Nine Thoughts on Watching SNL’s First Season for the Very First Time

I have to confess, despite watching a lot of SNL and having heard and read second-hand about much of the whole history, I’ve never seen a full episode from the Aykroyd-Belushi-Radner-Chase era….until this week and damn, mind blown!

Some urgent thoughts I have to get out:

1. So first, things first, I wasn’t expecting to like it

I’ve never been majorly impressed with these people or their later careers. I admire Ghostbusters which was written by someone from the first class (Aykroyd), but I didn’t ever think Dan Aykroyd was a must-see as an actor. I saw various sketches in isolation but out of context, they don’t give a picture of the full experience. Instead, I’ve always (perhaps wrongly) felt people were overly worshipping of these guys who were there first but not necessarily the funniest. I also feel like so many other casts (particularly the 1980 cast) suffered from having critics say “It’s not like it used to be” so I had that bias against it….

However, I should not have judged a book by its cover because…

2. This season was wild and certainly eventful

The sketches are not as fully-formed as today’s SNL and sketch comedy world and some of them don’t qualify as comedy but I can imagine turning on the TV in 1975 and 1976 when comedy on TV was in a very stale place and just being thoroughly shocked. Not that it was risque but it was just so bizarre and you never knew…