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Peacock Docuseries ‘SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night’ Adds Little to a Long-Established Legacy: TV Review
The four-part Peacock docuseries 'SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night' adds little to the storied institution's legacy.
Robert Alexander’s “Five Minutes” is a look at the audition process; Marshall Curry’s “Written By: A Week Inside the ‘SNL’ Writers Room” is exactly what it sounds like; Neil Berkeley’s “More Cowbell” is a 49-minute exegesis on a six-minute sketch; and Jason Zeldes’ “Season 11: The Weird Year” recaps an infamous interlude that nearly sank the show. The device wears thin when repeated ad nauseam for over an hour, but yields a few endearing nuggets: Maya Rudolph’s childhood classmate Gwyneth Paltrow recommended her to the producers; Hader made the notoriously stone-faced audience laugh with his Al Pacino impression; Jennifer Coolidge, Kevin Hart and Jordan Peele didn’t make the cut, yet we get a glimpse into the alternate timeline where they did. “The Weird Year” picks a worthy subject — an anomalous season starring an all-rookie cast, including Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall, with minimal sketch experience — but excises large swathes of context from its condensed history.
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