The first episode of Saturday Night Live starts with the sound of a door opening and closing, followed by the clunky echo of a heavy booted John Belushi playing an immigrant walking down wooden stairs into a near barren living room to meet up with his "English Speaking" tutor as played by Michael O' Donoghue. The sketch has the stamp of O' Donoghue written all over it: the bizarre instruction to 'feed one's fingertips to the wolverines' and the macabre flair of a painful death used as a punch line. SNL was introducing its own brand of comedy to the world, one that hadn't ever been seen on the likes of 'Laugh-In' or 'The Carol Burnett Show'.
Although the show hadn't found its own identity quite yet, there was no mistaking that this show was unlike anything else on television at the time. In fact, the first episode feels more like a late night 'special' featuring George Carlin than what it would become only two shows later with Rob Reiner as host. Carlin did four segments of his stand up material, touching on topics ranging from 'baseball and football' to 'oxy morons and religion'. He did not appear in any sketches for the show.
The first show also had its fair share of miscues and screw-ups. Don Pardo muffed the intro by calling the cast the "Not For Ready Prime Time Players" instead of the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" and Chevy Chase had some difficulty finding the correct camera while delivering the headlines on Weekend Update.
Most of the sketches on the show were very short, especially considering the amount of time given to the Muppet segment and other filmed material. Two filmed segments (Jamitol and Triopenin) played off of one shared joke while other sketches came off as corny (Bee Hospital-Victims of Shark Bites) and another as vaguely familiar as a Second City staple (Courtroom Scene). The only sketch that closely resembles what the future SNL would be is the 'Trojan Horse Home Security' sketch that aired very late in the show. There wasn't any real stand out sketch; the most memorable segments other than 'Update' and the opening were the filmed commercials, the musical guests or the one-man show of Andy Kaufman.
Watching Kaufman do his 'Mighty Mouse' routine one feels as if watching history in the making, another new beginning in performance art comedy. It's appropriate that Kaufman is on SNL's first show laying the groundwork for redefining the definitions of comedy. The crowd loves him and gives him the biggest applause of the night, unlike Carlin who asks the crowd after a tepid response to one of his jokes if "he's told these jokes already tonight".
The show was very heavy on its musical acts. Both Janis Ian and Billy Preston were able to sing two songs. On a side note, we get to see the woman that would play a huge part in the makeup of the show to come. Jacqueline Carlin, who also found her way into two filmed segments on the first show (New Dad-Academy of Better Careers), was the woman that Chevy would leave the show for to marry after only one season. It could be said that Chevy left the show to be a 'New Husband' and to have a 'better career' on the West Coast with Jacqueline, but one has to wonder if Chevy had the chance to do it all over again would he rather fall head over heels for Jacqueline on the West Coast or fall head over ass at Studio 8H for a television show on the East Coast?
Although the show hadn't found its own identity quite yet, there was no mistaking that this show was unlike anything else on television at the time. In fact, the first episode feels more like a late night 'special' featuring George Carlin than what it would become only two shows later with Rob Reiner as host. Carlin did four segments of his stand up material, touching on topics ranging from 'baseball and football' to 'oxy morons and religion'. He did not appear in any sketches for the show.
The first show also had its fair share of miscues and screw-ups. Don Pardo muffed the intro by calling the cast the "Not For Ready Prime Time Players" instead of the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" and Chevy Chase had some difficulty finding the correct camera while delivering the headlines on Weekend Update.
Most of the sketches on the show were very short, especially considering the amount of time given to the Muppet segment and other filmed material. Two filmed segments (Jamitol and Triopenin) played off of one shared joke while other sketches came off as corny (Bee Hospital-Victims of Shark Bites) and another as vaguely familiar as a Second City staple (Courtroom Scene). The only sketch that closely resembles what the future SNL would be is the 'Trojan Horse Home Security' sketch that aired very late in the show. There wasn't any real stand out sketch; the most memorable segments other than 'Update' and the opening were the filmed commercials, the musical guests or the one-man show of Andy Kaufman.
Watching Kaufman do his 'Mighty Mouse' routine one feels as if watching history in the making, another new beginning in performance art comedy. It's appropriate that Kaufman is on SNL's first show laying the groundwork for redefining the definitions of comedy. The crowd loves him and gives him the biggest applause of the night, unlike Carlin who asks the crowd after a tepid response to one of his jokes if "he's told these jokes already tonight".
The show was very heavy on its musical acts. Both Janis Ian and Billy Preston were able to sing two songs. On a side note, we get to see the woman that would play a huge part in the makeup of the show to come. Jacqueline Carlin, who also found her way into two filmed segments on the first show (New Dad-Academy of Better Careers), was the woman that Chevy would leave the show for to marry after only one season. It could be said that Chevy left the show to be a 'New Husband' and to have a 'better career' on the West Coast with Jacqueline, but one has to wonder if Chevy had the chance to do it all over again would he rather fall head over heels for Jacqueline on the West Coast or fall head over ass at Studio 8H for a television show on the East Coast?
