'Saturday Night Live' at 50: How the first season set the tone for the next 49

To watch "Saturday Night Live" enter its 50th season is to watch a formula that's as familiar and dependable as any on TV. But to watch back then was an adventure — also an experiment, a gamble, a long-shot, a leap into the great unknown.

Launched Oct. 11, 1975, this Saturday night potluck of sketches, "cold opens," commercial parodies, guest hosts and musical performances was unlike anything else on TV at the time and a little like everything else, too. Sometimes it bombed and sometimes it soared — a mixed payoff that has been repeated countless times since — but "SNL" rarely failed to entertain one way or another.

What came out of the very first season in 1975-76 was a template, or genetic code, if you will, which remains to this day.

That code was forged in the tumult of the times, too. Just five months before launch, the war in Vietnam had officially ended, while the oil embargo crisis of 1973 still reverberated. Richard Nixon had resigned from office the year before.

The country was in a funk — and so was Johnny Carson, NBC's late night superstar who wanted more time off as host of "The Tonight Show." NBC had made that difficult by airing "Tonight" repeats on Saturday nights. Carson wanted those for weeknights, and NBC caved.

What to do about all that time (90 minutes) on Saturdays? The network chose a 30-year-old native of Toronto, Canada, to figure this out. It has been observed before that "SNL" was the first TV series created by the first TV generation — technically true, perhaps, except that Lorne Michaels and head writer, Michael O'Donoghue, embraced an anti-TV sensibility. With a flood of commercials, sitcoms and by-the-number procedurals, prime time was the broadest of targets, and "SNL" was about to take aim.

But the trick — or balancing act — was to make fun of TV rather than bite off the hand that feeds it. Another trick was to reflect the nation's cultural malaise without falling into the morass itself.

To understand why "SNL" has made it all the way to Season 50, you must time-travel back to that first season for answers. They are there — the DNA of the most important series in U.S. television history — but there were really just a handful of episodes that made "SNL" what it is to this day.

Don't believe me? Here are the four that mattered most, and to some extent, still do.

Oct. 11, 1975 (Episode 1)

The first cold open was a skit starring John Belushi (soon to be among the most famous comics in the world) and O'Donoghue, with the latter playing an English language instructor to Belushi's student. O'Donoghue's line remains iconic among "SNL" fans ("I would like to feed your fingertips to a wolverine").

But that cold open was the true innovation.

Live TV was hardly unknown (most soaps remained live, while much of '50s TV had been live, too). Nevertheless, for the TV generation, this throwback was thrilling. Anything could happen in the moment. Disaster (or ruin) was a constant risk. Twenty million people were watching ... and waiting. "Saturday Night" (the "Live" was added by the second season) made this danger implicit, by calling cast members the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players."

In fact, this first open was tame, but the first guest host was not. George Carlin was deep into a cocaine addiction at the time, and also fast becoming the Carlin later generations of comics would so esteem (and fear) — the lacerating takedown artist with a gift for language and invective. NBC and Michaels had settled on "guest" hosts because they were cheaper than a regular one, and also more promotable. But Carlin ran the risk of torpedoing the show in the cradle. His first stand-up routine of the night was tepid by Carlin standards (about baseball and football), but the last one of the night was pure Carlin — a scalding takedown of organized religion and God. This might very well have ended "Saturday Night" had it not aired when fewer people were watching.

Then, there was the performance by Andy Kaufman, who appeared on network TV for only the second time that night. No one in the studio audience (or at home) knew what to expect, but what they got was comic vertigo, or the sense that Kaufman was crashing and they were crashing right along with him. (He sang the famous "Mighty Mouse" chorus in his first of several appearances that season.) That was part of the thrill of this first show, and the promise, too — anything can happen, anything will.

Other elements that endure from this episode include "Weekend Update" (with Chevy Chase as anchor), the musical guests (Billy Preston and Janis Ian), the first sketch featuring The Bees and the house band, led by brilliant Howard Shore, who would go on to win an Oscar for his "Lord of the Rings" score.

Chase was also "SNL's first breakout star.  He famously announced for the first time, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night ..."

2. Nov. 8, 1975 (Episode 4)

This fourth episode was the first truly representative "SNL" — the one that all of the other 971 that followed have been modeled on. The season's first episode was an experiment, the second an all-music one (Paul Simon), and the third aired without a music guest (instead, Belushi performed his Joe Cocker impersonation).

But this one had it all, notably the first female host — Candice Bergen, who would go on to become the first repeat host — and it also marked the first time a host performed in sketches (Bergen gamely appeared in all of them).

