Television viewers of a certain age will likely remember what happened at 1L30 p.m., Oct. 11, 2975, on NBC. A strange fellow in a heavy overcoat, speaking with a thick, Eastern European accent of some kind, sat in a chair opposite a macabre gentleman wearing dark glasses and reading aloud from a book. The latter commenced an English-language lesson, but what he had the other man saying were dark absurdities such as “I would like to feed your fingertips to wolverines.” After a couple of minutes, the duo (played by John Belushi and Michael O’Donoghue) had collapsed to the floor, and Chevy Chase entered the scene, looking into a camera and declaring, for the first time, “Live, from New York, it’s ‘Saturday Night’!” Thus began a late-night television institution still going strong.
This DVD collection from Time Life gathers 33 episodes from the first five seasons of SNL, when the original cast of the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players (Chase, Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Larraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin) stayed, more or less, intact until 1980. There is much more material from those years not included here, but the volume of archival comedy spread over 12 discs is still pretty hefty. Some of the show’s most memorable guest hosts are here: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Paul Simon, Buck Henry, Elliott Gould, Lily Tomlin, Eric Idle, and Steve Martin among them. And a diverse array of music guests is a wonderful addition as a cultural time capsule: Janis Ian, Bill Withers, Patti Smith, Carly Simon, Billy Joel and Kate Bush, along with many others.
But it’s the classic SNL sketches in those first five seasons that have become the stuff of legend: the Land Shark, Weekend Update, Coneheads, the Bass-O-Matic, Belushi’s recurring Samurai character, the infamous word-association test between Chase and Pryor, the Greek cheeseburger joint, Bill Murray’s unctuous lounge singer, and scores more. The lesser-known comedy moments fill in the rest, such as Eric Idle’s “drag” race, Buck Henry’s hilarious bit as a neurotic father who has to race home because he can only use his own bathroom, and Belushi’s parody of a twitchy Joe Cocker—performed right next to the real Joe Cocker. It’s also interesting to trace the rise of breakout stars and the mixed fortunes of those struggling for recognition. Chase, for instance, left after the first season as SNL’s first bona fide star (he later came to regret the decision), followed by Aykroyd and Belushi a few seasons later. Bill Murray, however—technically Chase’s replacement—took quite a while to catch fire, though when he finally did he owned the show.
In a way, these first SNL years were a road map of the first five years following some of the most tumultuous times America had ever known. A lot of us—especially those who appreciated ironic comedy and those looking for something hipper than the lowest common audience denominator—were ready for a more subversive form of late-night entertainment. SNL at its best delivered that. Strongly recommended.