What Happened During Saturday Night Live’s First Episode (And How Critics Reacted)

Unless you have been an Arctic expedition throughout the year 2025 or coma (when welcome back!), You will undoubtedly be aware of it “Saturday Night Live” has celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of the celebration, the comedy plant produced a series of documentary films, held a massive return home concert at Radio City Music Hall (which was completely paid for by Kevin Nealo for Adam Sandler) and sent a live specialty to the NBC.

The fact that this significant event caused critical writing about the value of the outlet worth a click from almost everyone was hardly surprising. “SNL” has been a reliable generator from Tepid to polwing since it premiered on October 11, 1975. It has been accused of too political or not enough political, too liberal or too conservative, and worst of all, unpleasant. In many stages, critics have demanded that it cancel (and almost after the catastrophic period 11), while there has been a period where it seemed absolutely necessary -especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the most talented Actors organized with the history of the exhibition are boldly.

“SNL” lasts, and now that the most recent episodes of the show can be experienced through stretch streaming services, such as YouTube, it will probably stay in the air, at least until Lorne Michaels finds the soil. Although it makes sense nowadays that the show hit the country with an actor stacked with superstars 50 years ago, the show confused some of the most influential critics in the country. Some quickly rejected it. One visible reviewer invested in what was originally named “Saturday night” hardly watching the first two episodes. How did the show survive in its early growing pain?

Before the cable, not to mention the streaming age, it was rare that the online TV series was a wild, designed swing. On the other hand, “Saturday night live” did nothing terribly new; It was a variety presentation that combined comedy drafts with music performances. But Bally Cold Open, who introduced Michael O’Donoghue teaching English to a foreign gentleman who was played by John Belushi (nonsense through the prompt “I want to feed your fingers to Wolverines”) was not the kind of comedy you expected “Dean Martin Show” or even counter -culture, such & Martin’s laughing “. This was different.

New York Times television critic, John J. O’Connor, Liked writing about Buzzy’s new series until its second episode was presented. Although he only looked at the second half of the second episode because he was “unusually good for dinner on Long Island” (if I admitted that I passed the movie half of the review, I look forward to being separated and looked at the unemployed), O’Connor wrote “even the quality of the quality of the presentation that is magnificent. “Modest comedy” (ie too liberal to the east coast).

If you have read one of the “SNL” for mandatory history or at least viewed Jason Reitman’s dressing competition “Saturday night” You know the contents of the first episode. If not, it should be noted that even though the drafts were short, the premiere was much more representative of what the show would become than the second episode -which was basically a Simon & Garfunkel presentation. Almost everyone outside O’Connor considered the debut at least fascinating. The only other major critic that fired torpedoes on this newly launched ship’s body Hollywood Reporter Richard HackAnyone who wrote that the first episode “plagues everywhere with the lack of exciting guests and innovative writing, which helped keep the debut at a lack of pace.”

Most television critics took the expectations approaching “Saturday night”. New York Magazine’s Jeff Greenfield It was not a fan of Albert Brooks shorts (which, albeit hilarious, contradicts the exhibition with a more aggressive sense of humor), and like most people, Jim Henson’s Muppets found to be a showstoppers in the worst sense. But after getting to the first episode, Greenfield pointed out that “Saturday night” is huge.

Time found “Saturday night” to be “uneven”, but he found a huge value in its standards. The Dick Adler of Los Angeles Times agreed, but still the presentation of the Lobba series in a late primary place. New Yorker and Chicago Tribune were also interested in the exhibition, But the TV guide went a step further by declaring the series more fun than “Monty Python Flying Circus”. “The taste of humor is a dangerous area,” wrote the magazine Cleveland Amory. “There are those who may insult men [Garrett Morris] Who introduces the news about the hard – he screams headlines – but at least it is very fun for us when he Hollers. “

After the end of the first season of the series, Rolling Stone Tom Burke Shook the courage to break the form of the exhibition. He wrote that it was “the main exhibition that is high before, during and still, as high as its actors are clearly.” The drug -friendly appeal of the program sometimes brought up his own destructive worst star (Especially Chris Farley and John Belushi), but this danger was an essential part of its success. The “Saturday night” needed the season to find its legs, but that necessary breaking was there from the first day. And television critics that could not be bothered to leave the dinner party from Long Island, to do their freaking work just made it cooler.