Saturday Night Live

My favorite era (after the boilerplate "when I was in jr. high/high school" response) is that period a couple years back when everyone started uploading their VHS copies of old episodes. I love being able to watch an entire old-school season as it originally aired. Eff a bowdlerized rerun.

― Runny Trumpet (Old Lunch), Friday, January 30, 2015 1:34 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I bought the 3rd season DVDs, primarily for the Sun Ra and Elvis Costello performances, and some of the episodes were strictly dullsville. But there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it: you'd think the Madeline Kahn episode would be hilarious and the Hugh Hefner one would suck, but weirdly, the opposite was true.

And the Ray Charles-hosted episode should be required viewing for all hosts. Oh, you want to skip rehearsal and rely on cue cards? Yeah, Ray didn't have that option.

I'm pretty bummed that they stopped the season sets. The first five years aren't exactly my favorites but I bought them (twice, after selling off the first set during lean times) and would've kept buying them as long as they kept putting them out.

I had the first season set but so much of it sucked. would've preferred 2&3 of the original cast, which I saw a bunch in re-runs as a teen

dvd market cratered, but they should offer them in some kind of digital/streaming package.

Hopefully Shout! Factory will pick up the reins eventually.

And, yeah, season one is pretty much abysmal.

the Paul Simon stuff is good

Lorne or whoever isn't gonna shell out for music rights just for streaming. There were (are?) a bunch of seasons on Netflix, but the lack of music clearances meant that some episodes were 20 minutes long.

SNL should just create their own app and put it on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire, or whatever other device people use to stream content. If HBO is going to do it, SNL surely could. There are 40 seasons of episodes now. That's plenty of material to justify its own app.

NBC would probably object, no?

I don't think that would get them around the music rights problem

I guess it would depend on subscription projections and how much they think people would pay.

Yeah, the music rights stuff is such a drag.

Really could make an argument that SNL eps, good or bad, are as good a historical document of an era as any and should be available to anyone with a library card

So anyone can see The Night of the Masturbating Zombies

I pray for the kids of today who don't get to see that sketch before they're old enough to really understand what's going on. Such a formative experience.

I think SNL moved from Netflix to Hulu at some point, because I signed up for Hulu specifically hoping I could watch the old "Who's More Grizzled?" sketch one night. It wasn't included in the episode it was supposed to be in, so I canceled immediately and removed the app.

This really is a case against contemporary copy rigs law if there ever was one

this eps been p funny

lmao @ whos more grizzled anecdote btw

damn if that d'angelo performance wasn't one of the best things on SNL ever

"charade" was fantastic

This is old news apparently, but I just noticed today that Cecily Strong is slated to host the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/cecily-strong-white-house-correspondents-dinner-113019.html

man catching a bunch of this VH1 Classic marathon has really soured me on several "eras" - the Bush years are depressing from end to end, although mostly for what was going on in the country. Knowing how things turned out and seeing people trying to milk Iraq invasion etc for laughs is just hard to watch. Non-topical stuff from that period fares better.

And then going back to the early 90s things get super-grim again but this time it's because of the cast and, I guess, the writing. I'm referring to the Sandler/Spade/Farley/Meyers era where you've got a bunch of guys who really just can't do character acting at all (well, Meyers can to a limited extent) and sketches end up relying a *lot* on endlessly repeated catchphrases and recycled jokes. Every Matt Foley sketch is exactly the same, for example. Wayne's World sketches recycle jokes mirthlessly. Sandler and Spade can't be bothered to do anything resembling acting. It's just embarassing.

I'm curious what episodes they're going to cherrypick from the 80s, since I've never seen a bunch of those episodes as I was too young and they were not endlessly re-run.

they were not endlessly re-run

Weird. It seemed to me at one time that all the SNL reruns on VH1 or some other cable outlet were from the Piscopo/Murphy era or the season with Billy Crystal and Martin Short. I've seen many of those SO MANY TIMES.

early-mid 80s SNLs were an after-school staple for me thanks to comedy central iirc

back when it was a joke on the simpsons that smithers watched comedy central

Bush II era is when my attention started to wane, especially when Chris Parnell started doing Bush.

Will Ferrell was right - should've kept the president in the Mission Accomplished bodysuit for the rest of his terms, getting more worn out as time goes by.

yeah I didn't get cable/comedy central during that period I guess

xp

this show is deeply embarrassing

large chunks of it def are

otoh I randomly caught Jesse Jackson reading "Green Eggs and Ham" so that was cool

Was that the same episode as the "The Question Is Moot" gameshow sketch? One of the all-time best.

I didn't see that so I'm not sure. It was hosted by Michael Jordan and musical guest was Public Enemy so I guess that was one of their "let's put some black people on" episodes

Oh, nm...that sketch was from an earlier ep that Jesse hosted (84-ish).

http://www.maniacworld.com/question-is-moot.html

And, yeah, season one is pretty much abysmal.

insane fux

there's good stuff (mostly Paul Simon-related) but it's erratic

Chevy's good right out the gate

the style of the first season IS WHY THE SHOW WAS EVER SIGNIFICANT.

The Question Is Moot is classic.

I didn't see that so I'm not sure. It was hosted by Michael Jordan and musical guest was Public Enemy so I guess that was one of their "let's put some black people on" episodes

― Οὖτις, Monday, February 9, 2015 3:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember this episode well, as it aired the night Miles Davis died. Public Enemy asked for a moment of silence for Miles before their second song saying, "Without him, there'd be no us."

Rolling Stone ranks the cast members!

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/saturday-night-live-all-141-cast-members-ranked-20150211

(something something one old, irrelevant institution reviews another something something)

man the pre-Hartman/Lovitz 80s seasons are a real wasteland (occasional Eddie Murphy brilliance excepted)

138. Victoria Jackson

She's got so much to answer for, but still...Ouch

Some funny stuff during the season of ringers (Short, Crystal, Guest and Shearer), but yeah.

One of the funniest things from the years prior to Lorne's return is Madonna's monologue where she shows a filmed piece of her wedding to Sean Penn.

Even though Lovitz was in the top 20 on Rob's list, he should've been top 10.

I remember the ringer season being solid (and there were some all-time classic bits: synchronized swimming, Murphy's "White Like Me"), but I'm probably overrating it since it was the first season I was allowed to stay up and watch every week.

The first page of that shit made me so angry haha

I have a soft spot for the assassination of Buckwheat because it's the first SNL episode I ever saw. I was at the house of some friends of the family—the adults were doing bible study and the kids were staying up watching tv—and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

I didn't watch it again until the 86/87 season, though, when Hartman and Hooks and Carvey and Lovitz etc all came together for the beginning of the show's best era.

The Buckwheat assassination bit has one of my favorite Murphy moments, when the guy who shot Buckwheat (and who was voted "Most Likely to Kill Buckwheat" in high school) talked about tasting lime jello in a dream.

Bobby Moynihan deserved better imho.