The fourth also featured "SNL's" first truly "sticky" sketch — the land shark "Jaws" parody, which the cast apparently much preferred to the often-repeated (some would say repeated-to-death) bees sketch during the first season. "Land Shark" proved to Michaels that sketches could become stars in their own right — to be trotted out when the spirit (or need to fill time) moved him.

Then there was that first season cast. By this fourth episode, "Saturday Night" was a breakout phenom, and these seven — Belushi, Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner — were emerging phenoms in their own rights.

Belushi's true breakout moment ("Samurai Hotel") was still weeks away (Dec. 13), but Chase was already one of the biggest stars on TV, thanks to a gag as old as vaudeville — the stumble and fall.

What made this night so historic, however, happened in the cold open, when Chase portrayed President Gerald Ford for the first time. "Ladies and gentleman, the president of the United States," announced Don Pardo. Chase's Ford then falls over the podium, followed by another tumble over some chairs. The audience instantly got the gag — Ford fell while descending some airplane steps that June — and a tradition was born. "SNL" has parodied presidents ever since.

3. Dec. 13, 1975 (Episode 7)

Until "All in the Family" came along, the idea of race as a comic foil was inconceivable. But on this seventh episode, "Saturday Night" reached for the third rail.

Having Richard Pryor as guest host seemed — then, as now — like the greatest score in the young show's history. He was the biggest stand-up on the planet and Michaels had even flirted with the idea of making Pryor the permanent host.

What could go wrong? Well ...

Nervous NBC wanted a 10-second delay for the first time on the show (and settled for a 5-second one), but never had to use it. Pryor — who dedicated his opening monologue to a then-ailing Miles Davis — was flawless, and the first evidence that a guest host could blow up the show, and "blow up" in a good way. By performing one of the most indelible stand-up routines in "SNL" history (Pryor, as himself, on acid), he paved the way for all hosts who would follow — or at least he set the bar for them.

Race, as subtext or throughline, was woven throughout the rest of the episode. Radner's Emily Litella — the "Weekend Update" counter-opinion commentator and first of a long line of recurring characters on the segment — arrived to protest the "busting of students." When informed that her topic was busing, another breakout was born: "Oh ... never mind."

Meanwhile, in this episode Pryor also performed the famous — also infamous — sketch with Chase, in which he played a job applicant to Chase's interlocutor. Both engaged in an escalation of racial epithets, culminating with the most abhorrent one. It offended and shocked then, still does — which was the whole idea.

And did I mention that Gil Scott-Heron — whose spoken-word style addressed racism and poverty, as well as that revolution which won't be televised is coming — was a musical guest?

This seventh episode was the long ball that "SNL" didn't really need to throw. The series was already a hit, and hit series — especially then — are risk-averse. But this episode emphatically proved that "Saturday Night" was willing to take them. Among the finest episodes in "SNL" history was the payoff.

4. Feb. 28, 1976 (Episode 15)

In this episode, hosted by Jill Clayburgh, the cold open comes of age, as the single most important element on "SNL." And who should star? None other than the wizard of oz himself — the man behind the curtain, and until now just a name on the closing credits.

When Michaels appears on live TV for the first time, TV's fourth wall comes tumbling down. Viewers are in on the joke because they know as well as anyone else that TV is built upon artifice but until this point, television — or at least those who made it — had hardly set itself up as the butt of a joke.

Michaels did, and a glorious tradition was born.

A savvy showman, Michaels must have known this was another risk but also one worth taking. The setup was simple: Chase refuses to take another fall for the camera, then storms off to Michaels' office deep in the bowels of Studio 8H with a handheld camera following him. He blows into the office — the producer's desk famously accessorized with a portrait of Richard Nixon — then makes his demands. The producer talks him into doing another pratfall anyway.

An even better cold open arrived a few months later (May 22) when guest host Buck Henry couldn't get past the 30 Rock security guard, and Michaels had to go down some more halls (and an elevator) to let him in. (In both episodes, Michaels offered money to The Beatles to appear; according to "SNL" legend, they nearly did.)

A star was born — who also happened to be the executive producer.

Finally, this episode featured the premiere of the "Mister Bill" Claymation comedy shorts ("Oh, nooooooo!!!"). Some 22 of those would follow in the years to come. Such pretaped bits were a way to fill time, but those produced by Albert Brooks and Gary Weis for the first season had largely been hit-or-miss. "Mr. Bill" was a hit, and set the stage for countless other taped comedy shorts in the years to come.