And then it was 11:28, 11:29—one of Nigel’s pearls of wisdom that people outside TNO borrowed was “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s 11:30”—and I could hear Penelope saying, “Thirty seconds to air, people, thirty seconds to air. Keep moving, everyone.” The cold open started, and Oliver was smarmily self-righteous as Comey, and Viv was impatient as his editor and Lynette came onstage as a world-weary Hillary Clinton and then there was the moment at the sketch’s conclusion when they broke the fourth wall, leaned their heads in, looked at the camera, and shouted in unison, welcoming viewers to the show just as TNO cast members had been doing since 1981. Hearing the famous line never failed to release something in me, some ecstasy that was like lifting the tab on a soda can, or maybe like having an orgasm, or maybe like knowing I’d have an orgasm in the near future—some excitement and anticipation and nervousness and delight. The essential thing I’d failed to understand about TNO before working there was that, even though there were flubbed lines and late camera cuts and sketches that bombed, the live part wasn’t the show’s weakness; it was its strength. And really, so was the way all the preparation had to be crammed into a week. These were the things that made us inventive and wildly ambitious, that gave the show its unpredictability and intensity and magic. Though, oddly, even after thirty-seven years, plenty of viewers still didn’t realize the show was live.
By this point, I’d been around Noah enough that I could tell he was nervous during the monologue, but in an endearing way—that he was both happy and jittery. When Elliot came out for their faux-misunderstanding, Elliot’s comparative stiffness—and frankly, his comparatively mediocre looks—amplified Noah’s charms. And then Noah was saying, “Our musical guest is, well, also me, and we’ve got a great show tonight, so stick around and we’ll be right back,” and it was all spinning forward, with Peggy whisking Noah offstage （another of my all-time favorite moments had been the night when a petite starlet in extremely high heels finished her monologue and Peggy simply hoisted the starlet into a piggyback to get her from Home Base to her first sketch）。 I often thought that TNO was like a sped-up version of life itself, and that whether something proceeded magnificently or disastrously, time always kept rushing by and the next moment was happening. During commercial breaks, or as other sketches unfolded, the swarms of techs in all black were calmly moving set walls and unrolling rugs and carrying sofas and desks, and before each sketch started, Penelope was saying over the speakers, “Ten seconds,” and then, “Three, two,” and then we were live again. After Noah’s monologue, the commercial break, and Tony and Lianna’s digital short, the Cheesemonger killed （of course the sketch I’d cared about the least killed, and the one I’d cared about the most had been cut, even if I’d been the one to cut it）; then there was the Medicine Cabinet sketch that had replaced The Danny Horst Rule, which was both clever and a little soft still, not as sharp as it would have been if it had been revised more; then the overhauled Sister & Father, which made the audience roar as soon as Noah appeared in his white cassock and skullcap and in which Viv as the nun innocently spouted filthy double entendres that prompted me to scan the backs of the heads of the audience in the floor seats for Dr. Theo; then Noah’s first musical act was being introduced by his sister, Vicky, and it was “Ambiguous,” the song I’d watched him rehearse. This time around, it made me unexpectedly sad and then made me think maybe I should end things with Gene and try, after all this time, for a real boyfriend. Not anyone from TNO, certainly, and not Noah Brewster because he was Noah Brewster. But someone, someone whose eyes I’d want to gaze into and who’d want to gaze into mine while we lay on a huge bed with a million pillows. Then it was News Desk, in which whatever mood Danny was in was indistinguishable from his usual deadpan delivery and which, apart from Danny’s current-events jokes, featured Bailey in a cooking segment for Minnesota hot dishes—Bailey was, in real life, from Duluth—and as they dumped a massive pitcher of cream of mushroom soup into a clear glass pan of tater tots, I could already tell this was going to be a recurring bit. Then there was Noah’s Choreography sketch, and I saw the snake handler waiting just off set; I’d expected the snake to be green like the rubber prop, but her scales had a pattern of reddish-orange diamonds over paler orange, and the audience cheered after the handler placed her around Noah’s shoulders then moved away, and my heart thudded, and then that sketch was finished, too, and I’d once again seen Noah’s muscular abdomen and so had many other Americans. Then there was Blabbermouth, and though it got laughs, just as I’d been able to tell that Bailey’s hot dish segment was the beginning of something, I could feel that Blabbermouth had run its course. Then Peggy was pulling Noah from Stage 3 to Stage 2 for his second song, the Cinderella mice and birds were outfitting him in a retro mint-green-and-black bowling shirt and touching up his makeup, Jay was introducing this time, and Noah was singing “Inbox Zero,” and then, after a commercial break, it was already time for goodnights, when Noah stood on Home Base, joined by the cast members and his band, and said thank you and everyone hugged each other. Catchphrase’s Unicycle sketch had been cut, but so had Joseph’s Three Tenors sketch. Danny didn’t appear for goodnights, and the house band was still playing the ending music and the audience was still cheering as I left the studio and walked down the hall toward his dressing room.
A producer and a wardrobe assistant both congratulated me on my sketches, and I thanked them perfunctorily. I knocked on Danny’s door and opened it without waiting for a response. He was sitting in front of the mirror removing makeup with a wipe.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“How do you think?”
“If you don’t want to go to the after-party, we could go get pizza or whatever.”
In the mirror, we made eye contact, and he smiled grimly. “No offense, but you’re giving such intense vibes right now of ‘Honey, I know you didn’t get invited to prom, but wouldn’t it be way more fun to stay in and bake cookies with Dad and me?’？”
“I do have a delicious recipe for snickerdoodles,” I said, and he didn’t laugh.
He said, “I’m gonna go home, smoke some weed, and try to sleep.”
“Will you text me tomorrow and let me know how you are?” We had never previously communicated on our day off.
“Okay, Mom,” he said.
Before I left his dressing room, I patted him on the shoulder.
Cast members, unlike writers, were each provided with a car and driver to get to the after-parties—more specifically, with a gigantic black Cadillac Escalade SUV—and I’d arranged to ride along with Henrietta and her wife, Lisa. Before I met them in Henrietta’s dressing room, which was just a few doors from Danny’s, I needed to stop by the seventeenth floor, drop off my scripts, and get the black nylon fanny pack I used as a purse. When I entered the office, an enormous bouquet of flowers sat in the center of my desk, dark and light pink roses and frosted-looking greenery. As I lifted the large square vase from the open cardboard box, I thought that if this was Noah’s way of thanking me for helping him with his sketch （four days, and also a lifetime, before）， it was both excessive and extraordinarily gracious.