Saturday Night Live

i've been wondering recently ... has it always been standard for the cold open to be a riff on political/topical news even if there isn't actually much news to riff on, and so the show ends up doing some terrible/hacky/boring bit about, like, filibusters or some other actual political policy that has no comedic value? my earliest memories of SNL are when darrell hammond as clinton and will ferrell as bush actually gave the the show a good reason to do political cold opens. but there must have been periods around that time and before/after in non election seasons or w/e where there wasn't an obvious political sketch to do... did they ever do cold opens that were just funny sketches not explicitly tied to some news event from the preceding 4-5 days?

I can't remember a cold open that's ever been set in an abstract. They've always been current events-related, though not always specifically political.

i def remember older snl bits that opened with non-political sketches, but i wanna say that changed during the clinton impeachment years?

interesting juxtaposition w/ the other new guy who never gets put in sketches who did some real conceptual update bit that kind of bombed, feel a bit bad for him.

I thought that bit - the AI/robot comedian - was very funny and well done. Purely on a technical level, the way he used his voice was really impressive, and the way it built to a punch line like the machine had learned something from the interaction was really sharp.

yeah i liked it, it was clearly well thought out & he performed it with aplomb. i bet he auditioned for the show with it. but it was prob just not for the right crowd for it, i mean these are ppl who scream at the top of their lungs for colin jost’s jokes y’know

I didn’t think Athari’s bit bombed at all. Obviously it wasn’t easy following Squirm, and it was more impressive than funny, but the audience seemed into it. And I thought his previous sketch (“Angelo” on the Rami Malek episode) was really solid. Kid’s going places!

Even in the first year they opened with Gerald Ford stuff iirc

I remember Wayne’s World — after it had established itself/been run into the ground — getting at least a couple of cold opens.

That Sarah Squirm thing, that's some of that there "anti-comedy", isn't it?

No, it was pretty straightforward joke writing and comic delivery, she yelled in an exaggerated way and said funny things and I laughed, it was about as straight down the lane as comedy gets.

The "anti-comedy" version of that bit is David S. Pumpkins, which I appreciate, but didn't really laugh at and don't need to see again.

Yeah I like her a lot. I’m a little more ambivalent about her extreem gross out stuff (although well-executed) but I think she’s funny and cool and charming

ps there have been lots of sketches, especially political sketches, just as bad as Ted Cruz Street! They're all like that!

Oh, I believe you--I don't tune in that much. (Not sure why I did last night.) Cecily Strong's Marjorie Taylor Greene in the midst of "Cruz Street" wasn't that bad, though I'm sure they could do better.

Checking the "One SNL A Day" review blog, the first political cold open was in the fourth episode, with Chevy as Ford:

https://www.onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/11.8.1975_0.00.50.00.jpg

And the second was two episodes later, with Chevy again doing Ford:

https://www.onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/11.22.1975_0.00.17.00.jpg
https://www.onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/11.22.1975_0.00.17.00.jpg

Oops

https://www.onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/11.22.1975_0.00.23.00.jpg

Seems to me they initially started really leaning into the political cold opens with the '88 Election launching the Poppy Carvey Interzone (so much so that in the last one of his administration, Hartman as Clinton swoops in and does the "Live From..." line, it's followed up by Carvey lamenting, "I used to get to say that."

sarah squirm must be really excited to be on the show. 2010s SNL is one of the strongest influences on her comedy

Lovitz redeeming himself by tearing into Boebert

Her name is Chloe Fineman. She’s a comedic genius & actress. You were lucky to have her parody you.
Too bad you are unable to laugh at yourself… sad.
And you joking about the tragic death on the movie “Rust” is sick. No one was killed on the @nbcsnl sketch. https://t.co/ZbrpX83yBa

— Jon Lovitz (@realjonlovitz) December 13, 2021

That episode this weekend was the bleakest shit imaginable. Just baffled that they even bothered.

I tuned in for about five minutes out of morbid curiosity, caught the tail end of 'Dick in a Box' followed by a commercial for Louis CK's new special. So yes, I concur with your assessment.

first episode i'm maybe interested to see in decades

it was dire

It’s just a clip show, forks, with two cast members and three guests introducing the week’s pre-taped sketches, filled out with an hour of old ones.

it was extremely weird and made me think this is all march 2020 again because of how grim it was overall

just a clip show

the "Weekend Update" segment was all-new, but it was very, very bad

made me think this is all march 2020 again because of how grim it was

even grimmer than any of the remote-from-home shows in 2020

They also, for some reason, decided to add some laugh track to the stage bits, which was very odd. Maybe it was the crew, but I don't think so.

