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NOTE: Hey, everybody! I was planning on posting this on Christmas, but then I totally forgot about that like a complete idiot. But I'm posting it now, because while it's attached to my review coming out in a few days, it's such a substantive piece of writing that I'd like it to also exist on its own so that it can get more unique web traffic and serve as an independent writing sample.
(The full episode can be watched here.)
Desperate times call for desperate measures, but is that always a bad thing? Season 11 of Saturday Night Live, for the most part, would lead you to believe it, amidst the series of questionable decisions it's made up to this point... but sometimes, out of adversity, amazing things can happen. It's true that something as crazy as the George Wendt/Francis Ford Coppola episode could only happen in a season like Season 11, but it still feels so deeply improbable. With Lorne Michaels and SNL in general, any degree of self-analysis is a slippery slope that risks having its cake and eating it too, and there's a definite risk of this deeply meta night being a self-indulgent mess that pokes at the show's systemic problems without trying to rectify them—and perhaps it does, to some extent. But the audacity of this episode, and the willingness of the show to hold itself up to some healthy scrutiny, makes it a legendary success. This is perhaps the most unique evening of the show that you will ever see.
