Your Guide to the Hopelessly Out-of-Date Jokes in the First-Ever ‘SNL’
The three-hour Saturday Night Live anniversary party on Sunday night not enough television for you?
Don’t worry, NBC has you covered. In the show’s regular time slot on Saturday night, the network will rebroadcast the very first episode from 50 years ago, hosted by comedian George Carlin. Because SNL was a topical show — and because this episode ran in the fall of 1975 — some of the jokes will not only be dated but incomprehensible thanks to long-forgotten cultural references.
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Use this handy guide to get up to speed — only 55 miles per hour on the highway back then.
That thing Michael O’Donoghue is reading in the cold open? That’s a print edition of a newspaper.
Carlin’s opening monologue describes football’s desire to eventually overtake baseball as our national pastime. Consider that goal mission accomplished.
Andy Kaufman’s musical ode to a childhood favorite is funny even if you don’t get the reference, but probably more hilarious if you grew up watching Mighty Mouse cartoons.
“Do you ever look at the crowds in old movies and wonder if they’re dead yet?” ponders Carlin in his second monologue. You can play the same game with Carlin’s studio audience.
In that same monologue, Carlin laments getting searched at the airport. While this practice relaxed in the 1980s and 1990s, hijacking planes was a thing in the 1970s, hence the extra security. Carlin had no idea what he’d be in for 25 years later when TSA was invented.
Why a talk show sketch about “Victims of Shark Bite”? Jaws was 1975’s biggest movie.
Michael O’Donoghue plays Chevy Chase’s wife in a commercial parody for Jamitol. What’s the joke? It might help if you knew the original spots for vitamin supplement Geritol.
Chevy Chase leads off the first-ever Weekend Update with a joke about Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, a regular figure in the news before his mysterious disappearance in 1975. Was it mob-related? The Mafia conspiracy helps explain a joke about dedicating a new building where Hoffa “will always be a cornerstone in the organization.”
If you couldn’t guess by Chase’s jokes, President Gerald Ford had a reputation for being clumsy.
The commercial parody for Triopenin was spoofing the new concept of child-proof safety caps for medication. A few years earlier, kids had free reign in mommy’s medicine cabinet.
“Did you ever dial a phone and forget who you’re calling?” Carlin asks as he begins another stand-up set. Push-button phones didn’t become a thing until the 1980s. Not that those are around either.
Even in 1975, Albert Brooks’ parody of an old newsreel was pretty dated. The short news segments ran before movies in the early days of cinema but were nearly dead by the 1970s. Still, enough people remembered them to get the bit. The jokes about Israel, unfortunately, are still timely. The jokes about lowering the age of consent to seven are just unfortunate.
A sketch with Gilda Radner and you-probably-never-heard-of-him George Coe is one of the most dated bits, from its corded telephones to Coe’s rapid-pace infomercial delivery. Coe is spoofing late-night TV ads for training schools, commercials you probably haven’t seen if you were born past 1985 or so. He also touts the amazing picture-phones of the future, the kind you may be using to read this article.
Comedian Valri Bromfield’s bit as a fussy teacher references “dress shields.” They’ve been out of fashion for decades but women use to apply the cloth circles to the armpit to prevent sweat stains.