It was much weirder than sic describes imo, with Paul Rudd delivering the monologue to an empty room, with only one member of the band sitting behind him. Weekend Update was Tina Fey and Michael Che sitting on stools on the main stage pitching the jokes to Kenan Thompson, Tom Hanks and Paul Rudd sitting in the audience. A true clip show with just intros would have been less uncanny.

And that pre-taped Pete Davidson sketch thing was just weird, like it was unfinished or something, I don't know. Seemed like 2 of the 3 pre-taped skits they did would have been cut in a normal week. The Christmas Socks one was the only "new" thing worth even a half-chuckle.

i'll pass i guess, but please keep me informed if anyone has a full breakdown on air because it sounds like that's where we're going

P.S. Lorne is apparently thinking about retiring, discuss

Bring On Ebersol Mk.II!

Lotta people think Lorne's influence on SNL drags it toward mediocrity and without him the writers and performers would soar on the wings of eagles. Eeeeh, he's done OK. The alternate history of mid-boggling funny stuff is just a wishful theory. NBC is a big, old network, owned by Comcast, an even bigger money-grasping corporation and that's probably a much more decisive factor in SNL's limitations than Lorne. He knows his real job is delivering a consistently large audience, not comedic brilliance. He's good at it.

While the overall arc of the show is definitely a slow decline, I don't think the drop off has been as stark as the popular consensus seems to imply. Decades of them churning out clip shows and "best of" collections have made it seem like past eras were just wall-to-wall peaks of hilarity, but rewatching full episodes (not the edited for Comedy Central ones, mind) remind you that it was always hit and miss. It's just more miss now than hit most episodes.

yeah every time I blame modern SNL for the current state of tv comedy--famous people "making fun" of themselves in late night skits, doing karaoke, rapping etc.--I remember they were already doing this crap in the 80s and 90s

I saw it reported that there was an actual outbreak (either with the staff and crew or the cast, not sure). Also Billie Eilish said Lorne Michaels was coughing all over the place the week before.

It was a terrible episode, they really should have canned it and just done a rerun but I guess they paid for Rudd and Hanks to be there and thought they could pull it off. If they'd bothered to put Fey and Che behind the desk for WU that might have helped somewhat.

That wasn't a laugh track, that was crew.

that Christmas Socks thing was stupid but I gather this is a reference to the Christmas Shoes, a song I only learned about the day after and which I refuse to listen to

The whole SNL arc is a rollercoaster ride, with one of the most consistent narrative beats being the show pulling victory from the jaws of defeat almost every time they've needed to (i.e. Murphy & Piscopo rising out of the Doumanian season; getting canceled & then uncanceled in S11, allowing for the S12 cast of Hartman, Hooks, Carvey etc. to happen; rebuilding w/Ferrell, Shannon etc. immediately after the 'Bad Boys' era collapsed; the "Lazy Sunday" vid getting in on the ground floor of YouTube and making that site a household name; and bringing back Fey to play Sarah Palin, making the show a watercooler sensation).

Obvs. I've been reading SNL historical blogs and binging old clips recently.

that Christmas Socks thing was stupid

And it seemed like an attempt to re-mine material already done much better in "The Wishing Boot"

just wrt wishes involving footwear i guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riFiJWBcwJI

i thought the winning sketch this week was Sarah Squirm and Pete DAvidson hawking their prom dresses and weird son.

Andy Dismukes must be ecstatically happy that the SNL writers have him slotted in as the target of a merciless beat down in every skit he appears in.

Was just thinking, since I just watched Power of the Dog over the weekend, that he'd be a killer Kodi Smit-McPhee in a skit.

^ lol i had this same thought, figured they have something cooked up for oscar time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6I9u3wjn-A

well i watched that so i guess i have no one to blame but myself

Please know my fellow Latinx/latino/latina fans, i am doing everything i can to get voice out there on the show. ♥️

— Melissa Villaseñor (@melissavcomedy) January 27, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8HvuF55-pk

David S. Pumpkins came back...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsUmiB30Q8A

i found it funny, but they kind of tipped their hand by having Hanks show up in an earlier sketch.

Harlow was rather good at doing sketches, surprisingly.

Tonight we send off one of the best to ever do it. We'll miss you, Cecily! pic.twitter.com/zsoGfw8SdP

— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 18, 2022

https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/snl-denied-david-fricke-weekend-update.html