pete Davidson was. As he watches his audition, he says, “How the fuck did I get this show?” and laughs.
Most Pilot-y Line: We were curious as to why there weren’t any members of the original cast (or, more accurately, the casts of Seasons 1-5, if you want to include Bill Murray) in the “Five Minutes” episode. Perhaps it’s because that cast and those years have been so over-examined, Alexander wanted perspectives from other cast members, though they do go all the way back to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was in the cast from Seasons 8-10.
Our Call: STREAM IT. SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night takes a refreshing approach to Saturday Night Live’s history, and we hope that we see more episodes going forward, even if they have to change the title to SNL51, SNL52, etc.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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