Rat Patrol wrote:NBC re-ran the 1st-ever episode of SNL this weekend with Carlin hosting. Obviously toned-down act because of network TV, but his religion spiel was pretty out there for 1975. And he did the legendary football vs. baseball bit.
Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
And, wow...his joke about taking weapons on an airplane and taking out the pilot with a well-placed papercut would not fly today. Neither would the Albert Brooks skit about lowering the age of consent to 7 which had a creepy businessman in a trench coat trying to bribe an actual 7-year-old girl actress with sundaes to get her up to his hotel room. I can't believe that one was ever allowed on TV in '75...or that it wasn't edited out of the rebroadcast by today's nanny-state network execs.
Did they show the whole episode? I didn't catch it because, by coincidence, I watched it on dvd about 2 days before George Carlin died... but the original runtime of those episodes was like an hour and 7 minutes.
Yeah, the Albert Brooks 7 year old bit was pretty on the edge. The crazy thing is, about 6 episodes later they reair the same Brooks film. So the 7 year old bit actually got aired on two different episodes! Things on late night were different in 75 I guess.
I just watched the first season episode Richard Pryor hosted. I can pretty much guarantee none of the skits from that episode would fly today.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead
Rat Patrol wrote:Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
I've seen that performance years ago and it's pretty apparent that he's out of his mind while also in a creative downturn, when much of his humour was of the Cheech & Chong variety. Other than it being the first episode of SNL, it's pretty forgettable in terms of Carlin.
"Grab some wood, bub.'" - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft
Rat Patrol wrote:NBC re-ran the 1st-ever episode of SNL this weekend with Carlin hosting. Obviously toned-down act because of network TV, but his religion spiel was pretty out there for 1975. And he did the legendary football vs. baseball bit.
Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
And, wow...his joke about taking weapons on an airplane and taking out the pilot with a well-placed papercut would not fly today. Neither would the Albert Brooks skit about lowering the age of consent to 7 which had a creepy businessman in a trench coat trying to bribe an actual 7-year-old girl actress with sundaes to get her up to his hotel room. I can't believe that one was ever allowed on TV in '75...or that it wasn't edited out of the rebroadcast by today's nanny-state network execs.
Did they show the whole episode? I didn't catch it because, by coincidence, I watched it on dvd about 2 days before George Carlin died... but the original runtime of those episodes was like an hour and 7 minutes.
Yeah, the Albert Brooks 7 year old bit was pretty on the edge. The crazy thing is, about 6 episodes later they reair the same Brooks film. So the 7 year old bit actually got aired on two different episodes! Things on late night were different in 75 I guess.
I just watched the first season episode Richard Pryor hosted. I can pretty much guarantee none of the skits from that episode would fly today.
How are the old episodes in general? It seems to me that sketch comedy doesn't age particularly well ever.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.
Rat Patrol wrote:Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
I've seen that performance years ago and it's pretty apparent that he's out of his mind while also in a creative downturn, when much of his humour was of the Cheech & Chong variety. Other than it being the first episode of SNL, it's pretty forgettable in terms of Carlin.
I honestly don't think SNL hit it's stride until the Pryor episode.
”INDER LOCK THE THE KISS THREAD IVE REALISED IM A PRZE IDOOT” - Thomas Jefferson
George Carlin is one of my favorite comedians. It sucks that I never got to see him live. I love when he talks about the safety lectures on the airplains and what to call the stewerdas, the lady on the plain.
Anyway,I love early SNL. One of my favorite sketches is when they have "Literary Corner" with Desi Arnaz reading Jabberwocky.
Rat Patrol wrote:Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
I've seen that performance years ago and it's pretty apparent that he's out of his mind while also in a creative downturn, when much of his humour was of the Cheech & Chong variety. Other than it being the first episode of SNL, it's pretty forgettable in terms of Carlin.
I honestly don't think SNL hit it's stride until the Pryor episode.
