A little midday SNL, John Belushi, and a Wolverine reference
This is the very first opening of the very first Saturday Night Live. John Belushi would've been 73 today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdWAGFLnOUg
January 24th, 2022 at 3:01 PM ^
John Belushi and Michael O'Donoghue - a classic. I don't think O'Donoghue was ever credited as a Not Ready for Primetime Player but was a long time writer for SNL.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:09 PM ^
Chevy Chase looks....like Fletch
January 24th, 2022 at 3:12 PM ^
SNL was hysterical in those early days.
January 30th, 2022 at 11:06 AM ^
the best!
January 24th, 2022 at 3:15 PM ^
I remember watching it live. This never gets old.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:17 PM ^
It’s still funny, just not as funny as it once was.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:23 PM ^
SNL basically stopped being funny once the Will Ferrell/Cheri O'Teri/Darryl Hammond/ group was gone. There were a few flickers of life after that, like Amy Poehler, but now it's basically not funny at all and hasn't been for years.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:41 PM ^
When's the last time you've sat down and watched full episodes on a consistent basis? It seems this is always a trendy take regarding SNL.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:59 PM ^
I record all new episodes and watch them latter.
Now I will say that #45 gave the show almost five years of free material that for the most part they turned into gold. He’s still the gift that keeps on giving.
January 24th, 2022 at 4:35 PM ^
See, this is where I disagree. Trump did provide plenty of fodder, but it's really hard to make fun of people that you love or people that you hate. Baldwin and the SNL writing staff I'm sure hated Trump so much that I think it made it difficult for them to be truly funny. Same with Obama. Too much love to actually make fun of him properly. They did a great job with Bush and Gore because those two just didn't elicit the polarization that we have now.
January 24th, 2022 at 5:08 PM ^
Latter the later?
January 24th, 2022 at 5:10 PM ^
I agree with BeatOSU52. Saturday Night Live have always been funny. People may have preferences when it comes to eras of SNL, but the comedy has never stopped.
January 24th, 2022 at 5:50 PM ^
When is the last time the opening monologue was funny? Few openings have grabbed my attention. I can only watch so much where the proposed punchline is repeated four and five times in an effort to get it to catch-on but it doesn't because it was NOT FUNNY. Halloween costumes based on SNL used to be rampant even in middle aged suburbia. Is it now? T-shirts? SNL needs more cowbell. Why would anyone watch a terrible show from start to finish? Why aren't my college age nieces and nephews cracking SNL jokes?
January 30th, 2022 at 11:07 AM ^
Not since Eddie Murphy days.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:46 PM ^
Maybe it's just me but the amount of political satire on SNL is just not that funny and downright boring.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:52 PM ^
I don't watch it regularly but it seems that it's about the same as it has always been. A few peaks surrounded by broad valleys. One post-Oteri example (not necessarily to everyone's taste) is the recurring skit where guest Jonah Hill plays a Borscht Belt comic as a six-year-old kid. Few years ago ...
January 24th, 2022 at 4:03 PM ^
Jonah Hill is just not funny.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:35 PM ^
I have a theory that SNL was always funny in the past, and not nearly as funny now--no matter what timeframe you live in--because of the way we remember the show.
Obviously, the quality has had ups and downs, but I think the style of the show tends to lend itself to remembering that funniest sketches, while the not-as-funny sketches fade quickly in memory. I don't often sit down and watch a full show, but if I did, I'd be comparing one week, with moderately good and moderately bad, against my memories from the past: almost all great sketches, picked from across many years.
January 24th, 2022 at 4:49 PM ^
Over the last 30 years, every single time I've seen someone mention SNL, someone says it used to be funny but hasn't been for years. Every time. It's an obligatory comment now.
January 24th, 2022 at 5:57 PM ^
SNL jokes were repeated in the classroom in the 70's and in the office in the 80's. I don't hear them now and I don't hear SNL jokes from my many nieces and nephews that are currently in college. Comedy is rarely timeless but, the external indicators are that the show hasn't been funny for 20 years. (Songs, t-shirts, Halloween costumes, movie spin-offs.) Late-night time slots are not great money makers on weekends. The bar is low. TV in general is falling off the map. Otherwise, SNL would have been dumped years ago.
January 24th, 2022 at 10:29 PM ^
Agreed. It's hard to make an hour of good sketches every week. I thought the same as others about the classic period, which so happens to be when I was younger, with Farley and Hartman and those people. But if you watch whole episodes there are plenty of meh ones in there.
It's similar to music. Many people think everything in the 60s was great, but that's because most people listen to really a handful of bands from then. Plenty of shit in that time too.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:18 PM ^
And then there was this.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:43 PM ^
This is supposed to mimic the Billy Goat tavern, which is located under Chicago on Illinois ave. The cheeseburgers are not bad. Everything else is just OK.
January 24th, 2022 at 4:20 PM ^
No Lie. My dad and his brother were Greeks who moved here. They opened a restaurant in Madison Heights (drive-in actually, the "happy Days" of Detroit). They talked very similar to the 2 Greeks shown in this Skit. Oh, and their names: Pete and George!!! We used to laugh so hard when this skit was on back in the day!!
January 24th, 2022 at 3:27 PM ^
One of my all time favorites
January 24th, 2022 at 3:28 PM ^
Why would *anyone* accept anything Badger-related when they could have a Wolverine? :-)
Thanks, Wendy! Fun times. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far way.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:38 PM ^
I remember when he was going to be the last one left.
January 24th, 2022 at 3:54 PM ^
I graduated from M LS&A in May of 1975 and went to grad school with a bunch of my fraternity brothers in Detroit, medical school and law school. SNL debuted on NBC on October 11, 1975. The first year, Channel 4 in Detroit didn't carry it so we watched it on the NBC station out of Toledo.
Saturday night parties would stop at 11:30 p.m. and get rolling again at 1:00 a.m. so we could watch SNL. Not a lot of Chevy Chase fans but we all loved the show.
January 24th, 2022 at 7:05 PM ^
I can remember going to the bar on Saturday night and then heading to someone's house to watch SNL and partying into the early morning after the show was over.
January 30th, 2022 at 11:07 AM ^
Those were the most original shows.
January 24th, 2022 at 4:23 PM ^
Although not an exuberant Chevy Chase fan on the whole, I did always enjoy watching him do President Ford in the early SNL days, speaking of Wolverines.
Actually, Michigan makes it into "The Pink Panther Strikes Again", speaking of Ford, as he is portrayed as attempt to watch the Michigan / Notre Dame game when Dreyfus breaks into the broadcast to blackmail world leaders, as I recall.
January 24th, 2022 at 4:29 PM ^
I grew up watching The Pink Panther Strikes Again (my dad is a huge Peter Sellers fan) and can probably pinpoint my Michigan fandom originating from that White House scene.
January 24th, 2022 at 7:39 PM ^
This is in my top five funny movies. I've seen it so many times I practically know the entire script by heart. Favorite scenes: "I used to be quite the gymnast" on the parallel bars and then falling down the stairs; "That was a priceless Steinway!" Putting his iron-gloved hand into the fire and then hitting himself in the head with the vase; the dentist scene and the nitrous oxide; and of course the scene with Cato when he is the Hunchback of Notre Dame with the inflatable hump. So many great scenes.
January 24th, 2022 at 8:11 PM ^
The dialogue includes references to Badgers and "boiling" Wolverines. I suspect it was written by a deranged Purdue fan.