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You can learn a lot about a person’s comedic sensibility by their preference in Weekend Update anchor. Chevy? Dennis Miller? Jimmy and Tina? Amy and Tina? Seth and Amy? These are really (really?) solid options. Humor is of course subjective, but there’s only one correct answer when it comes to the question of best Weekend Update anchor: Norm Macdonald.
From 1994 to 1997, Macdonald delivered the fake news to SNL viewers. Along with venerable Saturday Night Live scribe Jim Downey, Macdonald’s Weekend Update was often the lone saving grace during a difficult transitional period for the show. The halcyon days of the Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, and Chris Farley era were coming to an end and the new kids on the block — which included Will Ferrell, Ana Gasteyer, and Molly Shannon — still needed time to adjust to the bright lights of Studio 8H. Norm Macdonald bridged the gap between Saturday Night Live’s storied past and unknown future.
Macdonald’s dry, acerbic wit revitalized the Update desk. His cavalier, anti-establishment attitude created a potent comedic cocktail that was as fresh as it was unpredictable. He was punk rock. Living through the Norm-era of Update was like catching The White Stripes perform at the Mercury Lounge before they pierced the zeitgeist. His charismatic indifference to audience reaction strengthened his immunity to that comedic kryptonite known as silence.
Laugh. Don’t laugh. Macdonald gave zero fucks, which resulted in some of the most original, weird, cringe-worthy humor in Update history.
“It was never aimed at the studio audience,” Macdonald said of his stint on Update during the Saturday Night Live in the ’90s documentary. “It was always aimed directly at me. I just wrote what I knew was funny.”
Notice Macdonald said “what I knew was funny,” not “what I thought was funny.” It’s that kind of unwavering confidence and steely bravado that made Norm’s Weekend Update an event. You never forgot SNL was a live show during his reign on Update. Norm and Downey reveled in that “anything can happen” ethos that subsumed the series during its early days. Things could and very often did go wrong, which once resulted in Macdonald infamously blurting out “What the fuck was that?” during a live broadcast.
It wasn’t overly-produced; it wasn’t polished, but its runaway train style of comedy was a helluva lot of fun to watch.
“Recent photos sent from the Galileo space probe orbiting Jupiter’s moon Europa, suggest that it meets the conditions necessary to support a primitive form of life. Just what kind of life form?”
“You guessed it: Frank Stallone.”
But runaway trains inevitably crash. During the middle of the 1997-1998 season, NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer famously demanded that Macdonald and Downey be removed from Update. The show’s disorganized nature was becoming increasingly noticeable and Ohlmeyer, a longtime friend of O.J. Simpson, was reportedly unhappy with the unrelenting barrage of jokes Macdonald made at Simpson’s expense.
“After grisly photos of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson were shown in court, O.J. turned his head away and wept. It was at that moment that he realized he would never be able to kill her again.”
In retrospect, Norm Macdonald was never meant to have a long run on Update. He was way more “live fast, die young” than “slow and steady wins the race.” After SNL, Norm went on to write and star in the future cult classic Dirty Work, headline a number of sitcoms, and continues to perform stand-up. Currently, the former anchor is once again behind the desk hosting his own show, Norm Macdonald Live, which you can stream on Amazon.
Tina Fey once referred to Norm Macdonald as the last dangerous SNL cast member. It’s a fitting legacy for the first and last bad boy of Weekend Update.
Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
