I have to confess, despite watching a lot of SNL and having heard and read second-hand about much of the whole history, I’ve never seen a full episode from the Aykroyd-Belushi-Radner-Chase era….until this week and damn, mind blown!
Some urgent thoughts I have to get out:
1. So first, things first, I wasn’t expecting to like it
I’ve never been majorly impressed with these people or their later careers. I admire Ghostbusters which was written by someone from the first class (Aykroyd), but I didn’t ever think Dan Aykroyd was a must-see as an actor. I saw various sketches in isolation but out of context, they don’t give a picture of the full experience. Instead, I’ve always (perhaps wrongly) felt people were overly worshipping of these guys who were there first but not necessarily the funniest. I also feel like so many other casts (particularly the 1980 cast) suffered from having critics say “It’s not like it used to be” so I had that bias against it….
However, I should not have judged a book by its cover because…
2. This season was wild and certainly eventful
The sketches are not as fully-formed as today’s SNL and sketch comedy world and some of them don’t qualify as comedy but I can imagine turning on the TV in 1975 and 1976 when comedy on TV was in a very stale place and just being thoroughly shocked. Not that it was risque but it was just so bizarre and you never knew what you were going to get with each passing minute. There was Andy Kaufman acting like a nervous foreigner on stage, there was a brilliant comic named Valri Bromfeld acting like a disciplinarian school teacher in a monologue late in the first show, there was something with puppets called the Muppets even though they were different characters, there was a dance trope in one episode, there were Andy Samberg-like camera tricks, there were field segments, there were sketches that maybe lasted 45 seconds long and was just one joke, there was stuff that wasn’t really framed as comedy.
On top of that every stunt I’ve ever heard about like offering money to unite the Beatles, actually reuniting Simon and Garfunkel, pesrsonally going to the White House to film Gerald Ford, having voters decide if Andy Kaufman was funny happened in the first season.
Today’s SNL has had its highs and lows, but its format is rigid and predictable. Wayyyyy too many of its sketches are framed as game shows or talk shows. This cast was truly awful at celebrity impressions but at least they didn’t overmilk them like today’s cast does.
3. There were not seven original cast members?!
I have seen my fair share of pictures of the original cast and it always shows seven people.
As a pretty avid SNL buff (despite this embarrassing hole), I always assumed there were seven original cast members, but there were nine….and then some! There was an older broadway vet named Michael Coe and this shady fellow (he had a beard and sunglasses) guy named Michael O’Donoghue who was just nutty, who were there too and their names appeared in the opening credits. O’Danoghue’s did this bit where he says, “Here’s an impression of _______, oh and by the way, in the impression they’re getting their eyes gouged w/needles and then he sheiks in pain.” Some of the other stuff he did later in the season (that I haven’t seen but read about on Grantland) is even darker.
He seemed to behind the scenes be torturous enough in 1981 that he scared Catherine O’Hara from appearing on the show and wrote “danger” on the wall”, so he must have been pretty insane. I wonder if he was erased from history and the other cast members denied he was that prominent in later interviews?
4. I always assumed Belushi was a fast, slovenly type
Decisively less chaotic was John Belushi who I assumed was like this slovenly out-of-control fat guy and I always felt that was a turn-off so I never had much interest in his life. Comedians who are slovenly, fat guys and that’s their whole schtick, I never am drawn to. Maybe in later seasons he becomes obese, but he’s basically a regular joe sketch player who’s only heavy by comparisons to his co-stars who are generally skinny and tall (both Chase and Aykroyd are ridiculously lanky, Garrett Morris to an extent), so he looks heavy by comparison. I this other picture of him I googled, he’s not really that much heavier than the people in the shot.
5. Damn, Chevy Chase loved tripping
I have this feeling Chevy Chase never actually watched Gerald Ford do anything, but he just loved tripping. He tripped in the SNL audition. That’s pretty much the whole Gerald Ford shtick. Darrell Hammond sure would’ve been embarrassed.
6. Weekend Update’s hit to miss comparison is actually pretty good
Despite not being entirely aware of the news on any given week in 1975, I laughed quite a bit. The most traditionally comedic efforts clearly went into Weekend Update with solid jokes. Nothing particularly subversive or out of the ordinary about it. I really loved a bit where Chevy Chase did a field segment cutting to a reporter in Angola and getting the time zone wrong so she wasn’t there or cutting to her roomate
7. I don’t get the Blues Brothers
It’s just two guys singing the blues. I don’t even see it vaguely qualifying as comedic. A 1975 sketch didn’t necessarily require a punchline or an invitation to the audience to view a sketch as comedic but this was just two guys blowing off steam
8. I don’t specifically feel like these guys were bad boys or rebels
Michael O’Donoghue was bizarre but not cool, and the three main male leads (the show was really trying harder to market the personalities of the guys than the ladies) didn’t particularly strike me as cool or rebellious. As far as I can gather, it was heavily publicized that he press quite often that backstage it was a non-stop party of drugs, screwing and anti-authority attitudes as they thumbed their nose to the network and made things up as they went.
9. Garrett Morris might have been the best player on the cast
He seemed to have the strongest personality (outside of Michael O’Donoghue) and acted. Too bad he wasn’t marketed as highly as Chevy Chase.
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