For the past few weeks, I’ve been addicted to clips of SNL’s comedy sketches. Just in case you don’t know SNL  to well here’s some background info. The show has been on NBC for over 3 decades and currently is airing it’s 43 season! It features comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics. The sketches are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast as with featured performances by a musical guest. An episode normally begins with a cold open sketch that ends with someone breaking character and proclaiming, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”, properly beginning the show.

One of the most notable and direct influences of SNL came late in the 2000 Presidential campaign between Bush and Al Gore. The series of sketches played off the image of Bush as a swaggering cowboy (uttering faux phrases like “strategery”) and Democrat Al Gore as a wonkish bore (repeating “lockbox” over and over again). The caricature of Gore, in particular, was so devastating his aides reportedly encouraged the then-vice president to watch the sketches to hone his real-life performance. Ironically, prior to the SNL sketches, tracking polls suggested the public viewed Gore as the debate winner. But once the spoofs caught on and sunk in, the perception changed (the New York Times’ said he came across on “SNL” like “an overbearing know-it-all”), particularly among the show’s younger-skewing audience.

While people mostly associate the show with its political stance, it impacts on new media and comedy was just as, if not more, significant. “SNL” drew audiences to the small screen with bold expectations: to put the week’s news in understandable context, to deflate the puffed-up establishment types. Sometimes the sketches were juvenile. sometimes they fell flat (often running on too long, with players screaming bad lines as if that made them funnier). Sometimes they were delightfully silly (“The Killer Bees,” “The Coneheads”). But sometimes they delivered memorable rebukes or social commentary. By all accounts, “SNL” is a more professional place now, less sex/drugs/rock ‘n’ roll, an efficient production, still going strong as a comedy institution and breeding ground for Hollywood stardom (Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Billy Murray, and Tina Fey to name a few). They were part of a tradition that trained audiences to appreciate an evolving TV repertory company and to think of a certain live weekly television exercise as a breeding ground for lasting talent.

“SNL” successfully blurred the lines between news and entertainment, with its political parodies serving as a news source for younger viewers who traditionally don’t watch TV news. The variety show set the stage for the more intellectual cable lineup of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, John Oliver and Larry Wilmore.

Sources:

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/how-saturday-night-live-has-shaped-american-politics-n656716

Over 40 years, “Saturday Night Live” changed TV comedy and changed us