The forced-deck plotting in which all kinds of seemingly impossible problems have to be resolved before the debut episode goes on the air feels…forced.

Gabriel LaBelle‘s performance as SNL producer Lorne Michaels has no snap, no bite, no eye-gleam, no inner furnace…LaBelle’s performance as young Steven Spielberg in The Fablemans was reasonably decent, but his Michaels is about as bland as it gets.

Overhead lighting crashing to the floor is an overly emphatic metaphor for on-set chaos…too heavy-handed.

The most engaging performance or presence comes from curly-haired Rachel Sennot, who plays Michaels’ former wife and creative partner, Rosie Shuster. They were married between 1967 and 1980, and you can feel odd flirtatious vibes between them….vibes that go nowhere. On the downslope of their marriage Shuster began fucking Dan Aykroyd in 1979. If I was Reitman I would have cheated the timeline and used Shuster’s infidelity as a plot point.

Matt Wood plays John Belushi as some kind of submental, subverbal psychopath…why?

The Richard Kiel-sized Nicholas Braun is way, way too tall to play Andy Kaufman.

Saturday Night opens on 9.27=.24,