How I Got Into SNL
Yeah this was originally going to be me waxing poetic about Phil Hartman, but it kind of meandered off topic in my head and it turned into a story of how I got into watching SNL. So I thought I’d talk about that. I WILL eventually write about Phil Hartman, I swear.
I think I was an SNL fan from birth. I like to think that because my mother was a huge fan. She was 25 when SNL debuted in 1975 and practically grew up with them. It was a big event for her and her friends to watch it together and laugh over the antics of Belushi, Aykroyd, Murray, and Radner among others(FWIW, Radner is my mom’s favorite cast member). I think she watched some of the Crystal/Guest/Short era which was going on around the time I was born. Of course the SNL that ran after my birth didn’t air because there was a writer’s strike going on. Go figure, eh? So a love of sketch comedy was already in the blood enough.
During some weekends, my siblings and I would go up to Pawtucket to stay with my grandmother. When she’d go to bed, we’d be in the den together with the TV on. We were quietly watching Nick at Nite and it’s variety of programming. Nick at Nite, at the time, used to air half-hour episodes of SNL from the 1975-1980 era. One of the earliest memories I had was falling asleep to the opening credits of SNL and the TV framing an airbrushed picture of either Jane Curtin or Gilda Radner. I don’t know why I recall this, but I do. I’d basically nod off to the lullabies of lulz giving by men dressed as bees, Coneheads, ignorant sluts, and the Blues Brothers. It was quite a way to fall asleep, lemme tell you.
However, it’d be years later before I really got into SNL. It was 1996 and I was the tender age of 11 years old. Tommy Boy had come out on video and my brother really wanted to see this movie. So we rented it from the video store and actually came to really enjoy it. It was funny and I really loved the physical comedy of the whole thing. However, I also found myself drawn to the blonde snarky short guy. He was the straight man, but despite that, he still got laughs. I liked that. Of course, that was David Spade. It was through this newfound liking of David Spade and Chris Farley that I came to rediscover SNL.
And what luck was it that one hour SNL episodes were shown on Comedy Central just as I got home from school?! Damn lucky, I tell ya! My after school ritual was rather strange for an 11 year old girl. At an age where I should’ve been more about dolls and boys (it was in that time frame where boys were just starting to be interesting), I was more focused on watching SNL and trying to imitate or act like the many characters on the show. I wasn’t that great, but screw it, I enjoyed watching it.
As I watched SNL, however, I began to drift away from David Spade. I began to find his humor a little mean-spirited and not too…well…good. Sure, snarkiness is fine and I can get my inner snark on every so often, but the truth of the matter was that I became more interested in the other kind of comedy — the character based. I was liking the idea of sketch comedy, how these entire characters were just being presented and just making us all laugh. It was more about just the act itself rather than the person doing the act. And no one cast member was better at that than Phil Hartman, who soon became my favorite one to watch.
By the next year, I began to watch some of the stuff on Saturday nights. I was old enough to stay up later, plus my sister was obsessed with Hanson at the time and wanted to see them on SNL. Helen Hunt was hosting that episode. I watched that episode and it left me rather unimpressed with most of that cast. I did recall that was the episode that had all the baseball players in it. That warmed my baseball loving heart. But really, it wasn’t much to write home about, which left me a little sad. I still watched, however. I found myself drawn more to the standalone sketches in the late 90s (Jingleheimer Junction still never fails to crack me up)
However, I was still more into watching it on Comedy Central and just loved the late 80s cast…and the early 90s to an extent. But basically, this was how I got into SNL.
