Here’s a question: What, if anything, can “Saturday Night Live” learn from the live episode of “30 Rock” that aired last week?
When “30 Rock” broadcast its first live episode in 2010, the experiment was interesting in theory, disappointing in practice. But credit to the sitcom’s creators for cooking up another effort. Not because it was one of the show’s best outings. It wasn’t. But it was an intriguing example of what a live sketch comedy show could — and, I would argue, should — be attempting to do from week to week.
How fun would it be if”Saturday Night Live”had some of that zip and zing? We were all thinking it.
From day one, “Saturday Night Live” has been the elephant in the room on “30 Rock.”A passel of “SNL” alums are on board, including creator and star Tina Fey and “SNL” executive producer Lorne Michaels. Not to mention the show itself is set within the offices of a fictional “SNL”-type enterprise. The echoes are deafening.
But the live broadcast was something more overt. Recapping the episode for HitFix.com, TV critic Alan Sepinwall put it this way: “It was, essentially, an all-star jam band version of ‘SNL,’ using the ’30 Rock’ characters to link together a bunch of sketches, celebrity impersonations (and) fake commercials.”
A commenter on the Onion’s A.V. Club website put it more succinctly: “It was like the best ‘SNL’ in a long time.” Frenetic, tightly packed and positively madcap, the episode felt exciting, as if it might careen off the tracks at any moment. “It felt joyous and completely full of life,” another A.V. Club commenter pointed out, unlike the show’s live efforts two years ago, which “felt forced and stilted.”
You know what else feels forced and stilted? “Saturday Night Live.”
The mother ship of modern sketch comedy has done many things right over the years. Michaels has an impeccable eye for talent, both on camera and off. Despite perennial complaints about its quality, the show has endured for 37 seasons. Some of the time, it remains vital and relevant. It’s always been a major career springboard. And it is the only scripted television show on a major network that is still performed live.
And yet. There are a thousand “and yets” when it comes to “SNL.” You tune in every week. Hoping for the best. Feeling deflated by the end. The show still has the juice to generate the occasional water cooler moment, or an iconic character that isn’t the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. But I don’t know anybody who watches it live anymore, which fundamentally defeats the purpose of doing the show, you know, live.
Roughly twice as many people tune in to new episodes of “Saturday Night Live” (around 7 million, depending on the week) as watch “30 Rock,” which has suffered its own criticisms about creative ruts and being little more than a joke-delivery device.
But there was real provocation in last week’s episode — a challenge of sorts to “SNL” to embrace a more galvanizing spirit. Should “SNL” blow the entire format to pieces to do that? No. But the show’s basic building blocks haven’t changed much in nearly 40 years.
That structure is likely what makes the show a manageable undertaking — otherwise it would be chaos. It’s a reasonable argument. A live broadcast is unforgiving. Michaels has a network to which he must answer. The show has to get on the air intact. And it can’t look like amateur hour.
But as a viewer, the formula has become so rigid and predictable as to be aggressively hostile. Comedy is about upending expectations. The way “SNL” is built each week and pushed out on the air, it seems to do just the opposite.
So what can “SNL” crib from Fey and Co.’s live effort? I sat down to watch last week’s “30 Rock” (a screwball tip of the hat to live TV shows of old) back-to-back with the “SNL” that ran over the weekend, which was a repeat from February hosted by Channing Tatum. A few things stood out immediately.
1. Everything on “30 Rock” is not just faster, but two or three times as fast as “SNL.” (That’s true of a typical episode of “30 Rock,” as well.) The rhythms dictate that actors get in, get out and move on — and deliver that dialogue as if it’s on fire and it’s burning their mouths.
On “SNL,” there’s a lot of hanging around in groups, patiently waiting for each person to say his or her piece. A mediocre punch line tends to sit there, half a beat too long. Why? Because the delivery isn’t snappy enough, and the next setup doesn’t come barreling along quickly enough, either.
Timing is everything in comedy, but it’s a sore spot on “SNL.” The whole thing feels a bit lumbering as it moves from gag to gag and scene to scene. The deliberate pacing appears as early as the cold open (“Newt Gingrich: Moon President”), and it sets the tone. That’s a dreadful way to start a show. And here’s what happens: The opening credits start to feel like they go on forever, and I like the theme music. It’s to the point where even Don Pardo’s iconic introduction of each cast member starts to sounds rote.
