SNL 40th Anniversary: Long
I don’t know why I watched all three-and-a-half hours of “SNL”‘s 40th-anniversary special last night: Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake summed up the show’s history in their 5-minute opening. There was a lot of dead air during the evening, but it was nice to see all those long-departed faces pop up every so often: Belushi, Radner, Hartman. Kanye behaved himself, and Bradley Cooper kissed Betty White. In a show that made a couple of very soft jabs at “SNL”‘s weaknesses in the diversity department, an all-female Weekend Update was refreshing: Three women sat behind the anchor desk — Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Jane Curtin. But aside from Curtin’s sharp jabs at Fox News, the trio had little to do but introduce a few celebrity guests, one of whom (Melissa McCarthy, paying homage to Chris Farley) was among the night’s best meetings of old and new.
