SNL's Continued Downward Spiral Thread

Great to see a five-timers sketch. Guessing it was originally meant for the cold open before they decided to go serious.

Checking the handy dandy SNL archives, that was Elliott Gould's first appearance on the show in 31 years -- since Tom Hanks' five-timer sketch. His last of six hosting spots was in 1980.

 

Gotta rethink the wisdom of letting the guys from the 30 Rock mailroom fill in as the musical guest.

 

Plus 2!!! Cut for Time sketches

 

I'm usually into the discordant noise of LCD Soundsystem, but the first song especially, the vocals seemed way too low.

 

Podcast set is brilliant

 

Her performances on the Disney sing-alongs are surreal and fun.

The family band look an awful lot like Southern Culture on the Skids.

 

What a great episode

 

“Ages 34 and up.”

 

re: The huge cast, something about SNL contracts the past 5 to 10 years has changed, because now pretty much ALL of them are pursuing outside work while also doing the show from time to time. I was kind of struck by it while listening to Comedy Bang Bang today - Langston Kerman mentioned that his new show "Bust Down" has Chris Redd as a cast member, and on the same episode, Scott Auckerman was plugging a podcast by Ego. Kate and Cecily have multiple outside projects, as does Kenan, and Chloe Fineman is regularly guesting on a lot of stuff. I think that's probably good for the performers themselves, but bad for the quality of the show overall and probably accounts for why they're keeping 15+ people on staff now.

 

Chris Redd has also co-starred on "Kenan." Two birds, one stone.

 

I went to YouTube to watch last week's musical cold opening, which was lovely, and Weekend Update was a suggested video, so I watched it, too, and it was well-done. I literally LOLed a few times.

 

Such a great episode. The open was heartfelt, the monologue was terrific, the oddly funny monkey trial, COVID dinner discussion, "New Variant" digital short, 5-timers (glad to see Rudd got a little more of a showcase after his Christmas show was "abridged") WU was good, the Subway Churro (probably would have been THE sketch in any other show), but between Chris Redd's mustache on the Slime sketch and his work on the family reunion bit - he might have been the episode MVP. Solid writing throughout.