Saturday Night Live

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

imaging having that come up on your google alerts

https://www.theautopian.com/snl-perfectly-nails-dealership-commercials-raising-canes-drive-thrus-and-texas/

I have to say, this bit is a note-perfect send-up down to the library music (which Ford dealers actually use to this day) and the little detail about the one guy's daughter being named "Hailey".

Hardly ever watch this now, but I was at my sister's last week, and she and her husband PVR it to watch it the next day. So I was a captive audience for the Michael B. Jordan episode. Outside of the opening, a classified document-related press conference where Keenan Thompson and Bowen Yang were funny, I thought the rest was stupefyingly awful. I know I shouldn't feel bad for Michael B. Jordan, he was there to promote a movie, but I did--he was giving it the old college try, but the material was, as the expression goes, rock bottom.

agreed the show is pretty much unwatchable but the dealership/raising cane's thing was great, a cane's moved into the neighborhood this past summer and it's calmed down now but for a while it was creating these massive traffic problems (was the first cane's in minneapolis proper not the burbs)

caniacs will stop at nothing

lol I knew nothing about Raising Cane's but one opened near where I work and there were people lined up around the block to get in every day for three weeks. wtf?

i maintain the quality of this show has been basically consistent for ages, if not its entire stretch. it's always been about a 20% hit to miss ratio for me. Some years go as high as maybe 45% (like, the Ebersol year).

I think it's clear that JAJ and Sarah Sherman are the breakout stars from the featured players.

agree with consistency more or less. Some episodes are more dire than others. Occasionally I go huh, that was an ok episode, no real stinkers, and occasionally there are hilarious things.

akm otm

The trope of "SNL isn't as good as it used to be" is only slightly younger than the show itself. Almost always, the person saying that thinks it was best in their own personal adolescence (when staying up late was a lure in itself) or young adulthood (when the references felt fresh).

Also the trope of "Ugh, I don't even watch it anymore, it's gotten so bad." Probably someone said that about the drop in quality from the first episode to the second. And the first season to the second, and so on. Yawn.

It's a live show with an ensemble cast, where the whole thing needs to be created and rehearsed and performed in a constrained time period. And they throw in chaos factors of an uninitiated guest cast member (who have wildly varying abilities to learn and perform and improvise). Some skits are going to work and some not. Some jokes are going to land, and some not. Some cast members are going to shine and others will fizzle. Some writers will bring consistently good material, others will be more scattershot. Some weeks, the news will provide a ripe target for satire, some weeks it won't.

We can just accept that every time the opening credits roll, it's a crapshoot as to whether you get crap or something surprisingly adequate. That hit-or-miss nature is precisely why and how the show has survived and still has an audience.

Perhaps compare it to NASCAR. Sometimes there will be a wreck. It's a part of the appeal.

I'd like to see an anthology of the best skits from the past 15 or so years.

here's one of the worst

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/rear-window/2751114

there's alway been a lot of hit and miss stuff and yes nostalgia involved but there are certainly certain casts or eras that are better than others. that's not arguable.

i've watched every season since i was old enough.

The Internet makes it easy to enjoy SNL, you just wait for a good skit to blow up on social media and watch it online. And I thought it was Chick-Fil-As that cause horrible traffic backups on feeder roads with their drive-thru lines; never seen it happen at a Raising Cane's.

that's exactly how I enjoy SNL these days. don't watch the eps, wait for sketches to show up online, particularly ones that have any buzz, and watch em that way.

when the show is at its worst is when the writers get up their own ass with coming up with an absurdist premise that seems funny on its face, but don't tailor it to the talent they have on the show.

no matter how good or bad the material is, the cast has to commit to it and sell it

whereas "Maine Justice" on paper is about the dumbest thing imaginable but everybody leans into it and has so much fun with it, it's one of my favs (the original and followup!)

I probably shouldn't have used the phrase "rock bottom," because that does suggest I'm comparing the show I saw last week to some unspecified period of greatness. I've watched the show intermittently since it debuted, but don't harbor nostalgia for any one cast or period. Certain sketches, maybe. When I think of Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, I immediately start laughing inside.

So my reaction to the Michael B. Jordan show was more in a vacuum: this is just terrible, in and of itself. (The real-life equivalent of the Raising Cane sketch went past me, being Canadian. I got the joke, though, and personally just didn't find it that funny. It reminded a bit of Tex and Edna Boils's Organ Emporium from SCTV.)

SNL peak era was probably the Hartman years for me, it was just a cast of true pros. Not always hitting their targets but so much good shit.

the january jones episode was terrible across the board. the John Hamm episodes were pretty great.

I'll also admit that, entering my 60s, the cultural references to TikTok and Tidal and whatnot increasingly lose me. I'm sure that makes some difference.

I recently tracked down a sketch I've been looking for for ages, Ricky Nelson in a Twilight Zone episode ending up in the homes of Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, Danny Thomas, and I Love Lucy. Great use of the entire cast, some playing multiple roles (Dan Aykroyd as Rod Serling, George Burns, and Alfred Hitchcock.) While not as hilarious as I remembered, it was way more complex than "Grace Kelly farting for five minutes."

Sounds great. Can you provide a link?

https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-04-e-12-rick-nelson-judy-collins-02-17-1979

Starts at 13:45.

Cool, thanks! Have you seen the video linked here? Film noir: your favourites

The trope of "SNL isn't as good as it used to be" is only slightly younger than the show itself. Almost always, the person saying that thinks it was best in their own personal adolescence (when staying up late was a lure in itself) or young adulthood (when the references felt fresh).

There’s certainly some truth to this, but the first season I was able to watch every week was the cast of ringers in ‘84-‘85 — Ed Grimley! “I Hate When That Happens!” Eddie Murphy hosting! The film about the magic door-opening mat! Ringo Starr not getting any bids at an auction of Beatles memorabilia! The Question Is Moot! — but the next season was the return of Lorne, where it fell off a cliff and nearly got cancelled. So yeah, in this instance, from one season to the next, “it wasn’t as good as it used to be” definitely applied.

Love the ending of that season:

In the final sketch, Billy Martin is shown dumping gasoline around the studio and then setting it on fire. The entire cast is shown to be trapped in a room as a parody of TV show cliffhangers. Credits rolled with question marks on each name, signaling that the viewer didn't know which cast members would be returning the next season. Cast members were reportedly angered by an ending added to the sketch, in which Michaels has the opportunity to rescue the cast from the fire, but chooses to save only Lovitz.

Almost always, the person saying that thinks it was best in their own personal adolescence (when staying up late was a lure in itself) or young adulthood (when the references felt fresh).

I loved the show when I was 12-14, then rarely watched it for the next 15 years. When I started watching again regularly, it was in the late 2000s, and it seemed surprisingly solid, but then it started to sour on me again a few years ago. It occurred to me recently that maybe I liked it during that stetch because the cast was mostly around my age.