How do you discuss a show that has run for so many years and been so many different things to its viewing audience, alternately gut-bustingly funny and barely watchable, often within the same episode? Yesterday’s SNL special on Oprah did it’s best to pay homage to the show, and I think they did an admirable job. The most heart-rending moment of the show came when Tracy Morgan thanked Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin for being on the original cast. Get prepared to tell your coworkers you have something in your eye. “I just want to thank you two. I remember my father coming from Vietnam and he wasn’t…he had went through that. He wasn’t laughing much,†Morgan told them. “Then one night in 1975, he turned on Saturday Night Live. I’d never heard my father laugh like that, and I just wanted to thank you.†Yeah, it’s as sweet and sad as you’re imagining. Meanwhile Jane Curtin’s John Belushi comments were a different kind of devastating all together.
