Word: seemly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then, out of the ashes, a renaissance of sorts. For the 1986-87 season, Michaels pieced together a cast that finally took hold and is now starting its fourth season together. Only one of them -- the silky, moonfaced Jon Lovitz, creator of the pathological-liar character -- seems to capture the old spirit: like Belushi or Aykroyd or Radner, he gets laughs by simply showing up onstage. Still, there's plenty of talent on hand: Dana Carvey, a pixieish comic with devilish impressions of George Bush and Jimmy Stewart; Victoria Jackson, a ditsily appealing blond; and the sparkling, versatile Jan Hooks...
...show, in short, is once again delivering laughs. So why, for a veteran fan, does the new Saturday Night Live still seem like a pale imitation of its old self? For one thing, the most popular bits -- Carvey's Church Lady, the body-building brothers Hans and Franz -- are the weakest parts of the show, crowd pleasers that depend on makeup gimmicks rather than nimble gags. Too many sketches are pat and obvious in ways that the old group wouldn't have tolerated (a team of ad executives, marooned on an island, worries more about meetings and market surveys than...
...untrammeled capitalism. (This may explain why terrorists threatening to retaliate against the U.S. on the third anniversary of the American bombing of Libya were rumored to have chosen Atlantic City as their target.) Along the Boardwalk stands a rank of casinos nudged so close against the water that they seem to teeter at its edge, their windows shut to the ocean air, their backs turned to the city. Behind them cowers the neighborhood known as the Inlet, where boxy row houses devolve into strange confections of brick, plywood and cardboard, and people doze on sleeping bags in doorless rooms with...
...this approach, though, that the book ultimately founders. The canon, it would seem from reading Leibowitz's digressions on everything from Paul Valery to obscure ancient Greek dramatists, is alive and well--and certainly formative in most Americans' sense of themselves...
...fact, the eight autobiographies seem to have been chosen more for their diversity quotient than for their relevance to the style-versus-truth dichotomy which the author has posed as his central question...