Monsters of Television

Let’s take it down. What?

Saturday Night Live is busted. It’s not broken forever and the format isn’t dead. But it limps into every Saturday evening on the backs of Weekend Update, The Lonely Island, maybe the musical guest, and whichever topical host that wants to shill their product that week. The show is burdened by unfunny sketches and a desperate search for its identity. We are in the midst of building years for the series (as it has gone through several times in its history) and, while the writers try to rediscover their voice and themselves, the show is grasping for hooks anywhere they can.

Notice I said “topical” hosts. This typically means whatever male or female actor who has a new movie coming out or a television project on the network with some synergy value. But with hosts like Tom Brady, Michael Phelps, and Taylor Swift stepping into Alec Baldwin and Christopher Walken’s shoes, the host position isn’t just the coveted prize of any quick-thinking, steady-nerved actor but is a contribution of fame to anyone remotely recognizable.

It speaks to our times that viewers could amass enough clout to campaign for a woman they mostly knew as Rose Nylund to host the show in the twilight of her life. Betty White was a brilliant choice for Saturday Night Live host, even if most of the participants in the campaign weren’t aware of her decades of legit and television history before spinning tales of St. Olaf. It was remarkable that a grassroots movement could affect the casting decision of an institution. They never needed help before. But that is something that identifies the current paradigm of television audiences. We’ve gone from accepting what little we were given to turning the channel on something we don’t like to attempting to dictate what we consume, no longer viewing the medium (and those in charge) as being walled-off from the masses. And in an industry where viewing habits are shaking the foundations of an aging, if not antiquated, business model, the industry is willing to let the people speak (a little bit anyway).

But it may have opened the door to madness. Facebook is flooded with nominees to host SNL from Stephen Colbert to Joe Rogan to, er, Blake. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with these pages inherently. Sure, the unified effort to push Betty White back into the spotlight has to splinter a little bit among all these choices but pages like this have always been around, just no one expected much of them (although I fully support the Nathan Fillion and Bruce Campbell efforts).

Among these efforts is one to place James Roday and Dule Hill as joint hosts. And I support it, if only because this might be their golden opportunity to do it and it could mean a deconstruction of SNL‘s hobbled format. But I fear the expectation of what a desperate network might require if this thing is successful. It could mean great things. Or it could be completely disastrous for the franchise.

Outside of Psych, I don’t know much about the acting prowess of these two gentlemen. I understand them to have dynamic chemistry together and enough on-screen presence to keep me coming back to what is generally a procedural with better comedic-timing. The two also have pretty great writers catering to their idiosyncrasies and balancing the series on what they do best. They seem to vamp well together and can improv. But the environment of SNL is much different from their Canadian sets. Partly because of the distance. They do say New York and Vancouver are two cities separated by a common continent. But also since SNL is busted.

I can’t speak to how the actors would do in a live environment. Obviously, acting in a single take with only a few days of prep is a tall order. There are no “Psych-Outs” come Saturday at 11:35, just sketch failure. But I’m not worried about that. Even if the environment does get to them and they struggle on live national television, it might be fun to watch them melt under the lights, even if that means they resort to being Shawn and Gus until 1AM because that’s what they’re comfortable being. No, my worry is about the material they’ll be given.

You don’t have to watch the series to know it’s been weak lately (check out some of the snarky tveets on News for TV Majors) since no non-Lonely-Island sketch has been talked about since Tina Fey was Sarah Palin. As funny as our boys are, if they have weak material, they have a weak show. If we’re subjected to more “Gilly” segments and less format-busting “Digital Shorts” than the whole thing will be a waste of our time, save being able to see these guys on a broadcast network. Sure, it’s exposure for them. Broadcast eyeballs for a show that does decent on cable can only be a good thing and James and Dule would be great salesmen for Psych, a show that has cachet with any 18-49 audience. But it would totally bum me out to see them muddle through a script that gets crickets because it’s based on a character that wasn’t funny a year ago.

But what are Roday and Hill good at? Pop culture allusions and comic meta-analysis. If they busted the format a bit, had them wander the show in deconstructed sketches, commenting on the show, that would be amazing. Like if the Psych writers could take the show and then write in a layer of commentary over it. A Digital Short featuring those two might be too funny for television. But you see what I’m getting at: the show as it is now is completely stale and middling. Shaking things up somehow, in format or style or presentation, might be a great way to help this living television history regain its edge and James Roday and Dule Hill are a couple of guys that are pliable and charming enough to pull it off.

So say they do pull it off, whether the show decides to break out or not. Say the episode is wildly successful. What does that mean for how casting chooses its hosts? Obviously, money exchanges hands for top talent to host the show since it’s like product placement for other media properties. But would the network look at these grassroots campaigns to be a representative cross-section for people that would watch a particular program, like a swarm of eyeballs to collect? Would they begin harvesting from these Facebook pages? Could it get to a point where the network would demand the show install a host purely because the talent was able to garner enough “Likes” to make him or her seem popular? Although I think Megan Fox might have been short-changed with roles soley in the realm of male fantasy objects or acting as herself (though that may be because that’s all she can play), her episode, in spite of her denizens of supporters (and schadenfreude-afflicted detractors), was weak sauce. Will they put a host on the stage in spite of his or her talent just because the internet says they’ll watch him/her? I don’t know if that’s a slippery slope we want SNL to traverse. Then again, on its current track, what integrity do they have left?

Furthermore, and this may be a bit sentimental, if this is the way things are going, does that make Betty White’s victory less sweet? Instead of her being singularly voted by fans to ascend to the mainstream throne of sketch comedy (in such a dilapidated state that is), do people that follow her in the same path dilute the uniquity of what got her to 30 Rock? Or is it inevitable with how we see television nowadays, with advertisers begging us to “Like” them, that shows would choose talent like this and that Betty White was just special enough to be the first of many?