I’m always a little skeptical about specials like NBC’s The Women of ‘SNL’ retrospective (which airs tonight), at least in theory. We’ve seen enough hilarious women in history to know that they don’t need special, gender-centric commemoration, as if men are funnier and folks like Jane Curtin and Jan Hooks give a laudable second-place effort. But tonight’s special is necessary for another reason: The women of Saturday Night Live have contributed singularly to comedy in the past 36 seasons, and one of their chief accomplishments remains under-appreciated.
When SNL premiered in 1975, its breakout male stars established three facets of the show’s appeal that remain paramount to its success today: Chevy Chase gave us detached commentary on Weekend Update, Dan Aykroyd established the show’s skittish caricatures, and John Belushi delivered broad farce. But breakout female star Gilda Radner evinced a quality that has gone in and out of vogue in the past 35 years of SNL — funny characters with vulnerable streaks and a penchant for an almost poignant sense of humanity.
That sounds sentimental and boring in broad strokes, but it’s the only one of the aforementioned qualities you can’t learn in a level-one Second City class. Each of Gilda Radner’s characters — from the self-assured Roseanne Rosannadanna and self-righteous Emily Litella to the ebullient brownie-trooper Judy Miller and nerdy Lisa Loopner, displayed poetic gravitas, a life beyond the one-liner, and an emotional clarity that I associate less with sketch comedy and more with short story protagonists and one-man (or one-woman) shows. (Of course, Radner would go on to perform Gilda Live on Broadway and present her characters in exactly the latter format.)
Though at first, Radner was a bit of an anomaly, she fostered a transparent humanity among her castmates and foremothered a kind of comedy that SNL’s most successful women have embraced (with the notable exception of Tina Fey): Molly Shannon’s shameless Mary Katherine Gallagher is a direct descendant of Judy Miller, as are most of Victoria Jackson’s characters in all their bubbly confusion and unselfconscious wonderment; Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler and Nasim Pedrad’s loony, compulsively relatable kid characters hearken back to Radner’s sputtering Loopner; and the earnestness of Ana Gasteyer’s Bobbi Mohan-Culp — a phenomenal character who elevated sketches with Will Ferrell’s generically unaware Marty Culp to a moving level of realism — call to mind the startling (and misinformed) sincerity of Emily Litella.
As such, the women of SNL have been the ones to create characters who boast a certain Sno-Globe appeal — these immaculately rendered figures who capture something perfect, vulnerable, and unabashed. And really damn funny.
In fact, I like to trace this trend back to one unforgettable sketch in the ’70s. Here are Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, and another comic legend of the ’70s who pinpointed batty vulnerability, Madeline Kahn, enjoying a hilarious (and poignant) slumber party.
SNL could use more of this appeal. For now, they’re relying on Kristen Wiig’s delirium (which occasionally gives way to an affecting portrait) and one-note sketch conceits like “Darlique & Barney.” Hopefully tonight’s clip show will exhume some of the arresting sketch work of SNL’s grande dames and propel us away from the empty weirdness that began to pervade in the mid ’00s. We need characters who don’t require overwritten dialogue to sell an idea; we need characters who can convey a world of personality with a simple “Nevermind.”
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