If Lenny Bruce had survived, there's no doubt he would have been one of the hosts of Saturday Night Live when the show was in its early, formative years. That's because Bruce, who broke the rules of conventional comedy and satirical commentary (and who died in 1966), is the spiritual father of the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players and the revolution they won on the television airwaves and in American culture.
As it turns out, the first episode of Saturday Night Live was hosted by another counter-culture hero, George Carlin, whose distrust of authority and willingness to mock all our sacred cows is at the heart of his act and, ultimately, is the basis for SNL's attitude and its winning style that has sustained the show (in high times and low times) for 32 years. As originally carried out, SNL was barrier-breaking comedy, doing and saying things on TV - and in our living rooms - they were once considered unthinkable. It was subversive, and ultimately a cultural shift. SNL became the mainstream, and in the process, launched the careers of some of our most celebrated comedic actors. The show became the place to be seen, and today, even politicians want some face time on SNL.
Universal's Saturday Night Live: The Complete First Season is a great surprise, since it is one of those releases that fans never thought would see the light of day. DVD fans are all too aware of the complexities of securing music rights, and SNL's huge parade of musical guests over the years made season-set releases unlikely at best. Given the lack of SNL DVD releases from the early years (only single-disc best-of releases for John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner exist), the first season set fills a very empty void.
The eight discs in this set include 24 episodes, which were each 90 minutes long when aired (subtracting the commercials, the episodes are slightly more than an hour each on DVD). While the discs aren't perfect (strangely, for what is classified a "complete" season, it lacks some minor elements from the shows, like the portrait "bumpers" that were inserted before commercial breaks), let's not quibble. For all intents and purposes, these are the complete shows, and it's SNL at its most creative.
The elements of SNL that are still part of the show were right there in the first season - opening skit, "live from New York..." intro, host monologue, commercial parodies, sketch comedy, Weekend Update, musical guests, and so on. Chevy Chase (in his only season with the show) has a confidence and a comedic smugness that shines above those who have followed in his footsteps. Belushi opens the first sketch of the first show, with his bad-boy misanthropic sneer already present. Ackroyd, Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtain, and Garrett Morris round out the cast, and each one finds their place to shine in the first year. Even Jim Henson's Muppets and the creative team behind The Muppet Show put in some appearances, and you can see the predecessors to such characters as Yoda and Alf.In addition to Carlin, the choice of hosts honor those who made the SNL brand of comedy possible. Richard Pryor is host to an early show, and this was during his most creative period. Buck Henry (co-creator of Get Smart, see below) hosts the show twice in the first season. Henry, despite his meek appearance and polite tones, was an early master of biting political satire, and was never one avoid sacred cows. Paul Simon, Rob Reiner, Robert Klein, Lily Tomlin, and Elliot Gould also hosted during the first season.
The DVD set looks very classy and gives the show the respect it deserves. Still, it is rather big and bulky (even for eight discs) and the 32-page booklet that accompanies the set could have used some relevant liner notes on the history of the show. But the set is a true achievement, both in that it shows that acquiring music rights need not prevent a DVD document of a cultural landmark, and in the content of SNL's first season, which became the template for sketch comedy, political satire and helped define what we consider "funny."
More info: Saturday Night Live.com