Thereabouts, yeah. There's some bits and pieces before that, but it's pretty tame sketch comedy compared to the glory years of the NRFPTP.
"Grab some wood, bub.'" - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft
Rat Patrol wrote:Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
I've seen that performance years ago and it's pretty apparent that he's out of his mind while also in a creative downturn, when much of his humour was of the Cheech & Chong variety. Other than it being the first episode of SNL, it's pretty forgettable in terms of Carlin.
I honestly don't think SNL hit it's stride until the Pryor episode.
In fairness, that was only the 7th episode. It was also the first to use the regular stage format (not having that walkway that goes into the audience).
I think the early stuff is pretty good. A lot of the political humor is still funny for me because I enjoy political history so much (plus, really, Gerald Ford jokes are still amusing). The early SNL stuff is almost timeless because it often seems so bizarre and disconnected to any reality. I've been enjoying watching the early episodes.
The muppets bits haven't aged too well though.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead
Rat Patrol wrote:NBC re-ran the 1st-ever episode of SNL this weekend with Carlin hosting. Obviously toned-down act because of network TV, but his religion spiel was pretty out there for 1975. And he did the legendary football vs. baseball bit.
Not exactly a vintage-level performance...he looked nervous. According to the man himself he was so high that night that he barely remembers even giving the monologues, only that he was trying way too hard out of paranoia of forgetting his material on live network TV...hence the uncharacteristic jitters.
And, wow...his joke about taking weapons on an airplane and taking out the pilot with a well-placed papercut would not fly today. Neither would the Albert Brooks skit about lowering the age of consent to 7 which had a creepy businessman in a trench coat trying to bribe an actual 7-year-old girl actress with sundaes to get her up to his hotel room. I can't believe that one was ever allowed on TV in '75...or that it wasn't edited out of the rebroadcast by today's nanny-state network execs.
Did they show the whole episode? I didn't catch it because, by coincidence, I watched it on dvd about 2 days before George Carlin died... but the original runtime of those episodes was like an hour and 7 minutes.
Yeah, the Albert Brooks 7 year old bit was pretty on the edge. The crazy thing is, about 6 episodes later they reair the same Brooks film. So the 7 year old bit actually got aired on two different episodes! Things on late night were different in 75 I guess.
I just watched the first season episode Richard Pryor hosted. I can pretty much guarantee none of the skits from that episode would fly today.
How are the old episodes in general? It seems to me that sketch comedy doesn't age particularly well ever.
Surprisingly good because they were so damn absurdist as to be timeless. The skits in Season 1 are just outright weird genius. Few people in their fart-joke demographic today would even bother watching that stuff it would be so hard to wrap their brains around it, despite being raised to think that those original seasons were legend. I've seen Episode 1 before in truncated form, but never start-to-finish. It only loosely resembles the format of today...4 host monologues with no mention of the "we've got a great show / happy to be here" fluff that makes the last 20 years of monologues so unwatchable (hosts also didn't start appearing in skits until a little ways in), 3 musical performances and 2 musical guests (2 Billy Preston performances with one Janice Ian performance sandwiched in the middle), a short film (sort-of revived on occasion today, but way different back then), special-guest skits (this time a Muppets skit that Jim Henson obviously wrote while tripping balls), Weekend Update (pretty much the same as ever since all anchors since are in some way derivative of Chevy Chase) and then sparingly spaced regular skits from the cast who are sort of a background attraction. Since the original cast all came out of renowned improv troupes most of the absurdist humor probably was improv during the week and pounded into semi-coherent shape for the show. But it was really edgy, out there, never-seen-before type stuff for TV audiences. And as-noted there were a couple jaw-droppers that never, ever would've passed the censors today...sex and drugs innuendo a bit seedier and matter-of-fact than the dumbass overload that passes for comedy today.
I loved it. Definitely get Season 1 on DVD. It's every bit as good as people say it is.
