Quote of the Day (Andy Richter, on the Decline of the Late-Night Talk-Show Sidekick)

“Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon existed unto themselves. There was no late-night war. There was no competition. It was just a leisurely conversation. When you look at some of the old interviews that went on for like three acts, they don’t talk about anything. There just was nothing else on. When it started to be a competition, then it started to be about a personality and branding the show based on this one person.”—Talk-show personality (and Conan O'Brien "second banana") Andy Richter, theorizing on how the late-night tradition of talk-show sidekick declined, quoted in Dave Itzkoff, “The Top Second Banana Moves On,” The New York Times, June 27, 2021

This Day in TV History (‘SNL’ Airs 1st Episode in 5 Years Produced by Lorne Michaels)

Nov. 9, 1985—Five years after Lorne Michaels (pictured) stepped away from his creation, Saturday Night Live aired its first episode back under his guiding hand, allowing the late-night staple to once again take its place among the greatest TV showcases for comic talent next to Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and The Tonight Show under Johnny Carson.

Michaels’ resumption of his duties as executive producer came after the show, under its two previous heads, had been in danger of losing its reputation for irreverent skewing of American culture and politics by improv-trained comic actors, standup comics and jaundiced writers.

Expectations were high, then, on his return—probably too high to be met immediately, even with the comparative luxury of a season premiere more than a month later than in previous seasons. 

Reviews for this episode (guest-hosted by Madonna, with musical guests Simple Minds) were rocky, with the opening skit (NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff stating that urine drug tests would be given to the new cast members) running into particular flak. In fact, the entire 11^th season is regarded by many fans as among the worst in the show’s history.

But Michaels’ reputation was high enough that he was able to buy time, and a year later he had figured out how to right the ship.

Like a new company head coming in from outside, Michaels took the reins back at SNL after being assured he would have a free hand in choosing his team. And that meant in its entirety. Not a single cast member was retained from the prior season.

And so, show fans bid goodbye to Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Mary Gross, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Gary Kroeger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, and Pamela Stephenson. 

They said hello to Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Nora Dunn, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeney, and Danitra Vance.

The subsequent fame of Cusack and Downey shed a retrospective glow to the 11^th season that wasn’t there at the time. The new crew did not mesh particularly well right away.

Rather than cast young relative unknowns who nevertheless had worked together previously, as with the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, Michaels preferred several members who had already made a name for themselves onscreen, such as Randy Quaid and Anthony Michael Hall. This particular change in his methods was not successful across the board.

It was a close call, but NBC was willing to give Michaels another chance, and the executive producer felt he was not at a point where he could walk away from it. Severe difficulties had resulted back in 1980 when failure to come to terms on Michaels’ contract negotiations (along with burnout) led him led to walk away from the weekend institution.

Michaels’ follow-up venture, the prime-time comedy series The New Show, failed a year and a half after his departure. Success in reviving SNL would also revive his reputation.

NBC had had it even tougher: Jean Doumanian, the show’s head for the sixth season, was axed after only 10 months on the job (in a December 2016 Hollywood Reporter interview, she cited the handicaps she was under—the need to replace an entire cast and crew that left with Michaels, along with a lower budget than her predecessor enjoyed—while detractors pointed to the nickname “Ayatollah Doumanian” as evidence that she was not cut out for the role).

Her replacement, Dick Ebersol, retained only Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo from her cast. Though some of the new cast members succeeded, it really was Murphy’s brilliance that almost single-handedly saved the show over the next four seasons. 

By 1985, tired of the brutal schedule and of retooling the show yet again (with yet another round of recasting, along with switching to mostly prerecorded segments), Ebersol and NBC called it a day.

As mentioned earlier, Michael’s initial preference in 1985 for a more recognizable cast did not represent an advance on the Ebersol regime. And, as New York Magazine’s Brian Boone noted in 2013, the rest of that season featured so many creative misfires (e.g., Francis Ford Coppola as guest host)  that only an 11^th-hour plea by Michaels persuaded Tartikoff not to cancel the show for good.

But other changes that season, over the course of time, produced an upturn in the show’s favor:

* Lovitz and Dunn created several of the show’s more enduring characters, including Tommy Flanagan the Pathological Liar and film critic Ashley Ashley;

* Miller re-established “Weekend Update” as a focal point for the show’s political satire;

* Al Franken returned as a writer and featured player;

* Videotaped dress rehearsals furnished Michaels with multiple options: for fixing technical issues, experimenting with different line readings, or using unaired segments when a particular sketch was judged not worthy of being rerun.

Moreover, with a complete overhaul that actually worked this time—including new cast members Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, and Kevin Nealon—Michaels succeeded in bringing the show out of its Dark Ages and into its Renaissance. 

