Saturday Night Live: The Best Of Commercial Parodies

One of the things Saturday Night Live has done and done well since the show started is commercial parodies.  I found SNL’s Best of Commercial Parodies at Big Lots recently for $3.  I decided to pop it in and check it out.  The show originally aired as a special apparently and was hosted by Will Ferrell.  The Ferrell bits were used to intro and outro the real commercial breaks from the way it looks.  They aren’t the sharpest bits of humor SNL has ever seen, but they aren’t as bad as some of the sketches they tend to throw in after the last musical performance and before the good nights.

Of course the real reason to watch this disc is to see the commercial parodies.  When SNL started back in 1975, Lorne used to constantly have affiliates cutting out during the commercial parodies because they thought it was an actual commercial break.  Unfortunately only about 3 of the parodies from the classic first 5 years are included on this disc.  You get the Bass-O-Matic, Little Chocolate Donuts, and Hey You.  Most of the parodies are from the late 90s and early 2000s.  There are plenty of bits with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.  I don’t remember much of anything from seasons 6 through 11 making the cut.  I keep hoping SNL Season 6 will get the complete season release treatment this year just because I’m so anxious to see just how bad that year truly was.  It was also one of the three shortest seasons in SNL history.

So keeping in mind that most of the content of this disc is more recent, how did it fair?  Well, the parodies they chose were for the most part funny.  Many of them I remembered seeing when they first aired and enjoyed revisiting them.  Others were brand new to me and managed to make me smile.  A few suffered from not wrapping up the gag quick enough.  For example did “Oops, I Crapped My Pants” adult diapers really get funnier as the two seniors kept repeating the line, and did we really need that final shot of them walking off the tennis court carrying an obvious full load in their adult diapers?  Guess that depends on your taste in scatological humor.

The Best of Commercial Parodies is a decent collection and the DVD even provides several bonus commercials to make it an even better value.  At $3 I’m very happy with the DVD.  If I had paid full price, I’m not sure I would have been so thrilled.  I give Best of Commercial Parodies 2 1/2 stars.

Saturday Night Live: Lost And Found – SNL In The 80s

Like most people of my generation, I loved Saturday Night Live during the first five years.  When the last of the original cast left along with Producer Lorne Michaels, I quit watching regularly.  To be fair, I was in high school when the new cast came on and I had better things to do than stay up and watch SNL.  There were midnight movies on Saturday and there were also late night D&D games. 

It wasn’t until several years later that I began watching SNL on a regular basis again.  Lorne was coming back and bringing an entire new cast with him as well.  I was living on my own and working a job that put me home just about in time for the show.  I watched a few weeks and decided that the new cast just wasn’t that great.  I soon stopped watching and didn’t return for a couple more years by which time my life had changed again, but so had the quality of the show.  I watched it and actually found sketches to laugh at because they were funny.  I think it was also around this time that I bought and read Backstage Saturday Night which covered the early years of the show up through Lorne’s return.  It was entertaining and very informative.  This was also about the time that Comedy Central, then known as The Comedy Channel I believe, started airing half hour or hour long “Best Of SNL” as well as full 90 minute replays of the show.  They even aired some of the short season that was the first new cast in season 6.  The shows were fascinating to look back on.

 Lost And Found SNL in the 80s is a documentary that was made for NBC covering the 10 years after the original cast left.  There are clips from the shows and the musical guests as well as interview with the cast, crew, and selected guests.  The documentary doesn’t mince words either.  Gilbert Gottfried, a season six regular, plainly states that their shows were awful, but he also points out that part of their problem was the writing.  No matter how funny you are, if the writing is lousy, you can’t be funny.

 After the debacle that was season 6, a new producer was hired and most of the season 6 cast was fired.  Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo were retained and Eddie shot into superstardom.  New producer Dick Ebersol also decided to up their talent pool by hiring established talents in Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest.  Ebersol also started taping more segments of the show in advance.  When he finished season 10, he told NBC the only way he would stay on was if they agreed to tape the entire show, doing away with the live portion of Saturday Night Live.  NBC decided against that and instead talked Lorne Michaels into returning as producer.

