Bowen Yang has thought a lot about the common gripe that Saturday Night Live isn’t as good as it used to be.
“When people say SNL was better or was especially good at a certain era, they’re thinking of the best of this cast member, they’re thinking of the hits, and the highlight reels,” the cast member said on Monday at an Emmys consideration event with the current cast, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Yang’s comments come after years of debate about whether or not SNL is “funny anymore.” Many fans consider the show’s heyday to have been during its early inception through the 1990s, writing off the more recent seasons—the last six of which Yang has a major part of. Though he understands why highlights of the show make fans nostalgic, Yang said that clips of moments are just that—snippets. “You don’t get a highlight reel unless you do the full season of the show,” he said.
“They were playing the reel for us backstage, and I’m like, God, this show f---ing rocks, especially in the highlight reel,” he continued, to laughs from his fellow cast members and the crowd. “Every second of that reel, I’m like, God, that was a great sketch, and that person scored in that way,” he went on, but “obviously it’s this beautiful topography of different things and different incidents and different factors” that gives the show its most successful moments, he added.
That’s the point Yang said critics are missing when they compare past seasons to the present.
Yang’s comments echo what Bill Murray had to say in response to critics who complain that SNL is “lousy” compared to his time on the show from 1977 to 1980. “People always give me a hard time about, ‘Oh, the original show was so great and it’s lousy now,’” Murray said on the New Heights podcast in December. “I say, ‘No, it’s not.’ The show that’s on now, they do stuff that’s just as good as anybody ever did, all the time.”
Some jokes are just more memorable than others, Yang also said on Monday.
“I feel like my landing streak is reflected like actual FAA incidents,’” he joked, “Sometimes I don’t stick it and that’s okay. If no one dies that’s fine.” Fellow cast member Heidi Gardner chimed in to respond to the self-deprecating remark to declare that Yang “has a big ol’ hit rate” on the show.
“I will say you usually stick it,” she told him.
