Saturday Night Live Shows its Age

There is something seriously wrong when you collect dozens of the most talented and accomplished actors, comedians, and musicians for one televised presentation, and the highlight of the evening is somehow Miley Cyrus. And yet, somehow, that's exactly what happened when Saturday Night Live delivered an all-night, star-studded celebration of being at the forefront of American popular culture.

Cyrus, lately known far more for cheap publicity tricks and flaunting her sexuality than for exhibiting any real talent, turned a 180 and reminded us that she does still have talent after all, with a confident, fun, and vocally skilled performance of Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," a performance that balanced respect for the original recording (a rarity in cover performances these days) with putting a new stamp on the song.

Contrast that with Simon's own performance of the thematically apt "Still Crazy After All These Years." While it was initially a pleasure to see Simon just for nostalgia's sake, he looked old and tired, and more to the point, his voice was old and tired, resulting in a lackluster performance that the younger Simon would have cringed at. Ditto for Paul McCartney's equally vocally tired performance of "Maybe I'm Amazed," which was at least redeemed by his still-rockin' keyboards, and the note-perfect, excellent performance of his lead guitarist. Please note that I have nothing but respect for McCartney and Simon, who have both accomplished many amazing feats of music in their decades-long heydays. But this show simply did not represent them anywhere near their best.

Now, I know this is a comedy show and I seem stuck on the music, but in a way, the problems with McCartney's and Simon's performances are a reflection on what was wrong with the evening: The show was more interested in trotting out legends just for their own sake rather than entertaining us with them. This was true with every moment, every aspect of the show, starting with the "Catch-Phrase Medley" duet between Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake that opened the show. The song was clever enough in how it squeezed so many memorable SNL moments into one song, but note how the segment didn't have anything funny or interesting to say about the catch-phrases. It was basically just a list set to music.

The whole show seemed interested in making lists, with one montage sequence after another, showing brief clips of the "best of" sketches rather than any one of the sketches themselves. It's odd: I had previously thought that we'd seen enough of the same old "best of SNL" sketches to last a lifetime, but I now realize how wrong I was, as watching at least a few of these sketches in their entirety would have been much more fun than watching one hastily rushed "hey here's a few seconds of this one, and here's a few seconds of that one, now let's move on!" montage after another.

Another example of "presenting legends for their own sake rather than for the sake of entertaining us" was the much-touted, but highly disappointing cameo by Eddie Murphy. Chris Rock was impolitic but basically accurate in his introduction to Murphy, when he emphatically declared that Murphy pretty much single-handedly saved SNL from cancellation in the early 80s. (People tend to forget that Joe Piscopo was also immensely popular at the time, but even Piscopo ended up riding on Murphy's coat-tails.) Yet after Rock went on and on about how funny Murphy is, Murphy finally came out to take a bow -- and didn't even try to be funny. Lorne Michaels has been trying to get Murphy to come back to SNL for decades, and when he finally succeeds . . . Murphy really doesn't do anything. He makes a brief "thanks for your applause" speech and then leaves. Is this really what we've been waiting for decades to see?

As for the sketches, they were just sad. Going back yet again to that "legends for their own sake" theme that defined the evening, Dan Aykroyd and Laraine Newman did a  nearly word-for-word remake of "Bass-o-Matic," which has oddly been long considered one of Aykroyd's best skits, despite the fact that it was never funny. The only thing that was impressive about the sketch was Aykroyd's amazing rapid-fire delivery, and that one good thing about the sketch was missing in last night's re-do, as a now relatively elderly Aykroyd delivered the same lines, but slowed to a crawl.

Meanwhile, the recurring "The Californians" sketch was pretty much a disaster. Once you get past the very mildly funny concept that all of the characters in the faux soap opera talk in exaggerated So-Cal accents, you quickly realize that the only point of the sketch isn't humor, but rather just to see how many random celebrities you can squeeze into the thing. What's worse, "The Californians" proved a point made by a couple of comedians during the show, that SNL sketches have a tendency to drag. The sketch makes its one joke, repeatedly, and then had nowhere to go.

"Celebrity Jeopardy" fared a bit better, thanks, as usual, to the always creative repartee between the hapless Alex Trebek (Will Ferrell) and the delightfully offensive Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond). Jim Carrey also scored a couple of points here with a reprisal of his spacey Matthew McConaughey impression.

All in all, though, SNL's 40th celebration was so much more interested in self-congratulation than in entertaining its audience that I wonder if it should have even been televised; the whole thing was so full of back-and-forth praise and in-joking that it felt more like watching other people have a party than it felt like a show intended to benefit the viewing public.