Technical Glitches Put the ‘Live’ Back in ‘Saturday Night Live’
In the movie Saturday Night, the recreation of the minutes leading up to the first-ever episode of SNL, a frantic Dick Ebersol promises Lorne Michaels that he’d get the show’s faulty sound system fixed in time for the live show. This also happened in real life — Ebersol hired a crew that had just finished a Madison Square Garden rock concert to hurry their gear into Studio 8H on the day of the first broadcast.
Life imitated art imitating life last night, as the show returned from a commercial break and sat on a still of Stevie Nicks for a full minute without explanation. Stare at this for 60 seconds to get the full effect.
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On social media, some real-time viewers found the frozen image to be spooky — was something nefarious happening at 30 Rock? — while others guessed at the technical issues causing the interruption.
What the heck was going on? According to That Week in SNL, a buggy sound mixer was to blame, shades of 1975.
Whatever was happening with the sound didn’t let up after Nicks went full School of Rock with a witchified “Edge of Seventeen.” The show then cut to a double commercial break, presumably to get the audio mix back in order. But now something had to give. A late-running Ohio State/Oregon football game had already delayed the show's start by five minutes.
Add the long pause before Nicks’s performance and the double-break — several minutes of show time were lost. Just like in Saturday Night, Michaels must have been at his cork board trashing index cards, trying to scuttle enough sketches to get the show in on time.
Even after the cuts, was the audio still glitching? That Week in SNL says the last sketch, a black-and-white spoof called “The Hotel Detective,” was actually taped during the dress rehearsal. Fans who attended the rehearsal confirm it, saying identical cue-card goofs from rehearsal showed up in the aired version. (The cards peek into frame at the 1:44 mark.)
Yet despite all the technical mishaps, Ariana Grande and company were pretty funny last night. Like she did back in Season 41, Grande proves herself a surprisingly able host, showing off her gift for mimicry:
While the show finds clever ways to showcase her powerful voice:
Her best moment was her monologue, a self-assured song about not giving in to the temptation to sing. Maybe it’s all those years as a Nick kid, but Grande is so much more comfortable in front of the camera than other pop-star hosts. She kills it.
After 49-plus years of this, I’ve often wondered why the show simply doesn’t tape during the week. That would eliminate worry about equipment malfunctions while allowing writers and performers more chances to get the comedic timing right. But last night convinced me that there’s something essential about the show’s high-wire act. It’s one of the only shows on TV where you might get to witness a disaster in real time.
Keep it coming.
