SNL - It's Not Just About Laughs!

According to CNN, the viewership of NBC's Saturday Night Live is up by 50 percent. I will admit that, I haven't watched SNL this much since I was a pre-teen/teenager in the 1980's, in the heydays of Eddie Murphy (who played a stellar Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and Mr. Rogers) and Joe Piscopo (who played a hilarious Frank Sinatra). Who could forget the duet that Eddie as "Stevie" and Joe as "Frank" performed of the infamous Ebony & Ivory song, originally done in real life by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. Saturday Night Live in the 80's and early 90's was a riot and in rare form.

But, to me, SNL fell off, or it was probably just the fact that I graduated from high school, went off to college, and became old enough not to have to sit in the house on Saturday nights. No, but, part of it was that SNL kind of lost it's luster, at least on my age group. I blame part of it on the new cast members they hired in the late 90's and part of the 2000's. Some of them just haven't had the same star power as a Chevy Chase, an Eddie Murphy, a Bill Murray, or a Gilda Radner. I guess it took the antics of the Repuplican Party to give SNL the comeback that is now getting the show ratings they it has never seen before, particularly in the age of online videos. The clips of the Palin sketches have been viewed by millions of people over and over and has the world on the edge of its seat each Saturday Night, once again, waiting to see how the politicians are going to be portrayed each week leading up to the Presidential election. I can't wait to see what they do with Sarah Palin's real life appearance on the show this Saturday night.

And don't get me wrong, SNL is equal in it's parody. It's definitely not just the Republicans who get all the laughs. There are two white guys on SNL who do a mean impression of Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. The Jesse Jackson impersonator is actually quite good and very convincing in his imitation of Mr. Jackson's rhyme and rhetoric.

So, kudos to SNL for making an LL Cool J like comeback. I hope they can keep it up after the election is over!

media.think
Kellea
(CNN video of interview with SNL cast members about their influence on politics)