Humor, like beauty, doesn’t always last. Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy proved that.
And even the most secure institutions aren’t impregnable, as Jerry Seinfeld’s joke about the disgraced NBC News anchor Brian Williams suggested. But Sunday night’s three-and-a-half-hour special honoring the 40th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” worked and was well deserved. The NBC show, which in 1975 seemed likely not to live out its decade, turns out to have great bones and enduring blood lines.
The event had as many stars in the audience as onstage, and it also had many of the strengths and failings of “S.N.L.,” which has been on television longer than any other sketch comedy or variety show. It remains a standard-bearer, even for people who never watch it.
Some of the live sketches were too lame and too long; it didn’t help that they were placed next to montages of clips from some of the show’s most memorable moments from decades past. And not every guest was put to the best use. (Taylor Swift didn’t sing, and Kanye West did, lying on the floor under a large illuminated white sheet that made him look as if he were in a tanning booth.)
Yet the special was still a high-spirited, generous tribute, self-mocking (there were several jokes about the show’s lack of diversity and overly drawn-out live skits), as well as self-congratulatory. Some of it was awkward. After a huge, minutes-long buildup by Chris Rock, Mr. Murphy didn’t try to amuse, and despite getting a standing ovation, said almost nothing before the show cut to commercial. Mr. Chase also seemed startled to be there. But it was the flashbacks to their youth that made it fun.
One of the night’s best moments was a highlight reel of cast audition tapes, unvarnished shots of John Belushi, Dana Carvey, Amy Poehler and Jim Carrey (who famously didn’t make the cut), among others. The whole night boiled down to a parade of stars whose very presence reminded viewers what the show was all about.
There has never been a comedy farm team like “S.N.L.”: The series has been finding and nurturing talent for so many decades, waxing and waning in quality, but never ceasing to feed the movie and television systems with a next generation of standouts.
Sometimes, it’s more nest and incubator — more where the eggs hatch than where the birds fly. Larry David flamed out as a writer and left after a year, and soon after came up with “Seinfeld.” Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Chris Rock became full-fledged stars after leaving the show. Plenty of cast members were neither great nor memorable, but the number of people tapped, trained or showcased by “S.N.L.” is legion.
“S.N.L.” isn’t nearly as bold and cheerfully nihilistic as it was in 1975, nor is it as fueled by reckless behavior behind the scenes. (As Tina Fey put it: “Also joining us, one of the show’s original producers — cocaine.”) It’s also never as good as we remember it being. In real time, critics and viewers are always bemoaning how not-quite-funny-enough it is. And then, years later, the same voices complain that the current seasons and casts aren’t as good as previous ones. It was always thus with “S.N.L.,” yet it is hard to dismiss or overlook, even today in the era of YouTube, Comedy Central and Internet streaming channels.
Last week, after Jon Stewart announced he would stop doing the fake news on “The Daily Show,” his fans mourned, saying that he had pioneered a genre of political satire. He didn’t. “Weekend Update” was already there.
Jane Curtin, one of the show’s original cast members, did a star turn on Sunday night at the “Weekend Update” anchor desk, alongside Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler. “I used to be the only pretty blond woman reading the fake news,” Ms. Curtin said. As the Fox News logo appeared, she added, “Now there is a whole network devoted to that.”
Not every revived sketch worked. Dan Aykroyd valiantly raced through his lines while feeding fish into a blender on a fake late-night ad for Bass-o-Matic, but it didn’t really seem funny. A revival “Celebrity Jeopardy!” parody, with Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery and Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek, was better, helped by the addition of Alec Baldwin in a fake nose as Tony Bennett.
Bradley Cooper kissed Betty White on the lips. Steve Martin gamely did his King Tut routine, not bare-chested this time, but still somehow projecting manic self-mockery. Sarah Palin played herself. Keith Richards introduced Paul McCartney, who earlier in the night briefly sang with Paul Simon. Mr. Aykroyd did a ghostly refrain of the Blues Brothers alongside Jim Belushi, a former cast member and sibling of John Belushi, the “S.N.L.” star who died of an overdose in 1982.
Accordingly, the most unsettling moment of the night was a clip from an old filmed sketch, shot in black and white, that starred John Belushi as an elderly version of himself, walking haltingly through the snow-covered Not Ready for Prime Time Players Cemetery. “I was one of those ‘live fast/die young/leave a good-looking corpse types,’ ” Belushi says. “But I guess they were wrong.”
The memory of cast members who died too soon — Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chris Farley — hovered over the evening, but the show took the edge off by ending a long “In Memoriam” segment of deceased actors, writers and crew members with a picture of Jon Lovitz, recalling a similar joke from the show’s opening monologue. (Mr. Lovitz is, of course, alive, and was in the audience, bristling with feigned indignation.)
One of the easiest moments was a joke about Lorne Michaels, the “S.N.L.” creator. Mike Myers, who had mimicked his former boss’s accent to portray Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies, paid tribute to Mr. Michaels by making fun of him. “Well, it got a laugh,” Mr. Myers said in his best impression. “But did it get the right laugh?”
As is his wont, Mr. Michaels stayed out of the limelight until the end of the show, when he took the stage for a quick bow. He didn’t need to say or do more. “S.N.L.” is a comedy show born out of the irreverence and alienation of the 1970s that still matters four decades later.
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