Having Fun on Television
What makes for good late night TV? It’s obvious, but the most difficult thing to capture: fun.
Originally written in 2012; now updated throughout. The examples may now be dated, but it’s all, I think, still relevant.
One evening in the summer of 2011, I found myself two-and-a-half hours into my undertaking of a standby line, huddled under four umbrellas shared amongst six people on what could only have been the most torrential downpour in the recent history of New York City, if not civilization as a whole. Aside from mindless games and even more mindless conversation, I had but one interesting sight to occupy myself as I waited for (hopefully) a ticket to the 9:30 performance of the storied improv comedy show, ASSSSCAT 3000 — the awning of the theatre. Jutting out onto the street in all its splendorous existence within the confines of normalcy, it was a simple, white-on-burgundy, block-lettered label:
UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE THEATRE
I couldn’t help but think about what this place was, and what the area was. In general, the comedy clubs of New York City. This and others alike have seen their fair share of comedians come through and perform behind its doors, only to go on to become alums of a little show called Saturday Night Live. Here — at least from its relocation in 2003 to its departure in 2017 — was one of the great buildings from which comedy was made and, more simply, people had fun.
When reading and watching specials about SNL, I had always come across the same description of its early days: that it was a place where people had fun. A sort of renegade comedy troop (not even “troupe,” but “troop” — a gang of comedians more hardened than your average touring and performing collective), if you will. People like Chevy, Gilda, John, Dan, and the rest of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players had funny things to say and could finally have their voices heard, i.e. “Here, America, is what we think is funny. Comedy on our own terms.” And for the next few years, they continued doing what they loved and did best: They made jokes, and continued to be cool. The in-crowd. The kids of comedy in a seemingly Lord of the Flies situation: They were funny and they had a set, some cameras, and a broadcast license. For ninety minutes each week, they were taking over the airwaves.
But then something was happening that was uncontrollable, unforeseeable, and, on an obvious level, actually in the best interest of the show. SNL was getting bigger.
Thus, we have today. Saturday Night Live is currently in it’s thirty-seventh season and, though it has been said speculated Lorne Michaels would end the show upon his departure, whenever and however that may occur, he has no plans to stop doing it as long as he wants to do it. But the show has also drawn much criticism from critics and fans alike. The consensus: “This show isn’t what it used to be.” Now, for different people, “what it used to be” is always something different. The ’70s. The early ’90s. The early 2000s. But, regardless of whatever past they may have in mind, everyone is right. The show is not what it used to be; it’s gotten bigger. And so did the media. As the show became a legend, pop culture became more overpowering in society as a result of a growing media industry, and television was also continuing to grow as a business. The many SNL-alums-turned-stars didn’t help. SNL was in the spotlight. The show was suddenly more than the sum of its parts, or the sum of its history — It was a living legend that not many, if anyone, could live up to. When classic rock band the Eagles spoke about reuniting after their breakup, member Glenn Frey said the band was bigger than the four of them; that over time, it had become something more. SNL, too, saw this happen.
Furthermore, television audiences seemed to become more desensitized from what is occurring inside their TV sets. The thought, somewhat subconscious, was that that kind of TV is for the great and famous. People different than the audience themselves, who exist on another level. Who have a higher standing. And that’s not how it was when the show began in 1975. In its early years, SNL was real people having real fun. Today, to be fair, it is seemingly the same. But all of these changes that have happened to it and gone on around it — its achievement of “legend” status, a growing TV-as-a-business industry, and even more booming media industry, the separation of what goes on in the TV from what goes on in the lives in front of the TV — seem to have tangled the transmission of the real tone of Studio 8H to television audiences. That “cool comedy” vibe is gone. Within its walls inside 30 Rock, it may be there. But to viewers, it doesn’t seem apparent at all.
And one more thing was happening while SNL and its stars were becoming legends. Celebrities in general, including its cast, were becoming overly normalized. The growth of pop culture and fame as a commodity has led to TMZ and others following recognizable people around daily, candidly videotaping their actual, true, genuinely real lives. If a viewer likes someone they see on TV and has that fandom-based drive of wanting to know the real them, the live TV playpen is no longer their best option. The (unfortunately exploitative, rather than artistic) footage of gossip news cameras is.
