When Alec Baldwin first hosted Saturday Night Live in April of 1990 he was promoting his Jack Ryan role in The Hunt for Red October, before which he was mostly known for his terrifically inspired, daffy comic turns in Beetlejuice and Married to the Mob. Few outside of Lorne Michaels who, after the performance, suggested bringing Baldwin back annually, could have foreseen the beginnings of a completely sufficient parallel career, arguably of equal or greater value than the actor’s marquee work. Not that his excellence on the show should encourage a belittlement of his always controlling, often peerless performances in both schlock like Ghosts of Mississippi and State and Main to masterpieces like The Aviator and the remarkable, Farrelly Brothers­penned Outside Providence, throughout which he tenderly shuffles hilarious brutishness with self-torturing despondence. And yet it’s on SNL that Baldwin has offered his most fearless and signature work. It’s on SNL that he has earned his position as a true national treasure.

A national treasure, mind you, who won our hearts by trying to fuck a man-child ("Canteen Boy"), making out with a dog, talking about his balls on NPR, and generally dispensing with all discretion, decorum, dignity… in short, the concerns of lesser hosts. In a New York Times article by Jacques Steinberg, Baldwin claimed "there are two types of hosts," those who send themselves up and those who, like him, "join the company." In a way, Baldwin is sending up his persona—the automatic punch line to all of this behavior is, of course, its contrast with his slick-haired James Bond handsomeness and smoke-voiced charisma—but with his eagerness to be even offensively ridiculous, he tends to simply feel like the most valuable cast member.

Saturday Night Live‘s “Best of” DVDs, like almost all greatest hits comps, are too short to please everybody; only Will Ferrell’s combined two volumes feel adequately complete. But this DVD succeeds at balancing the obligatory infamous sketches (“Canteen Boy,” “NPR: Schwetty Balls”) with leftfield pleasures like “The Breakfast.” Written by longtime writing team Bonnie and Terry Turner, who also co-wrote the Wayne’s World films, “The Breakfast” is a beautifully simple, totally-contained work of art, held together by humanistic work from Kevin Nealon and Phil Hartman as sheepish diner regulars, and rapid-fire, just-off exchanges ("I like my eggs on top of my toast." "I’ll bet you do.") between waitress Jan Hooks and Baldwin’s mysterious stranger.

At least eight of the DVD’s 18 sketches revolve around homosexuality as a laughing matter, and a reasonable argument could be made that it’s excessive and alienating. It’s unfortunately cluttered in the material, but there’s a complete absence of cruelty on Baldwin’s part; that certainly doesn’t deserve congratulations, though perhaps it earns him the benefit of the doubt. For better or worse, giggling at gayness is a passed-on tradition between Robert Smigel, Sandler, Norm Macdonald, and a long history of SNL writers. In a sketch like "Greenhilly" (Baldwin’s very first), a crescendoing satire of something or other that features him kissing multiple partners, each one more unlikely than the last, to the strains of Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo theme, it is shocking (and funny) when he embraces Phil Hartman.

Will Ferrell as ridiculous Actors Studio lecturer James Lipton is always riotous, and Baldwin’s his best subject as “Love, American Style” star Charles Nelson Reilly, a "blinding, brilliant light from heaven" and "the greatest performer to have ever graced this earth." Other high points are Baldwin’s over-enunciating French professor, his choice De Niro on “The Joe Pesci Show,” and an inimitable entry in the Bill Brasky saga. Alec shines equally on the DVD’s commentary, accompanied by producer Marci Klein. Seeing how young (and trim) he looks in the early episodes: "That’s about how you look when you snort a line of coke from here to the moon" and "That’s actually my son, I let him guest a few times." More poignantly, he’s never embarrassed or cringing about his risks, nor should he be. Of all his curricula (show hosting, politics, movies, and who knows what else), his perfection of the art of sketch comedy acting could be the least dispensable.
—JUSTIN STEWART