It’s been a few years, now, since Johnny’s come home from his war in the Pacific. He and the other kids are goofing around in the living room: there’s laughs as the older brother wrestles each tyke, then a happy quieting as I Love Lucy comes on and the mid-century American family crowds around the TV. Mom and Pop look at their children on the floor: some gimmicky animal comic has fallen out of the little ones’ hands and everyone’s tucked into one another, smiling and giggling at this nexus of modern culture broadcast before them. And Johnny really seems like he’s all there; no more does it seem his years of torture in the islands haunt this home. A single tear would fall down Mother’s face, probably — because that’s the reaction I had in my analogous moment — as she realized America was finally as it should be again, settled in some glorious domestic peacetime and strutting its national pride. That feeling, of knowing war is finally over, and your country is back to some form of Pax Americana— that is the feeling I had, when I walked into class and saw something beautiful: my high school peers cackling at the smart board they were playing SNL highlights on.
There’s a phrase relevant in times like this: “we’re back.”
It was not a full three years ago that I was, on this very platform, lamenting what seemed to be the end times of American comedy. The rot was stemming from the States’ bwa-ha-ha focal point: Saturday Night Live. I wailed over the keyboard and sulked over what I’ll still concede was the reality. SNL was terrible. It had been for years. Irrelevancy was the status which had been fully embraced by the forty-seven year old retired American sweetheart. Flash forward to the show’s fiftieth anniversary special, which I watched in February with one reigning thought: this could not have come at a better time. Over the past five years, the cast has gradually undergone a full shake-up, the writing room has seen leagues of new faces, and a television program once more hip to what its given audience desires has been embraced by the world yet again. The youth is clamoring for the kitschiness of Sarah Sherman; they are positively nuts for the wiles of Marcello Hernandez. You know these names. On your media dispensary of choice, you, yourself, have surely seen at least a clip or two of Timothee Chalamet engaging in some live, late night bizarre-ity. I write here not to admit I was wrong, but to celebrate the desperately optimistic reminder that I noted way back in 2022: there was a time in the early 80s when Lorne Michaels had left the show, and SNL reached historically significant levels of awful. By 1990, though, there was David Spade, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Molly Shannon, and Ana Gasteyer. In 2025, well… we’re back.
How do I know? That one classroom bliss-cident doesn’t stand alone in Denmark’s coterie of SNL-revival evidence. In Mr. Corbett’s seventh period, the conversation turned ticklish at the mention of the aforementioned Saturday-night star Marcello Hernandez. My admission that I was going to see him live within the week elicited jealous squeals and, even better, knowing comments of, “Oh, I heard about that!” A far cry from the general student body’s complete incapability to even name an active cast member three years ago, as seen in my last article; they’re up to date with where these cast members are going. In Mr. Clendenen’s second period APUSH, after Maverick Johnson’s adoring comment of “I love SNL” was overheard by one Denmark Unleashed reporter, he offered in conversation that he watches the show “every weekend” — and cluttered agreement proved that his peers were in the same routine boat. So, please— don’t let me stop you when I start being wracked by shaking sobs of joy. Keep telling your friend about that sketch you loved last Saturday. Live from New York… things always get better eventually.
