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We’ll admit it, we haven’t watched "Saturday Night Live" in … well … let’s just say that the last time we watched "SNL" we thought it was about time for Kevin Nealon to finish up.
When we watched this past weekend, we got settled down on our couch (which happens to be on a very high horse), molded our face into a scowl, and got ready to rip apart every scene. But when a friend asked what we thought, we said, “You know, it wasn’t half bad,” and then quickly changed that to “Well, it was half bad”. For "SNL," that's actually a compliment.
The guest this week was Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a total pro who can read teleprompters better than anyone. We’re sure she had something to do with the funny this week; she obviously knows what she’s doing and is completely missing that deer-in-headlights look that most hosts get when faced with a live audience.
Watching some of the old-school Chicago improvisers was a real treat. Amy Poehler is still as hilarious as she was 10 years ago on the I.O. stage, and just as strange. Her take on The Secret’s Australian Rhonda Byrne was awesome (as was Maya Rudolph’s Oprah). We would have posted a clip of this scene because it was pretty funny, but alas, it is not available. Cutie-pie and former Chicago improviser Seth Meyers had great chemistry with Poehler on the Weekend Update, and they definitely got a few really nice groans from making bad jokes — a sign of success.
And Jason Sudeikis, an acquaintance of Chicagoist from years back, was perfect in this boom mike scene. He’s so good-looking and such a great straight man. There was something perfect about this scene, a nice, quiet, self-contained, totally realistic scene where no one was over-the-top and each actor had a nice grasp of what was going on.
There were plenty of scenes that felt like they were scraping the barrel; and we still have our general complaints about the actors watching the effing teleprompter too much and scenes going on too long. Overall though, we genuinely enjoyed watching some of "SNL." So are we crazy? Is "SNL" really not so bad? Or were we just in a good mood when we sat down to watch?
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i'm thinking you must have just been in a good mood. i have tried to watch a few times this season due to an interesting host or musical guest. each time was painfully unfunny, although i do love kenan. i am amazed they are still doing the versace bit which i'm not sure ever was funny.
Last season's episode with Julia Louis-Dreyfus was a classic! It featured Al Gore's surprise appearance delivering an alt-universe State of the Union ... hilarious.
I do agree SNL can be hit or miss but things seem to be getting a little more consistent lately.
she obviously knows what she’s doing and is completely missing that deer-in-headlights look that most hosts get when faced with a live audience.
perhaps not surprising considering she was a cast member in the '80s.
Don't forget that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was a regular cast member in the early '80s, in those forgotten years between Eddie Murphy and Dana Carvey.
Right, I remember, she's still better at it today than some of the current cast members. That's for sure.
"she obviously knows what she’s doing and is completely missing that deer-in-headlights look that most hosts get when faced with a live audience."
Of course she knows what she was doing. She was on the cast in the mid-80's. All former cast members will make for better hosts.
snl has been sucky.. but i did like the Restless Penis Syndrome skit since at work we always make fun of that Restless Leg Syndrome commercial
After the brilliant Carvey/Hartmann cast left SNL degenerated into Farley-Spade-Sandler frat boy potty humor. It's taken a few years but SNL is finally coming around. Subtlety is underrated in humor.
SNL is not funny, were you maybe at Second City and didn't realize it? Or IO? Or maybe you were at the grocery story watching that little water spritzer keep the vegetables moist. All of those things are more entertaining/funny than the current state of SNL. SNL no longer cares about being cutting edge or even funny. They choose bands that are wildly popular, with few exceptions, and the same goes for their guest hosts. Dane Cook? Peyton Manning? Jesus. Julia Louis Dreyfuss was a great choice, but for the most part they don't care about who will work best on the show, just who's the most popular. The cast members are a bunch of smarmy, entitled shits who only care about launching their movie career with whatever bad sketch they can get on the air on a regular basis.
That's ALWAYS been the case with the guest hosts and musical guests. Great artist one week, then flavors of the minute for weeks on end. And they've used the occasional athlete as host for as long as I can remember. I remember way back that Joe Montana played a key role in a sketch that was actually funny. Anyway, I haven't watched the show very often over the last 10 or 12 years but I concur wholeheartedly with the poster above who damned the Farley-Spade-Sandler era. None of them were ever consistently funny. Most often I found them spectacularly, desperately unfunny. It's not like there isn't talent out there either.
This thread just goes to show the truism behind SNL, the cast that you start with is always the best. After all, my favorite seasons were the farley/spade/sandler/myers years.
Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley auditioning for Chippendales...the best.
Kevin Nealon as weekend update anchor ruled. His schtick is tired now, but back then I loved it. Just like Germans love David Hasselhoff.
When the cast turned over to the Will Ferrell years, there wasn't much to love. I hated Chris Kattan, didn't like Will Ferrell much (until he started making good movies), the Roxbury stuff was utter crap.
