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So Tina Fey is leaving SNL. That’s the word on the street, and by ‘word on the street’ I obviously mean, ‘what she told Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.’ I assume she has no reason to lie. Frankly, this (along with her costar Rachel Dratch’s departure from the Saturday staple to network programming) was about the least shocking thing to come from Hollywood since the revelations that Suri Cruise is actually a composite of several different celebrity babies. If you remember this years finale of SNL, you’d recall that Fey and Dratch were very thank-youey during the goodbye.

The fact that she has a must succeed sit-com premiering in the fall (30 Rock) obviously has some impact on the whole thing. (NBC has some info/video.) Based on the clips that are available, and the assumption that Tina Fey is a pretty decent comedy writer, I’d say that 30 Rock will be a good show despite the fact that I’m putting the odds of survival at 4:1. Keep reading by clicking below…

The untold story of Tina Fey is that her stint at SNL was not as remarkable as many would have you believe. Until this past season where she split head-writer duties with the very unlikeable (yet strangely compelling) Seth Meyers, Fey was more or less in helming the SS-SNL. The thing is, she’s hardly the one responsible for the show when it succeeded over the past six or seven years– she can be held mostly responsible when it failed.

Let’s think about this. Between 1999 and 2002 SNL was about as good as the show could be (for the nay-sayers, I dare you to watch an episode of the show from 1976 or 1977 in its entirety and not get kind of bored. Sure, there are a myriad sketches from that era that are absolutely timeless, but they’re placed between a lot of crap. Just because it was new to television doesn’t make it entirely brilliant). Fey, while a part of this much-needed rejuvenation, has to give most of the credit to standout cast members (read: Will Ferrell) and the 2000 presidential election and its subsequent nonsense (read: Will Ferrell).

Her biggest contribution over the past handful of seasons was without a doubt the Weekend Update segment– a part of the show that has been around since day one and which has rarely ever been as good as we remember it being. Fey was refreshing on Weekend Update because we were in dire need of something that wasn’t Colin Quinn, and the idea of an attractive female reading to us fake news was just about perfect. Fey may have gotten many of us to watch the show again, but she wasn’t what held us there. As much as it may sicken me to say it, Jimmy Fallon was the real secret weapon. He was never particularly funny, but his SNL persona was best suited to the update desk. There, it didn’t matter if he laughed because he wasn’t suppose to be anyone other than himself– this goofy kid with suspiciously disheveled hair.

Once Fallon left the show, the whole thing came crumbling down. His last season on the air was pretty damn bad, but it was always Weekend Update that saved whatever flaming disaster had been happening on-screen over the previous 50 minutes. He ruined more sketches than a tourette’s stricken courtroom artist, but he and Fey would pull through and make Update worth checking out. Amy Poehler couldn’t keep the dam from busting open. Her sensibilities are too closely tied to that of Fey’s– there was no give and take, and neither one of them were able to take the reigns by doing the segment as a character like Kevin Nealon or Norm MacDonald.

Not to say that Poehler isn’t funny, she has enough comedy-currency stacked up before she even got on SNL to cement her fate as a champ, but she didn’t bring anything new to Update, and the segment (and show) suffered because of it. Weekend Update could always save a crappy episode, but a crappy Update is the deathblow to an otherwise hit-and-miss installment of Saturday Night Live.

Luckily for Tina Fey the fact that she was head writer during some of the show’s more successful years (and the fact that Lorne Michaels apparently LOVES her) is going to allow her to move toward projects where her voice will be able to seep through more clearly. Mean Girls illustrated this and I suspect 30 Rock will as well. Though none of this promises regular employment– hopefully for her sake America will take kindly to her new show.

And while I’m on the subject, NBC-4, in what is perhaps the greatest service to the community any station could provide, airs complete 90-minute episodes of classic SNL. “Classic” frequently means episodes from 1976-1979, and its remarkable to see those in their entirety, but sometimes its simply whole eps from another time in the shows history (a less noteworthy time). This past week they showed one from 1995. This was that awkward time period where Mark McKinney and Nancy Walls were in the cast, as well as a pre-obligatory Will Ferrell and other staples from the popular late-90s cast. Norm MacDonald was still doing update, though I suspect he was about to be fired.

Anyway, at the time this was just about at the pinnacle of the show’s awfulness. All the big names from the early 90s (Sandler, Spade, Farley) had left and the show was retooling. I’m sure if I’d been in my early twenties when this aired, I’d say it was yet another sign of why SNL is no longer relevant and funny. And I would have been right… then. What’s interesting is that 10 years later, the show was actually pretty decent. The political sketches seem spot on, and perhaps more importantly capture the era. Tupac was the musical guest, and Norm MacDonald did a joke on Update that went something like this:

OJ Simpson testified today that he had never beaten his wife or abused her verablly. Luckily for Mr. Simpson, the lawyers never asked if he had cut off his wifes head.

Not so much funny as it is fascinating. SNL would never let a line like that go on the air today. I’m not going to argue as to whether that is a good thing or not, but it certainly paints an interesting picture of the times.

Really, SNL is a show designed to be viewed in syndication. In a weird way, the bubble that is created around current events when live programs are rebroadcast makes them all the more relevant to a mass audience. It’s a shame you can’t get SNL on Comedy Central seven times a day anymore. Who the hell wants to watch MADTV?

MORE READING: ‘60′ + ‘30′ = ‘SNL’ Trend [Kansas City Star]

Tags: 30 Rock, NBC, Personalities, SNL, Tina Fey, Weekend Update

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 3:22 am and is filed under Commentary, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.