Saturday Night Live has always had its ups and downs, and always will.  There is only so much that people can do to create a good episode, much less a GREAT episode, in only 6 days’ time.  In 40 years, I’d argue that only one single episode was firing on all burners and reached the level of earth orbit…year 3, episode 18, starring Steve Martin and the Blues Brothers.  Others have come close, and, yes, many individual sketches are exemplary…but only this one episode delivers it all. (IMHO.)

The recent 40th Anniversary Special was pretty good, but Norm MacDonald’s collected tweets about the special’s Celebrity Jeopardy sketch really say a lot about how the show is put together each week.  Just click on the pic…