Saturday Night Live: Difference between revisions

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* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]: When ''Saturday Night Live'' premiered (as ''NBC's Saturday Night''), it was much more of a [[Variety Show]]. The first few episodes had multiple musical guests and other performers, with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players only one part of the larger whole. The second episode (October 18, 1975) had no sketch comedy at all other than Weekend Update; the whole rest of the show was given to host/musical guest Paul Simon and other musical acts. Before Season 1 was finished, the sketch comedy part of the show had come to dominate.

** For some time after that, even as the sketch comedy became the emphasis of the show, the musical guests got more airtime than a viewer of later seasons would expect. In Season 2 the musical acts routinely got to do four songs. [[George Harrison]] performed two songs (with host Paul Simon) and the show aired two of his music videos.

* [[Edited for Syndication]]: Sometimes the NBC reruns will either have sketches or segments edited out due to a current event that turned the sketch into a [[Funny Aneurysm Moment]] (a rerun of the episode hosted by Blake Lively cut the Weekend Update segment where Abby Elliot impersonates Brittany Murphy due to Murphy's sudden death fifteen days after the episode's premiere) or censorship complaints (i.e. the Sinead O'Connor incident on the Season 18 episode hosted by Tim Robbins; Martin Lawrence's raunchy monologue from Season 19 was shortened and replaced with a series of cards telling viewers that his monologue was so controversial that it almost got everyone on ''SNL'' fired and it can never air on TV again). Other times, parts will be edited (or replaced with dress rehearsal versions) because of miscues, accidental use of the F-(or S-)word, or just the simple fact that the dress rehearsal version was done better (and includes funnier jokes that were either botched on-camera or omitted due to time constraints).

** ''SNL'' was shown on cable channels Comedy Central (from the early 1990s to 2003) and E! (from 2003-08) as 60-minute reruns (which filter out the weaker sketches and only air the best sketches and Weekend Update segments from that episode) Comedy Central dropped their reruns in favor of ''[[Mad TV]]'' (which was later dropped for more comedy specials, movies, and imports of failed animated sitcoms, such as ''[[Sit Down, Shut Up]]'' and ''[[The Goode Family]]''), while E! dropped theirs in favor of more reality shows. As of September 2010, hour-long reruns now air on [[VH-1]].

*** In addition to the hour long version mentioned above, there were reruns that were cut down to a half-hour and aired in syndication on local TV stations and on Nick at Nite in the 1980s, usually paired with reruns of ''SCTV''.

** The famous sketch in which Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze compete to become Chippendale's dancers originally featured the Loverboy song "Working for the Weekend." Any time you see it now - and it shows up on ''all'' the "best of SNL" retrospectives - it features generic instrumental rock, presumably due to music licensing issues.

** While not really syndication, episodes availabe on NBC's On-demand service in cable markets have the musical guest performances and many of the bumpers removed.

* [[Guest Host]]: Some of which are fan favorites and come back to host, like Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, Christopher Walken, Tom Hanks, John Goodman (though he hasn't hosted since 2001), Buck Henry (from the 1975-80 era), and Drew Barrymore (who first hosted when she was only seven years old). Some new fan favorite frequent hosts as of the 2008-2009 season include Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Scarlett Johanssen, and Justin Timberlake.

** All hosts of five or more episodes are part of a special Five-Timers Club, as demonstrated in a mid-1990s sketch (which included then-writer and pre-''Late Night'' Conan O'Brien as a servant). The club also includes musical guests with similar records, with Paul Simon as having the most appearances of any musical guest.