by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
For a show that’s been extremely influential in American comedy for about 50 years now, people love, love, LOVE to bitch and moan about how bad Saturday Night Live is.
Lorne Michaels
I honestly just don’t get it.
The show is extremely inconsistent, yes, but it’s still, to varying degrees, really, really funny. And it definitely gives us rubes out in the hinterlands a sense of what New Yorkers are talking about.
Anyway. I think some of it may be there are a lot of young journalists who think they’re good enough to be an SNL cast member, so they take it out on the show. And, also, whenever thinking about SNL, you have to remember that the show is popular for the very reason why the nattering nabobs of negativism hate it so much — it’s Bob Hope humor.
It doesn’t really make you burst out laughing all the time, but it is humorous and you chuckle now and again. And its broader cultural significance picks up whatever slack there may be in its actual humor.
