SNL 10-6

How about a test pattern or a goldfish swimming in a bowl for 90 minutes?

OK, seriously, how about the featured band playing for 90 minutes?

 

I agree. They need to reinvent the show, instead of getting rid of it.

Reinventing the show would include dumping the entire cast. Firing all the writers. And good-bye Loren.

 

Or Lorne.

 

They did revamp the show a bit two seasons ago when they cut the cast down to what it is now. It saves money and it's better for sketch shows to not have a huge cast.

I still think that there's a few bright spots. Kristen Wiig is funny every week and does great with her characters and if he didn't have to carry scenes, I think Andy Samberg would be really funny more often. I just don't know how they can't come up with better ideas.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if sketch comedy is dead. A lot of these people are funny in other stuff, but SNL always sucks. And it's hard to pinpoint it to just writing or performing. Case-in-point, I handed out a lot of blame to Tina Fey when she was head writer. I thought the writing had slipped and she was bad on Update. Now 30 Rock is one of my two favorite shows and I think she is great.

 

If that attitude had prevailed in the awful seasons from 1985-86, we'd have never had the great run from the late '80s through about '92 or '93, and those years were as good as SNL ever was. SNL will find itself again.

 

Agreed. She has this great deadpan/droll anger thing going. Her bit last night in the HDTV sonogram skit was outstanding. "I just want a healthy baby." Pretty much what she did in Knocked Up. How did someone not find that movie funny? Geez.

That was ONE bad season, Tony. This has been--fuck, I've lost count. It's been awful for YEARS. Years and years and years.

I agree it's not getting cancelled, but neither is Dr. Evil releasing the reigns until at least 10 years after his death. So the show sucks and it's going to suck for a long time.

 

Actually, I thought it was pretty bad from about 83-87, but there were reasons to tune in. I loved Tim Kazurinski's professorial-type character on Weekend Update with the flash cards for his new words.

As it is right now, with TiVo technology, I'll record it and sift through and find enough enjoyment, even if some weeks it's just some of the jokes on Weekend Update.

And among the newer cast members, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are pretty damn talented and Samberg does some pretty damn good stuff, too. I even like how Armisen and and Forte can play the real odd-ball characters. I think they have enough talent. They need better writers.

If I recall correctly, some of the best SNLers were originally writers first, then ended up playing the characters they'd written, including Chevy Chase and Tina Fey.

 

SNL has been in the shitter since Ferrell left. The show needs at least one person who can almost single-handedly carry the show on his/her back.

I would argue that there have only been a handful of people like that in the show's history.

1. Dana Carvey
2. John Belushi
3. Dan Aykroyd
4. Will Ferrell
5. Eddie Murphy
6. Phil Hartman
7. Mike Myers
8. Bill Murray
9. Chris Farley
10. Jon Lovitz (That may be reaching)

You had some who could do the news great but couldn't do much else (Chase, Fey, Miller, McDonald), others who were great impressionists (Fallon, Crystal, Piscopo, Hammond) and some who were great in a very specific type skit (Sandler, Rock, Short, Spade, Radner, Schneider, Curtin). Others were just versatile (Nealon, Meadows, Hooks, Morris, Dunn).

Right now, they probably think Hammond is good enough to carry the show. He's good, but he's nowhere close to being on the level of some of the elite in SNL history.

Keep in mind some of the names who got lost in the shuffle before... Sarah Silverman, Jay Mohr, Stephen Colbert, Damon Wayans, Larry David, Janeane Garofalo, James Belushi, Julia Louis-Dreyfus etc...) I'm not saying I like all of them, but they've all been pretty damn successful away from SNL. That's not even mentioning Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall...

Right now the show just sucks... Samberg is great in digital shorts, but almost nothing else. Hader does great impressions, but nothing else. Poehler and Maya Rudolph are talented, but overrated and the rest of the cast, with the exception of Hammond are completely nondescript.

 

I didn't see it, but my kid was trying to tell me how hilarious the douchebag skit was (especially something about the KISS-guy imitation) and he could not stop cracking up as he was trying to do so.

Now I fear for him.

 

Right now the show just sucks... Samberg is great in digital shorts, but almost nothing else. Hader does great impressions, but nothing else. Poehler and Maya Rudolph are talented, but overrated and the rest of the cast, with the exception of Hammond are completely nondescript.

While I agree with this statement I would add that I like Wigg. I think she is pretty damn funny and also oddly attractive.

 

Yes, I also enjoyed the National Douchebag Championships. And Armisen did a killer Gene Simmons, although a great bit of it was the hair and makeup. It was funny, but didn't approach classic level.

What would help, too, is some better hosts. When SNL came back to greatness in the late 80s, some of the real classic skits involved great hosts like Tom Hanks. This year's hosts have been a basketball player and a young actor who still doesn't have near the chops that Hanks did back then.

I remember watching the show Hanks hosted back in 1988 and that's when it hit me that SNL was damn good again. I can think of two skits from that show just off the top of my head -- "Jew, Not a Jew" and "Mr. Short-Term Memory" -- that were classics.

Later that season they had Leslie Nielsen host another classic show. That show debuted the very first Wayne's World as the last skit of the night -- the slot reserved for what's perceived to be the weakest skit of the show.