Anyone Else Have a Hard Time Watching mid-1980's SNL?

[evilkumquat]

Netflix (get it while it lasts!) now has edited versions of the first three decades of Saturday Night Live available for streaming.

And boy do I mean EDITED. Some are less than 30 minutes long!

But I found that the enjoyment of my favorite seasons, the legendary post-Eddie Murphy cast of Carvey, Hartman, Hooks, Dunn, Lovitz and Nealon are forever tarnished by the later activities of Jackson and Miller.

Every time either of those two are on camera, I just can't get it out of my head that the "sweet" one is really a snide, robotic Stepford-wife style Christian airhead (possibly racist) Birther full of hatred and bitterness while the "intellectual" is a classist embracer of torture and greed.

[begin_within]

1. Not to mention Lorne Michaels is a Repuke.

They probably edited out all the good stuff and/or "controversial" stuff. SNL was fun in the 1970s, our parties stopped to watch it; but ever since then it's been downhill with only a few scattered bright spots.

[Old and In the Way]

6. "our parties stopped to watch it"

So did ours. I lived in an area with a lot of bars that catered to young people. It was amazing to see people clearing out of them on a Saturday night to head someplace to watch the show. Of course, that was before the age of DVR's and cable networks, so you got 1 shot to see the show or you missed out.

I still have a playbill from the National Lampoon Show that featured pretty much the entire cast in the summer of '75 when they were tuning up for SNL at the New Paladium in NYC. I remember being told that they were going live on TV that fall and thinking...oh, this is going to be something special...

[tgearfanatic234]

7. Exactly!

[RZM]

2. I try not to worry about entertainers' personal lives or politics

And just enjoy their work. Given the ridiculous behavior and beliefs of so many entertainment figures over the years, that's a slippery slope that I'd rather not deal with.

Besides, I'm a lot less troubled by entertainers whose beliefs differ from mine than I am by those who have committed serious crimes (often with few legal consequences, let alone career consequences).

[itsrobert]

4. Yup

Dennis Miller once was funny. Drugs weren't good to him in the long run.

[izquierdista]

3. Mental illness takes many forms

Hatred, bitterness, greed, sadism, racism -- these are all dysfunctional sociopathies. People that don't have these under control have difficulty relating to normal people and have to retreat into their small social group which, unfortunately, only serves to reinforce their deficit. It's untreated mental illness, and with the poor health care system the country has, it isn't likely to get treated any time soon.

I look on it as I would someone who lost control of his alcoholism or drug addiction -- it's another mental dysfunction in need of treatment.

[Myrina]

5. I couldn't watch them THEN ...

... after the original cast (Belushi, Ackroyd, Murray, Chase, Curtin, Radner et al), nobody could fill their shoes. And it's only gotten more lame ... SNL's time has passed.