Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Snap judgment: A new lease on ``Live.''
There were certainly lapses in the show, which was battered last season by low ratings, critical hostility and even public complaints from NBC executives. But the program got off to a very good start with its first sketch: ``O.J. Today,'' written by veteran Robert Smigel and satirizing the way the O.J. Simpson trial has been turned into a TV series. It can't be easy to come up with new O.J. material at this point, but ``SNL'' managed.
Mariel Hemingway, the guest host, threw herself body and soul into the job and lit up the show. You'd never know she was the unlucky star of one of the new season's biggest flops, ``Central Park West'' (on CBS). She gave 111 percent all night.
Of the new cast, few members stood out and as a group they seemed mostly old and bland. Short, cute Cheri Oteri showed huge potential, however, in her sketches, even if the sketches themselves weren't much. And Darrell Hammond did a stunningly accurate impression of Ted Koppel during a ``Nightline'' spoof that featured returnees Tim Meadows as Colin Powell and Norm MacDonald as a snarly Bob Dole.
Will Ferrell, who looks like Wayne Rogers, was featured in a few sketches, and appeared competent if hardly inspired. Molly Shannon, however, was overbearing as Ann Miller in a sketch called ``Leg Up,'' with Oteri faring only a tiny bit better as Debbie Reynolds. Why it was decided that these two old show biz gals merited a clobbering is an utter puzzle. The segment clocked in at an oppressive six and a half minutes.
MacDonald, who inherited anchorship of the crucial ``Weekend Update'' feature last season, proved extremely comfortable with it again, though his long pauses and stares between items are irritating.
Perhaps most disappointing was ``Spade in America,'' a five-minute segment starring holdover David Spade, who sits at a desk and comments on items in the news. Even when Spade's material is good, his delivery is so drab, so I'm-too-cool, that he's enervating. He seems to want to distance himself from everything he says even as he's saying it.
He made one reference to the artist formerly known as Prince, who was supposed to be the opening night musical guest but canceled eight days before the show. Spade called him ``the artist formerly booked on this show but who flaked on us.'' A little later, Spade said that telling women he's the Unabomber ``works better than saying I'm on `Saturday Night Live,' that's for sure,'' a reference to the show's shaky status.
Filmmaker James Signorelli contributed another bull's-eye commercial parody, this one for a beer called A.M. Ale - ``because you can't wait 'til afternoon.'' And staff writer Jack Handey followed up his previous ``Deep Thoughts'' feature with a worthy successor, ``Fuzzy Memories.'' The evening's sole outright disaster was a sketch lampooning cable-access sex shows in New York and starring Mark McKinney as something called The Chicken Lady.
From his home in New York on Sunday, executive producer Lorne Michaels sounded cautiously pleased with the opening night. ``There was a lot of anxiety, a lot of fussin', during the week,'' Michaels said, indicating network executives had been on his case, ``but everybody seemed happy'' after the show. NBC President Robert C. Wright attended both the broadcast and the after-show party. Michaels said Wright has been ``tremendously supportive'' all along.
The season premiere may not have had viewers opening their windows to shout ``bravo,'' but it was a step up from the torpor and complacency of last season. ``I just wish the press would move up the street a couple of blocks now,'' Michaels joked, ``and beat up on David Letterman for a change.''
He also said, more seriously, ``I hope people who watched the first show will say there were enough sparks and enough vitality to make it worth continuing.''
For sure. The bottom line (to coin a phrase): The planet is much better off with ``Saturday Night Live'' than without it. For now, it appears, ``Live'' lives.
by CNB