Everyone is cool and having fun on TV in today’s world. In many ways, it has become the norm. With an increasingly saturated range of programs on television, it seems like every celebrity has a voice on our sets. One of the most historically revered forms of comedy entertainment has been the late night talk shows. Programs such as The Tonight Show and Late Night have become long-running franchises based on their ability to bring fun and entertainment into viewers’ homes each night. However, some have done this better than others. The key component of those better shows that the others were missing was the caution they paid to not alienating viewers. It is not entertaining to watch two people in front of you reference an inside joke, and the same goes for television — the viewers should be in on the joke.
In 2007, the Writers Guild of America strike forced the late night shows into a suspension of production until they decided to go back on the air without writers in order to keep the jobs of the programs’ other crew members. On Late Night with Conan O’Brien, material that would normally be filled with written sketches was replaced with great moments of fan interaction and senseless activity. Conan bought a zip-line, placed it in the audience, and asked for suggestions from fans on how to use it. (One night in particular saw him glide down to save President Lincoln from an approaching John Wilkes Booth, comedically complete with an Oscar Mayer sponsorship logo hanging around his neck, in a not-too-accurate recreation of the sixteenth President’s assassination, all based on a piece of fan art a viewer had sent in.)
On other nights, he spun his wedding ring on his desk and counted how long it could stay spinning for, in what became an oddly compelling recurring segment. He even went so far as to bring out a physics professor from MIT to help him break his ring-spinning record. The interview lasted 15 minutes, yet never felt too long.
In later years, it was Jimmy Fallon’s tenure as Late Night host that seemed to be the best source of fun on TV. Simply put, he offered an all-inclusive style of fun, while Conan’s kind of fun leaned more toward an irreverence that can alienate the audience a little bit. While Fallon’s Late Night adhered to the traditional late night talk show format in many ways (having a desk, a suit, and the typical six-segment format with two interviews and a musical guest), he in many ways added new things that the old, tired, and increasingly irrelevant genre was missing. Adding The Roots, a hip hop band with great improvisational abilities instead of a traditional brass band, the general tone of the show felt different right off the bat when it premiered. It was more relevant to the core audience of young viewers, and therefore already more fun for these viewers.
While shows with celebrities playing games now saturate the airwaves — propelled in no small part by Fallon’s Tonight Show leaning heavily on that content — in his Late Night days, these games were a more novel idea. The addition of games like Charades, Password, and even beer pong had struck that chord of fun, unscripted content that people could relate to. These were all games people know, and they enjoy the unplanned actions and reactions of those playing them live. (This is why these segments remain successful today — and, in turn, why the talk show genre is overflowing with them — but this surplus has also chipped away that (forgive the following word here) “cool” factor these concepts once carried, so it can certainly be argued that it’s now a type of “fun on TV” that has precluded itself from “fun on TV” at its most effective and cool (again, forgive me).
And as much as Fallon is panned for it at times, his tendency to break character and laugh at his own jokes was always one of his strengths. “Breaking” is quite directly a physical manifestation of things going awry; of the scripted becoming unscripted — so it drew viewers into the show even more. With this show, late night television is no longer a sophisticated manifestation of great comedy writing as much as it is a laid-back environment for the viewer to “hang out” with their Jimmy, whose comic personality and sensibility is relayed best to viewers during these most candid moments of the program.
For these late night talk shows, changes can be made to allow the audience to enjoy themselves more. It all lies in how much the hosts decide to include the audience in their comedy pieces. SNL, however, could not control its own fate. It became bigger than a simple television show, which took all of the fun out if it.
On Conan’s second-to-last episode before abdicating The Tonight Show, he told viewers what to expect of his last two nights on the air: “Here’s the plan: Tonight and tomorrow night, we are going to have a lot of fun on television.”
What followed was some of his best, most entertaining, and most remembered work to date.
Having fun on television isn’t everything. Every program still needs a great deal of planning for each episode to go off without a hitch. The “fun” factor is not by any means the only factor in a show’s success or failure, and that applies to SNL. But it is the reason the show isn’t as cool, or as relevant.
And there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
