Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 25, 1987
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: In the grand scheme of things, it turns out that Blake Lively was far less important of a TV actress than she has been as a celebrity or even a movie star (certainly the success of The Shallows means she’s going to be spending a lot of time making movies in the near future). Her time on Gossip Girl now feels less like a glamorous TV star coming into her own and more like a transient phase on her way to other, better things. Which in a way fit her character, Serena Van Der Woodsen perfectly. Serena was always the least emotionally invested character, the most likely to drift away from the group and end up on some Mediterranean island somewhere (fending off sharks? Hey sure, why not?). Still, it was that aloof quality, and Lively’s performance of it, which always made you think there was someone guiding the ship behind those winsome eyes, that served the show so well.
[Also? Shout out to the string quartet version of “Never Tear Us Apart” in that above clip.]
But today, on the occasion of her birthday, we should make note of what is secretly Blake Lively’s crowning achievement in the medium of television, and that would be her participation in Saturday Night Live‘s famous/infamous Potato Chip sketch. What is the potato chip sketch, you ask? Oh, you poor fool.
It’s been called the “weirdest SNL sketch ever.” And honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to argue after watching it. Lively’s part is the assistant to a NASA manager whose potato chips have just been stolen by a job applicant. Lively’s appropriately over-the-top holler of “POTATO CHIP THIEEEEEEEEEF” hits exactly the kind of exaggerated grotesquerie the sketch needs. It’s the kind of performance in the kind of sketch that will live on if only in the fevered remembrances of Saturday Night Live fans. And beyond that, it’s gratifying to see that Blake Lively really gets this bizarre sketch, well enough to nail the tone on her one big line. It’s kind of analogous to Christina Aguilera playing Samantha in that one Sex and the City sketch (“I’m a dude!”). Endless kudos to Blake Lively for that one.
So on this occasion, happy birthday, Blake Lively. Hope you’re not too busy fending off sharks to enjoy a (lawfully acquired) potato chip or two.
