This past week, “Saturday Night Live” was hosted by Ellen Page, star of the painfully hip, Oscar-nominated Juno and heir apparent to the title of “the object of scene kids’ wet dreams,” one currently held by Scarlett Johansson.  Not only was the future queen of overexposure bestowed hosting duties, but Chicago’s favorite sons, Wilco, were featured as the musical guests.  To most college kids with floppy haircuts and white earphones dangling down past their skinny frames right down to their skinny jeans, this would be a fantasy lineup for the weekly sketch program.  But for the majority of mainstream America, I would assume that a collective “who?” was whispered once the guests’ names appeared in the opening credits.  It causes one to wonder if NBC is simply trying to give some airtime to people who deserve more exposure than the usual superstars they invite to the show.  However, that’s incredibly unlikely since the ratings-deprived network (in the post-“Friends” era) will grasp onto any and all of its viewers with every fiber of its being.  No, NBC has a completely different agenda than giving the underdogs a chance for the sake of creativity or altruism (a word largely absent from the vocabularies of industry folk). 

Excuse me if I think that Lorne Michaels is coming off as a desperate kid trying to earn himself some indie cred, but his selection of hosts and musical guests this season suggests a certain degree of pandering to a demographic that they’ve been slowly courting since the rise of Andy Samberg and his internet shorts.  Perhaps Michaels assumes that most hipsters are either too young to be out late on a Saturday night or that they’re too depressed to rise from their beds; either way, he obviously notices that there is a viewer base there waiting to be exploited.  In only half a season, Michaels has already invited the likes of Feist, Spoon, the aforementioned Wilco, and Vampire Weekend to perform on the show.  Furthermore, he enlisted the services of Seth Rogen, a hero in hipster circles for his role in cult phenomenon “Freaks and Geeks”. However, if Michaels continues to produce interesting programming, I’ll try my best to disregard his motives and just enjoy the show. 

Brother Amur