SNL still has a beating heart. I think that viral video has played a significant role in keeping it alive by rebroadcasting the digital shorts. The Natalie Portman rap, ChronicWHATles of Narnia, and Timberlake's Dick in a Box are several examples of great comedy written by that young Jewish guy on the show (Andy Kohlberg?). Youtube, etc. really helped to revitalize the show by giving access to the shorts to anyone, like me, at any time. Now my interest is somewhat renewed, but I think it still has a long way to go to regain its former glory.
I've watched SNL a few times over the winter. You can count on about 2 good skits and rest to be crap. They need to ditch the News segment, not funny at all. For an hour and a half, it pretty much sucks and if I am watching a recording I fast-forward through most of the skits.
The guy who does the news on SNL is the smarmiest of the bunch, although that Andy Samberg guy is also pretty smarmy.
Weirdly enough, one of my first improv teachers was Jason Sudiekis, and whoever said he was "entitled" is way off. He was on fire in Second City Las Vegas and earned everything he's gotten.
The fact is, these guys have about 12-20 hours to write as much as they can, produce, direct, and put on a show. It's the nature of putting together a live show under the restrictions that Lorne, NBC, and the sponsors (yes, the sponsors) place on them. That's why you have Arcade Fire on one night, then Fallout Boy another.
I have to say you are crazy. It is pretty bad still - too little bright spots in an hour and a half. I usually find myself laughing a lot more when I catch reruns of MadTV.
SNL will always be funny enough for its major audience, 10-14 year old adolescents home late on a Saturday night. It functions as a rite of passage, a kid's first exposure to snarky irreverent sketch comedy.
It continues to ebb and flow over the years between kind of funny and pretty lame; never getting too funny because of all the limitations put on it by the powers that be, but never getting totally lame because of the truly talented performers and writers that still manage to make it on the show.
We "grown-ups" will check in on occasion, either kind of digging it or hating it depending on our mood (very good point-BTW) and what end of the "suck/not suck continuum" the show happens to be; but our opinions are irrelevant so long as there are still dorky tweeners with nothing else to do (you know I speak from experience, however far in the past it may have been).
I see what you're saying Cletus. I guess it's just that when SNL started, it was the show that the grown-ups checked out for irreverent comedy. I guess that the time there was nothing else like that and by grown-ups i mean more like 16-30 maybe.
Mike- I was 12 or 13 when SNL debuted, and you're right that there really hadn't been anything like it before (in the US at least).
The edginess, the fact that it was live, and most of all (for me at the time), was the way they did TV Commercial spoofs. As a young budding comic/writer (years before I actually became one), it would drive me crazy how satirical sketch shows never really tried when they did commercial parodies. I would rant about how they should actually use the same production values as "real" commercials, how much funnier it would be if they made it so you almost couldn't tell that it wasn't legit until the payoff.
I remember tuning into the middle of the first SNL broadcast and they were doing a commercial for the new "Track 3" razor. They played it totally straight, just like a regular commercial, and I didn't know it was a joke until the final line "Because you'll believe anything" (of course they now have a "real" 4 or 5 blade razor, but that's another issue). It was such a comedy epiphany for me. "THAT'S how you're supposed to do it" I exclaimed, and the show became weekly ritual for my dorky social outcast self. Then Second City TV came along and my joy was increased even more, and I stayed home every Saturday even when I had other options.
The funny thing was that SNL didn't totally catch on with the hip grown-ups for a couple months, until after crazed kids like myself enacted entire episodes for older siblings and parents across the nation. But it quickly became the cultural icon that it is today, and soon fell prey to the politics and laziness that keep it from being as good as it once was.
Although, to be honest, when I watch the "classic" episodes nowadays (the ones that changed my life as a lad) they really aren't as funny as I remember them. I see all kinds of flaws and things I never noticed as a youth. The thing that really holds up are those awesomely edgy musical guests they had; Tom Waits, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello etc. etc. This is where the current show really lets the youth of today down, by not exposing mainstream rural/suburban kids to the truly new and unique music (although they still manage to book a great band or two).
I can't believe I've just spent this much time expounding on SNL, but I have to give it props for how it formed my tastes and effected my life. I will stop now, except to mention that Amy Poehler has always been an edgy comic genius, but lately has also been looking damn sexy.
There have been some great SNLs this season (Alec Baldwin, Hugh Laurie & JT were all borderline brilliant) but the Julia Loius Dreyfuss epi from this past weekend was awful, despite Julia's talent. Her gifts were wasted. I managed to get through the whole thing in fifteen minutes.
Amy Poehler & Maya Rudolph have always been great but Kristen Wiig is close on their heels as top female cast member these days. The male cast is top notch as well but the show is so hot and cold, it's tough for them to have any momentum. I think Tina Fey's departure (to write her great show) has hurt the writing quality.
I have been watching since birth and I have to say this season is the best season in YEARS!!!! The first 2 of the season were crap, but from the ALec Baldwin episode on has been pretty damn funny overall.