Bill Murray Fails to Acknowledge Reality of ‘Saturday Night Live’

Bill Murray, who can be a prickly a-hole if you catch him on the wrong day, has a soft spot in his heart for Saturday Night Live performers. It’s why he agreed to host the show and cheer on the cast during SNL’s worst season. And it’s why he’s jumping on his white horse to defend the current show against haters who call it “lousy.” 

“People always give me a hard time, like, ‘Oh god, the original show was so great, and it’s lousy now,’” Murray told the Kelce brothers on their New Heights podcast. But the SNL icon disagrees with that assessment. “The show that’s on now, they do stuff that’s just as good as anybody ever did all the time.”

Murray has it right — but his positive spin overlooks a crucial fact about Saturday Night Live. Sure, the current show is as “good” as ever. But that’s because the show has always been wildly uneven, even in the glory days of Murray, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. 

Older shows have the advantage of being remembered for classic sketches. But have you tried watching an entire episode from those first five seasons? Don’t bother with the Peacock versions, which cut terrible sketches and controversial punchlines. Instead, find an old episode on archive.org or via the DVD box sets. You’ll get a few laughs with a classic Nerds or Coneheads sketch, but you’ll also uncover several bits that fall flat on their faces.

Even Murray wasn’t immune. After he replaced Chevy Chase in SNL’s second season, Murray couldn’t buy a laugh. Some show insiders say Lorne Michaels worried that he’d made a hiring mistake, according to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. To get things on track, Michaels and Murray co-wrote a piece called “The New Guy.” Murray took the stage alone, looking right into the camera and pleading for his SNL survival.

“Hello. I’m Bill Murray. You can call me Billy, but around here everybody just calls me ‘the new guy.’ I want to thank the producer, Lorne Michaels, for urging me to speak with you directly. You see, I’m a little bit concerned. I don’t think I’m making it on the show. I’m a funny guy, but I haven’t been so funny on the show.”

Murray told the audience how he’d lost his confidence, and how much it hurt when friends and family told him, “I saw you on the show Saturday night, and you stunk.” (Sound familiar?)

He ended the bit with a plea: “If you could see it in your heart to laugh whenever I say something, I don’t care what it is, or if you can’t laugh, think about my family, and the father that I never really got to know. If I know you’re on my side, I’ll make you laugh so hard, you’ll have to hold your sides to keep from pulling a muscle or tearing a cartilage. It’s up to you.”

In other words, Murray knows just what it’s like when people say SNL is lousy. That’s because the struggle has been going on for 50 years.