Opinion | S.N.L. Is for Me and All the Other Outsiders

In December 2019, when my children were in third and fifth grade, I decided to show them a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that, decades before, my three siblings and I had loved: Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn as the Sweeney Sisters singing a Christmas medley at a party. I had trouble finding this particular sketch, but as my kids and I inhaled, via YouTube, a random assortment of other ones from over the years — among them such classics as “NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls” and “The Love Toilet” — I inadvertently yet happily created what would become our 2020 hobby, while quarantined in our Minneapolis home. I also welcomed my offspring into a time-honored tradition: watching “S.N.L.” when you’re a little too young for it.
I myself began doing this in the mid-80s, in my friend Annie’s attic, when her older brothers introduced us to “Choppin’ Broccoli,” “A Couple of White Guys” and “The Church Lady.” As it happens, “S.N.L.” and I are the same age. I arrived in August 1975, and “S.N.L.” debuted in October. It’s therefore a little brain-scrambling to me that “S.N.L.” is now, with deserved fanfare, celebrating 50 years while I’m not quite 49 and a half, but apparently a TV show’s first season starts immediately, while a human’s first season starts when she turns 1.
In any case, when I think of being too young for “S.N.L.” and enjoying it anyway, I don’t exactly mean because of the risqué content. Admittedly, as my family started watching entire episodes in reverse order of their airing — we especially enjoyed the golden age of Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant — my husband and I occasionally fast-forwarded through sketches not because they were crude (bring on “Undercover Office Potty”) but because they were innocence-destroying (the intentionally misogynistic “Guy Who Just Bought a Boat”).
But I suspect that for a child watching “S.N.L.,” the joke itself doesn’t necessarily matter. If you’re 8 or 10, you might never even have heard of the politician or cultural trend being mocked. But you still know that you’re watching something funny; the magic of “S.N.L.” is that with its costumes and collaboration and the cast members regularly cracking up themselves and one another, it makes adulthood itself seem fun.