Forgettable ‘Unforgettable’
Over the past week or so, E! has been rerunning its five-part special of “The 101 Most Unforgettable SNL Moments.” You may recall that this special was, for a brief time, the subject of a legal battle between E! and NBC. E! had just purchased the rights to air “Saturday Night Live,” which had previously resided with Comedy Central. E!, like VH-1, has made countdown specials a part of its stock in trade, and immediately began working on an SNL special which it could use to promote its new possession. The network thought it had the rights to use SNL clips under a part of its contract which allowed use of brief program excerpts for promotional purposes.
But NBC and Lorne Michaels objected, saying E! didn’t have the rights to use SNL clips to create a whole program. After all, SNL has made a side industry out of its own compilation specials.
Eventually, the parties came to some kind of settlement and E! was allowed to air its special. And while I still watch it from time to time, just to see the clips themselves, the special itself is awful in comparison to the official authorized projects. Most of the official SNL compilations have been collections, without commentary, of clips featuring a specific performer, such as “The Best of Phil Hartman,” which I own and love. But they’ve also done three terrific (and surprisingly frank) documentary retrospectives: “SNL: The First Five Years,” “SNL in the 80s” and “SNL in the 90s,” all of which aired in prime time on NBC. Also, during their 25th anniversary year, they did a great series on VH-1 called “SNL 25: The Music” that highlighted musical performances and music-related skits from the show’s history.
“101 Most Unforgettable SNL Moments” is clunky, un-revealing, repetitive. Too many of the commentators are either minor SNL players like Beth Cahill or minor E! regulars like Rachel Quintance who have no connection to the show. Also, they frequently declined to buy music rights for particular clips, meaning they had to run the clips with alternate music. The hysterical skit of Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley auditioning to be Chippendale’s dancers just doesn’t sound right with the wrong music, for example. And the famous “cowbell” sketch includes cowbell — which I suspect was overdubbed by the E! producers — but doesn’t include even a snippet of the Blue Oyster Cult song which is being parodied.
And they overuse clips of rehearsals, with the cast members out of costume and makeup, to the point where it becomes distracting. (I suppose that E! had those clips in its library from its various entertainment news shows.)
The 101 moments may be unforgettable, but the compilation definitely is not.
.