Mostly, though, the people who have worked for him over the years remain loyal and appreciative. If he’s sometimes been tough on them, he has also launched careers. He has also, of course, gotten very rich himself off Saturday Night Live, as well as the movies he’s produced, like Mean Girls and Wayne’s World. But you can’t begrudge him. At one point in Lorne, he mentions a random thought that occurred to him when he was a kid: “If I went to prison, I’d get to read a lot.” He was kind of wrong—prison isn’t fun—but also right, just as he was right about those performers dressed in bee costumes. If Lorne is nothing else, it’s a portrait of a guy who knows when to zig and when to zag. His moves may sometimes seem counterintuitive—but then, that’s how a television show, risky from the get-go, survives for 50 years and counting, through unwatchable seasons and great ones. The executives who expressed dismay over a silly but brilliant bee sketch are long gone. But Michaels endures, not only having the last laugh, but passing it along to us.
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