Entertainment Weekly reunited some classic TV and movie casts for this month’s reunion issue, including Arrested Development, Cheers, and National Lampoon’s Vacation, but today, EW published an interview with Garry Shandling and a reunion video of the cast of HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, featuring Jeffrey Tambor, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rip Torn, and more. The Garry Shandling interview, although short, has some interesting moments. On the massive impact the show has had on the next generation of sitcom folk, Shandling said, “Sometimes I’ll be watching TV and what happens is I’ll flip to [a show] and within two seconds, I feel like I’m in the writers room again. [...]
The moment Murray, Belushi and Aykroyd left, it started to be "cool" to dis SNL. You’ve heard the criticisms. When Entertainment Weekly’s Annie Barrett reviewed 30 Rock's live episode (which was shot in SNL’s Studio 8H, with the same production crew), she described it as “like SNL, but funny!” Good one, Annie. No matter how funny or relevant SNL becomes, commentators are still reluctant to praise the show, whining that it has lost the "edge" or "energy" of the previous era.
What’s weird is that I don’t remember anyone loving the "previous era" very much, either. How quickly we forget the visceral reviews hurled at the show [...]
