Saturday Night Live: The 80's
 

Really well done but, DANG, there were a lot of commercials.

It was excellent !!!

That was a great show. Glad they spent a lot of time explaining the 85-86 season. Oddly enough it's one of my favorites.

I was happy they spent a lot of time pre-86 (they'll probably focus on the post-86 cast once they do a special on the '90s era of SNL since most of those cast members made it into the first half of that decade). I was even happier that they showed a clip from that brilliant '86 finale when they light the cast on fire and Lorne only saves Jon Lovitz, such a classic SNL moment. :lol:

Even the weaker moments from the '80s (80-81 anyone?) are far superior than the dreck that's currently passing as SNL.

That's what i don't get. This special showed how they were willing to dump the entire cast when it really wasn't working. Why are the current cast and writers still on? , they can't possibly think that the show is working. I can see not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings but sometimes you just have to do what is best for the show.

Any mention of Charles Rocket kicking his own bucket?

This really showed how good the 84-85 season was with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Jim Belushi, and Julia Louis Dreyfuss, and others.

To me that was the best season, even better then the Belushi Years in the 70's. Dont get me wrong the Belushi years were great, but this season is still overall hysterical when it is shown in reruns.

And the funny thing is it didn't have Lorne Michaels. Compare that to now, and the show today is awful. The writers are bad, the actors with the exception of a few have no talent, and other than political skits, which are they do to much of , the show is a bore anymore.

This show showed how far SNL has nosedived in 20 years, cause it hasn't been really funny since the early 90's. It is sad because what made the 84-85 season so unique is they went in a different direction, and it wasn't a typical SNL season. There wasn't much political humor that year, and that was an election year too. It was just solid writing, and a really talented cast with characters such as Fernando, Sammy Davis Jr., Captain Kangaroo, Ed Grimley, and Jackie Rodgers Jr., it was great every week.

man, watching that really pissed me off. Only being 22 years old I really missed some good seasons of SNL. There were defently some good episodes with Ferrell, hammond,mcdonald, but I really cant remember beyond those guys. Even though most of the 80's were rough for SNL I would bet its funnier then what they have now.

I thought this was very good. I just passed by and saw interviews. I thought it was just going to be a clip show and thats it.

Had I known it would have interviews from today I would have made an appointment to stop down.

As I was watching it, and of course they DID play some clips for reference, I noticed something that back then you wouldn't notice. But today it's GLARING.

They were not reading off cue cards. Or rather reading off cue cards so blatantly that they just stand still, never move, and their eyes dart back and forth reading their lines as if it's the first time they've seen the material.

Lorne must need a stiff drink after every episode in 2005 just to forget the crap and dream of better days when he had pros.

This special made the SNL of today look worse than I thought it was.

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I thought the musical clips they showed were poor, as they did not edit in clips consistently that were from the era they were discussing. Case in point, they showed the Cowboy Junkies when they were discussing the early eighties when that was more later 80's.

That kept bugging me.

I don't think they were meant to represent the era, but rather the theme of what they were talking about. Example: Lone Justice's "Shelter" when they said Dick Ebersol was good at handling the network and protecting the show.

No. That JUST happened.

The show was great, but not nearly long enough. 10 years in 90 minutes is no good. And too bad they couldn't secure Murphy.

Belushi as the chess coach killed me...the man can actually be funny when he wants to be.

That '86 finale was funny. I had forgotten that Lorne came to save Jon Lovitz. I remember being shocked when I saw it, and I knew a lot of those folks weren't coming back :)

I agree. If I could have one season of SNL on DVD, that would be the one. That foursome of Crystal, Shearer, Guest, and Short was brilliant.

As for this show, it seemed like something better suited for E! to run, although I guess they couldn't run clips then.

I'm assuming he was talking about when Charles Rocket uttered "fuck" live which was mentioned during the special (and also mentioned that they let "fuck" slip during the first five years, but nobody cared then as the show was doing so well whereas the show was a trainwreck during 80-81.

Maybe Lorne needs to leave the show and have Ebersol come back and run things again. Christ, even when the 85-86 season had more young hollywood actors than comedians is better than the current state of the show which consists of nothing but comedians (in both the writing staff and cast). And this is coming from someone who hates that season with a passion (I happen to turn it off when it's ever been replayed).

Isn't it time that Eddie Murphy stop pulling a Shatner and embrace his legacy on the show? I'm getting tired of hearing others speak for him about his time on SNL.

I loved reliving some of those moments. Many of those episodes are still so fresh in my memory, it's hard to imagine some of them took place 20 years ago. And that made me feel old!

And if they could ever get season sets out of this show, I'd buy several of the 80s seasons in a heart beat.

Yep. Plus he was great as Cap'n Kangaroo on the password-like show.

No, I think he's referring to the fact that Charles Rocket killed himself just a couple of weeks ago.

I was thinking the same exact thing throughout the show. The main difference? Most of them were veterans of comedy troupes and improv shows. Not sure you can say that today....but yeah, it was amazing how obvious the difference was.

surprisingly good show all around - I was amazed they didn't shy away from the bad - and boy did they completely excoriate Ms. Doumanian.

I feel kind of bad for Joe Piscopo. He and Murphy revitalized the show, and look where the two of them are now.

Man, can't believe that I completely forgot about Mr. and Mrs. T!

It was watchable, but not very enlightening. Actually felt there weren't enough clips or interviews & would've liked another hour - or maybe even split into 2 2-hour shows. Very few (if any) performers got their best bits highlighted. Ending it at 1990 felt pretty arbitrary since so many of the cast members continued to work on the show for another couple of years. I was expecting some kind of Phil Hartman tribute at the end, but then I realized that he stayed on the show til '94 & they'll talk more about him in the next special.

I liked that they talked about what didn't work & what they did wrong (- just as Al Franken admitted that they wasted Garrett Morris in the first special). I wonder how long it'll take before they're able to do the same about the current shows.

Also liked that they picked songs that tied into what was being discussed because it meant that we didn't just get the big names. Seeing Cowboy Junkies & Lone Justice in prime time is pretty shocking.

I'm glad I got to see Charles Rocket say "fuck" after reading about it for so long - & it was interesting to see Gilbert Gottfried play a different character.

Many NBC stations do show complete 90 minute reruns of old shows Saturday night/Sunday morning at 3am. Trouble is you never really know what you're going to get. It seems to be random. Last weekend they had an Alec Baldwin/B-52s episode listed, but it was actually the "Who Shot Buckwheat" episode from '83 with Bruce Dern & Leon Redbone as the guests.

I enjoyed the show, but I don't remember seeing Penn and Teller on there. They were supposed to have taped some stuff for the special, but it either got cut or I just somehow missed them talking.

As far as the current show its completely unwatchable to me. Its definitely time for a complete cast dump and a fresh start. I liked the Will Farrell cast, but once all those guys left they never found any solid replacements.

Yep, sounds like it's time for another fire!