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Having read the original version from 2002, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the new version with interviews from more recent seasons. It did not disappoint! Must read for comedy fans.
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use
Moderate: Addiction, Suicide
Minor: Eating disorder
funny
informative
slow-paced
Drugs, drugs, and lots of drugs. An updated version of this book would be far more boring. Be honest, most of us read this book just for the era in which we watched and grew up with the show, hence my lower rating.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use
I really enjoyed a lot of parts of this book, but it is very dense and can be occasionally hard to follow because of the overlapping interviews.
I was watching old episodes of SNL on Netflix as I was reading this. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much otherwise, but it was a great accompaniment.
Quotes from hosts, cast memebers and writers of the show throughout the years. As someone who has watched from the beginning it was interesting to learn how things took form. I learned the reasons for some odd things I had noticed over the years.
The Studs Terkel format lends its self to reading in bits and pieces. It's an interesting read for fans of the show.
The Studs Terkel format lends its self to reading in bits and pieces. It's an interesting read for fans of the show.
A great oral history of an entertainment institution, the book has a great journalistic foundation but boy does it seem long in parts.
funny
This was an unending slog, especially towards the second half. There were definitely interesting nuggets, but I can't say I walked away much richer for having read it.
There's little to no narrative structure. If you're going to get anything out of this, you need to read it with Wikipedia open. Which is kind of ridiculous, given how long it is. How can you have so much information but still feel like you don't know what's going on? The reporting bounces back and forth between people, often on seemingly unrelated topics, and it's your job to figure out what story the author is trying to tell.
Hint: it's often a pandering one. As other reviewers have mentioned, you will hear A LOT about Lorne Micheals and his style. And then when you think the book is over, he gets his own section, so that you can hear it all again.
The pandering is throughout, but the uncritical bias reaches a new height towards the end, in the section about the controversy around not having black women on the show. His comments are only a page or two long, but they're full of righteous indignation. I went from not really noticing the narration and craving more historical context to feeling like I'd been confronted with the author's defensive stance. "Jay Pharoah made things worse" by commenting honestly on his opinions. He ends it with "the hubbub subsided, though a few critics still complained about other minorities supposedly underrepresented on the show." Supposedly? Okay, calm down there. It's hardly putting the story together, he also manages to telegraph quite clearly his disgust that such a charge even had to be addressed. NOT, note, that lack of representation had to be addressed, but that critics had the gall to bring it up and complain about the clearly unimpeachable SNL. The interviews gave a slightly more well-rounded picture, but like... your one job is providing context. Way to distract with your belligerent opinions.
Also there is some NASTY smack-talking in this book. Often enough about women who were perceived as being too proud for the show. Jim Downey comes across as an absolute jerk. Sure, probably a great writer (although without looking it up, I have no idea WHAT he wrote) but comes across as pompous, dismissive, and out-of-touch. His Monica Lewinsky comments particularly stand out, but he had plenty to say about other women as well. He also criticizes anything political that he didn't write.
The authors don't edit out all this trash talk, and in fact it feels like they encouraged it and are choosing to center it. Maybe as a way to try to counteract their own pandering? But again, it's not anchored in any way by narrative, so mostly I'm googling who the person is and who they're talking about. Yeah, definitely people who worked together for a long time are going to have opinions about each other. But how about ATTEMPTING to contextualize it so we can walk away with a sense of what was going on? As it is, it just seems toxic and unpleasant. Which, maybe that's the point.
Along with the lack of narrative structure, in the second half it just gets choppier and choppier. I'm assuming this is because every so often they go back and update, and it makes more sense to just add on rather than rewrite from the beginning, but... it shows. The last 15 years of the show (broken into smaller sections) all manage to feel like tacked-on afterthoughts. And the kind of critical eye to what the show does and its value, which exists somewhat in the beginning, is missing. It's more just pro forma addressing what and who happened. The zoom-out of what it all means (which wasn't so strong to begin with) is completely gone by that point. Except for an overblown sense of importance, that just stays and grows throughout the book.
So basically, meh. It didn't give me what I was hoping for, and I can't recommend it.
There's little to no narrative structure. If you're going to get anything out of this, you need to read it with Wikipedia open. Which is kind of ridiculous, given how long it is. How can you have so much information but still feel like you don't know what's going on? The reporting bounces back and forth between people, often on seemingly unrelated topics, and it's your job to figure out what story the author is trying to tell.
Hint: it's often a pandering one. As other reviewers have mentioned, you will hear A LOT about Lorne Micheals and his style. And then when you think the book is over, he gets his own section, so that you can hear it all again.
The pandering is throughout, but the uncritical bias reaches a new height towards the end, in the section about the controversy around not having black women on the show. His comments are only a page or two long, but they're full of righteous indignation. I went from not really noticing the narration and craving more historical context to feeling like I'd been confronted with the author's defensive stance. "Jay Pharoah made things worse" by commenting honestly on his opinions. He ends it with "the hubbub subsided, though a few critics still complained about other minorities supposedly underrepresented on the show." Supposedly? Okay, calm down there. It's hardly putting the story together, he also manages to telegraph quite clearly his disgust that such a charge even had to be addressed. NOT, note, that lack of representation had to be addressed, but that critics had the gall to bring it up and complain about the clearly unimpeachable SNL. The interviews gave a slightly more well-rounded picture, but like... your one job is providing context. Way to distract with your belligerent opinions.
Also there is some NASTY smack-talking in this book. Often enough about women who were perceived as being too proud for the show. Jim Downey comes across as an absolute jerk. Sure, probably a great writer (although without looking it up, I have no idea WHAT he wrote) but comes across as pompous, dismissive, and out-of-touch. His Monica Lewinsky comments particularly stand out, but he had plenty to say about other women as well. He also criticizes anything political that he didn't write.
The authors don't edit out all this trash talk, and in fact it feels like they encouraged it and are choosing to center it. Maybe as a way to try to counteract their own pandering? But again, it's not anchored in any way by narrative, so mostly I'm googling who the person is and who they're talking about. Yeah, definitely people who worked together for a long time are going to have opinions about each other. But how about ATTEMPTING to contextualize it so we can walk away with a sense of what was going on? As it is, it just seems toxic and unpleasant. Which, maybe that's the point.
Along with the lack of narrative structure, in the second half it just gets choppier and choppier. I'm assuming this is because every so often they go back and update, and it makes more sense to just add on rather than rewrite from the beginning, but... it shows. The last 15 years of the show (broken into smaller sections) all manage to feel like tacked-on afterthoughts. And the kind of critical eye to what the show does and its value, which exists somewhat in the beginning, is missing. It's more just pro forma addressing what and who happened. The zoom-out of what it all means (which wasn't so strong to begin with) is completely gone by that point. Except for an overblown sense of importance, that just stays and grows throughout the book.
So basically, meh. It didn't give me what I was hoping for, and I can't recommend it.