Lorne also was allowed to hire an entire new crew of actors, and he did.  Many of his actors were also well-known performers; Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr,, and Randy Quaid among them. Unfortunately the chemistry that the first cast had back in 75, wasn’t coming out with the new cast.  Lorne quickly went from the man who was coming back to save SNL, to the man who might be driving the final nail in its coffin.  He realized that part of what made SNL work in the early days was the fact that the performers knew each other and many of them had worked together before.  When he started retooling SNL for season 12, he began looking for performers that had worked together or that were friends.  The new cast pulled the show out of the grave and went on to several years of greatness.  Lorne began rotating people in and out to keep the show fresh, and to allow them to nurture talent like Mike Myers and Adam Sandler later on. 

Lost And Found SNL in the 80s is a fond look back at some of the worst years of the show.  I give it 3 ½ stars.  The DVD also features almost another hour and a half to two hours of bonus interviews and skits.  They look at censors, race, and other topics as it relates to the show.  Now I only hope that this December they will release the complete 6^th season on DVD.  The documentary gave me a taste, but I want to see it all.  I also hope they release it with the Charlene Tilton episode uncut and just the way it aired on the East coast.

Saturday Night Live The Best Of Chris Farley

I started watching Saturday Night Live somewhere around the second or third season.  At the time our local NBC affiliate was running Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in the late night Saturday slot.  My nephews in Illinois were fortunate enough to get SNL from the beginning.  I saw a couple of episodes while we were there on vacation one year and was hooked.  Once the series started airing locally, I was a faithful viewer up until the end of the 5th season when the original cast all departed.  I watched a few of the shows with the new cast, but I just wasn’t as captivated.  I didn’t start watching again until season 11.  That was the year Lorne Michaels returned to SNL.

I watched the first few episodes of season 11, but I realized that it was not nearly as funny as it had been and drifted away again by season’s end.  I returned once more at the beginning of season 14.  This was the season premiere with Tom Hanks and Keith Richards.  There was something different about the show this time.  It was actually funny.  The next week was also funny.  They had a great cast and talented featured players.  I watched for several seasons and saw new members join the cast.  One of these new members was Chris Farley.

I can’t say that Chris was my favorite member of the cast, but I thought he did some good work.  He was funny and seemed very adept at physical humor.  I was surprised to hear he had passed away when the news broke in 1997, but I shouldn’t have been.  The DVD containing The Best Of Chris Farley is the original Trimark DVD.  It contains a tribute show that SNL aired to Chris containing an opening from Tim Meadows and a collection of some of Chris’ best or most popular skits.  At one point these best of compilations were the only way to get SNL on DVD.  A few classic episodes had been released on VHS years ago, but no one had tried to issue the full seasons.  NBC Universal did finally start releasing the season sets and the first 5 seasons have been issued in very nice box sets.  I’m hoping that they continue this year with the shortened and much maligned season 6.  Season 6 is famous for introducing Eddie Murphy and for the episode where cast member Charles Rocket uttered the F bomb live from New York at the end of the Charlene Tilton hosted episode.  Only 13 episodes aired that year and only 2 of them after the Titlon episode.  The show returned the next fall with a new producer, a mostly new cast and a star in Joe Piscopo and a superstar in Eddie Murphy.  I’m hoping they don’t skip over the sixth season and move on to a more popular cast.

So how was the Chris Farley compilation?  Not bad.  It featured several full skits with Chris’ most famous characters and some clips of other famous bits including the alien ship landing where Chris’ tear away costume tore away too soon.  It’s a nice collection, but it’s only a taste of what Chris brought to the show.  Perhaps if NBC Universal continues releasing the SNL seasons, you’ll be able to see all of his work in another 10 years or so.  Until then, The Best of Chris Farley is a decent sampling.  I give it 8 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.