Let's get this out of the way. SNL in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation (May 6, 9-11 PM, NBC) has the same problems as SNL in the '80s had, albeit not as noticeably. Clips and musical guests still don't match the seasons. Not everyone from the 1990s versions of SNL offer interviews for the documentary, although some of the most notable cast members (Norm MacDonald, Mike Myers, and Will Ferrell) are prominently featured. There's too much backstage stuff to adequately cover ten seasons of Saturday Night Live.

These are just minor gripes. Kenneth Bowser's third in a trilogy of SNL retrospectives fit their own SNL-like formula, but this second sequel to Live From New York: The First Five Years of Saturday Night Live doesn't follow diminishing returns protocol like the typical SNL recurring character. It's not as good as Live From New York, but SNL in the '90s is better than SNL in the '80s. The documentary is better paced than SNL in the '80s, covers its chosen decade more equally and features more than "greatest hits" clips.

There's a Suel Forrester clip in the documentary, which surprised me - one of Chris Kattan's more underrated characters appears? Neat. I also wasn't expecting to see Norm MacDonald lambasting cue card and camera crews during a "Weekend Update" segment, but it appears here and I appreciate that.

Chris Rock and the "token black guy" problem is talked about and covered in a surprising manner. Rock was at best a minor part of SNL when he was there, but those "Nat X" sketches weather well. SNL has always had its problems with tokenism, so it's nice that SNL in the '90s doesn't shy away from SNL's problems with regards to depicting black culture accurately. An "I'm Chillin'" clip has Chris Rock talking about how it was essentially a black "Wayne's World." It's a bit disconcerting to see a "Ladies Man" clip appear during a segment ostensibly about the 1993-94 season since "The Ladies Man" was a mainstay of the 1995-2000 years. A "Perspectives" clip would have made more thematic sense, since that and O.J. Simpson best marked Meadows' first five years on the show.

Adam Sandler is put over by Robert Smigel and other contemporaries as quite intelligent for the style of comedy he did. I don't actually disagree with that assessment - a lot of his material (Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, They're All Gonna Laugh At You!) deals in stupid humour and he knows it. He can do more dramatic roles, but it's with concepts like the uninhibited Buffoon/Pedro and the manchild Canteen Boy that he made his name. I wouldn't go so far as to call Sandler a genius (for instance, Opera Man has not aged well), but some of his stuff is quite good for its utter lack of pretense. Like him or hate him, he's made his mark.