Now in its 46^th season, SNL is the longest-running weekly late-night show in the history of television, and Michaels himself has become an institution, given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 2016 by Barack Obama.

TV Quote of the Day (“Dr. Evil,” Revealing His 2020 Plans)

“I found the perfect running mate, the only man more hated than Donald Trump.” (A campaign poster fills the screen: "Evil/Zuckerberg 2020.") “Hey, America, get ready to be poked!” (begins to laugh diabolically)—“Dr. Evil” (played by Mike Myers), describing his firing from the Trump Cabinet (he was the “ideas” man) and his plans for the next Presidential election, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Apr. 5, 2018

Quote of the Day (Jimmy Kimmel, on His Strength as a Talk-Show Host)

“I feel like what I do best is take a strong stand against stupid things, like, for instance, pumpkin-spice pizza.”— Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel quoted in David Marchese, “In Conversation: Jimmy Kimmel,” New York Magazine, Oct. 30-Nov. 12, 2017

In a recent cover story for New York Magazine, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel—who turned 50 last week—reflected frankly on this unusual point in his life and in that of the country.

I am ambivalent about comedians wading into politics. To the extent that they do it at all, I prefer that politics be one of many subjects tackled and that comics be bipartisan in their targets, whether in a joshing (Will Rogers) or savage (Mark Twain) spirit. Virtue does not wholly reside in one party any more than it does in one religion, and ignoring one group of politicos automatically eliminates incredibly inviting satiric fodder.

But these times are like none that I have ever witnessed—nor, in a lifetime devoted to reading history, in any prior American era that I know of. It’s not just that the human instincts for power, greed and lust that have always posed obstacles for candidates and officeholders, nor even the smooth spin cycles that have made the last generation of politicians often unworthy of being taken at their word.

No, it is the daily meanness and mendacity and the shredded constitutional protections coming from the Oval Office that make this moment unprecedented in our history. And the GOP, in firm control of every branch of the U.S. government, yet fearful of losing congressional seats, has now gone all in with a President unchastened by political experience and swollen by the powers of his office.

In this era, it’s no longer poets who are, in Shelley’s phrase, the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” It’s the comedians who, by virtue of their large audiences, can speak truth to power, the electronic era’s counterpart to King Lear’s fool.

nd so, we have Jimmy Kimmel, previously a largely apolitical late-night host, entering the health-care debate after his baby son needed open-heart surgery to repair a congenital defect. His remarks that night explaining his recent absence--“No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child’s life”—might not have been funny, but they were appropriate and genuine.

As a parent, Kimmel has also felt compelled to weigh in on gun control. (Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, he noted bitingly in his post-Vegas-shooting monologue, “sent their thoughts and their prayers today, which is good. They should be praying. They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country.”) 

 But looming over all has been the specter of President Trump.

“I never imagined he [Trump] would actually be elected,” Kimmel said in his New York interview. “I remember joking about it: If you tried to think of the most extreme example of someone who would never be elected president, Trump was a name you’d throw in there. There was a time when I thought this country was much more likely to elect Maury [Povich] as president than Donald Trump. His election was shocking. It makes me question everything.”

Kimmel responded thoughtfully to a wide range of other topics in his sit-down, including the surprising durability of the late-night talk-show format. 

But what remains most indelibly in the memory, after several pages, are his deep-bone concern about the direction of America under its new leadership (“I go to bed worried, and I wake up worried, and I honestly don’t know if things are going to be okay”) and his sense that he has crossed a comic Rubicon with his swerve away from his formerly apolitical style (“I think I’ve alienated more people than I’ve brought onboard. But what I thought was important was telling the truth.”)

Joke of the Day (Conan O’Brien, on Airlines’ Customer Service)

“Last year, complaints about airlines increased 22%. There were probably more complaints, but the airlines lost them.”—TV late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, tweet of Apr. 24, 2015

Quote of the Day (Larry Wilmore, on Wit)

“Someone slipping on a banana peel is funny, but there’s nothing witty about it. Wit involves using language in a clever way to reveal some greater truth. We appreciate both the cleverness and the light that it shines for us.”—Larry Wilmore, quoted in “Soapbox: Jane Krakowski, Larry Wilmore and More on Wit,” WSJ. Magazine, Mar. 21, 2016

Sorry about the cancellation of your Nightly Show, Larry. With luck, you’ll be smiling and displaying your wit again soon in another forum.

Quote of the Day (Conan O’Brien, on a New App for Pot Users)

“A new app can tell marijuana users how high they are. It’s called the Domino's Pizza app.”—Talk-show host Conan O’Brien on Conan, Aug. 3, 2015 episode