Compare that with “30 Rock” and Alec Baldwin’s loopy ode to Dean Martin and 1960s variety shows. It was one minute long. Short. But potent. Fey managed to load more jokes into those 60 seconds — Baldwin had a field day with that cigarette, and with politically incorrect drunken asides — than anything on “SNL,” where the sketches average between three and five minutes. That’s staggering. Why isn’t “SNL” doing shorter, punchier sketches?
2. An overriding theme gave the “30 Rock” sketches — cutaways, really — a cohesive feel. Each existed within its own world, and yet felt as if it belonged to a larger comedic idea. And it freed up jokes within each of those sketches to range out into non sequitur territory, if only for a beat.
But aside from “SNL’s” dandy Betty White episode in 2010 that became a salute to the women of “SNL” past and present, the show doesn’t really do theme episodes. (Not in its regular late-night form, anyway.) Maybe it should every so often. It would be a worthwhile creative challenge. Blow off the musical guest that week and mix up the order of things. Why shouldn’t “SNL” have the room to devise a larger framing device if the idea is good enough? (Another of NBC’s sitcoms, “Community,” has explored this ground with compelling results, including last week’s “Law & Order” spoof, which took over the entire episode.)
Yes, a 30-minute episode has different demands than a 90-minute episode. But these are smart people, a big chunk of whom came from The Second City and iO Theater here in Chicago, where long-form is the name of the game.
3. No one on “30 Rock” appeared to be reading cue cards. This is a biggie. Haven’t we all had it up to here with “SNL’s” penchant for cue-card acting, a phenomenon whereby actors stare at a point just off camera and try to invest some life into a line that they are clearly reading rather than performing?
Whatever the setup is at “SNL,” it seems worth revisiting if it means the cast doesn’t have time to memorize its lines. I suspect it would be a two-birds, one-stone solution that would effectively kick up the pace of each sketch.
4. There’s this weird thing that all “SNL” sketches do: They stall. There are intros that follow intros, and it can be a full minute and a half before you ever get to the meat of a scene. Too much windup, not enough follow-through. The sketches feel like jetliners forced to circle the airport. It’s hard to tell if this is intentional or something the writers aren’t even aware of anymore, but these delay tactics might be the biggest problem sinking “SNL” sketches.
Except no, the endings are pretty terrible too. When was the last time you saw a sketch end on a real kicker rather than a pffft? When a sketch ends on a shrug, is it any wonder the audience does the same? “30 Rock” took a more proactive approach, either whipping to the next scene or cutting to a faux cigarette commercial that fired off jokes like an automatic rifle.
5. Let ’em see you sweat. By the end of “30 Rock,” Baldwin was visibly sweating, and it drove home the idea that the cast had been running around like crazy to get the show on the air. That type of energy isn’t as palpable on “SNL.”
6. Write jokes that are light on their feet. On “SNL,” Bill Hader played the host of a 1966-era game show and began with a blatantly sexist one-liner: “Funny story, my wife asked me what I thought of her new pants suit today, and I said, ‘If I want to make love to a man, I’d join the Navy.'” Pause. Awkward titters from the audience.
Compare that with the bit on “30 Rock” that also skewered male chauvinism. Set in 1970, it featured news anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (played by Jon Hamm and Baldwin for the East Coast broadcast; Brian Williams and Baldwin for the West Coast), cutting Fey’s lady correspondent down to size with a rat-a-tat series of put-downs: “Honey, you have a dynamite shape, but you’re going to have to shut up and let a man tell us what’s happening. Now, is your father or a policeman nearby?”
A one-minute scene. And it ended on a solid laugh.
All of this together makes for a tough assignment week in, week out. The writer-performers at Second City take months to develop and hone a show before they really nail a scene’s sweet spot. “SNL” doesn’t have that luxury, and there are other complicating factors, including a celebrity guest host who may or may not fit into the swing of things. (There are three more new episodes in the season; Super Bowl winner Eli Manning hosts Saturday.)
A sense of danger has been noticeably missing for a long time now. Also missing is the notion that we’re watching a company of players flying by the seat of its pants. No doubt “Saturday Night Live” is an aerobic workout for all those involved. In the best-case scenario, it should leave the audience catching its breath as well.
Twitter @NinaMetzNews
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