Saturday Night Live

The show has always had a couple good sketches and a ton of bad ones. It's hit and miss but there's usually at least one good moment - even Tim Kazurinsky had Dr. Jack Badofsky.

xxpost I have been making everyone I know watch the Walhberg skit. Sometimes the reaction is like, "AWESOME" and sometimes it's like "Oooooo-kay" but I think it's just great.

I've been talking to my animals like this lately. "So you're a cat, huh? What's up with that?"

Also, a person's reaction to whether Kristen Wiig is funny is a litmus test for something I haven't figured out yet.

I married a monkey was kazurinski's other good bit. although the monkey was probably funnier than him.

There are totally fluctuations in quality, but I find it weird the way conversations about it are constantly about how the show has been LOL Saturday Night DEAD for X period and is suddenly back on its feet, despite the fact that someone else is always claiming it was totally on for X period and actually sucks now. I can't really account for this except to guess that (a) there are just periods of head-writership where the tone appeals to some people and not others, and (b) no matter what year you're talking about, there are always a few funny-ass things and a lot of crap that doesn't work, and your decision about which of those things to focus on probably has less to do with quality and more to do with whether you want to like the show at that moment or not. (Cf the fact that people who go on about how crappy it's been for X years are saying this to explain why they don't watch it anyway, so ...)

I might also suggest here that the periods of the show's goodness or non-goodness actually have less to do with the quality of the writing or the greatness of the performers and more to do with some weird sense of confidence radiating from the show itself. E.g., the period where Fey + Fallon were doing Weekend Update was fun to watch, but I don't remember it being because the writing was head and shoulders above anything else -- it just seemed more like the show was kinda loose and confident and unclenched and enjoying itself, which makes the whole exercise more pleasant (and lets one enjoy, e.g., some crappy sketch where Horatio Sanz starts giggling and the whole thing falls apart anyway).

SNL quality is inversely proportional to the length of the sketches. The shorter they are, the better the show.

SNL is better this season than it has in the past couple of years, but I think that's more due to the cast making dodgy writing better rather than the other way around.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/90/90hgame.phtml

also awesome

xpost: omg it's just like conversations about *insert long-running television show here*!

i will say the mark wahlberg talks to animals sketch was a) hilarious b) gave me a little more respect for andy samberg.

Me too. When Wahlberg started talking to the donkey I think it was a perfect moment.

I'm not going to argue about when the show was at it's peak because that just seems as interesting as new discussions of rockism.

kristin wiig can be really funny, but most of her characters (target lady, lady who can't keep a sectret, lady who has to out-do everyone) are reall unfunny, mad tv type shit, that for some reason recur way too much.

you probably just stroke it

kristin wiig can be really funny
Did she do any television between Joe Schmoe and SNL?

The period where Fey + Fallon were doing Weekend Update was fun to watch, but I don't remember it being because the writing was head and shoulders above anything else -- it just seemed more like the show was kinda loose and confident and unclenched and enjoying itself, which makes the whole exercise more pleasant (and lets one enjoy, e.g., some crappy sketch where Horatio Sanz starts giggling and the whole thing falls apart anyway).
Ha, like the Jerry McGuire sequel sketch?

Horatio Sanz is a crime against humanity.

I liked the thing where he pretended to be Billy Joel giving somebody a ride home.

hey chicken, some people wanna eat you, but i just wanna talk to you <--- high level of comedy forever

I liked the time I watched a season premiere episode and didn't see his name in the opening credits.

Sanz is one of the only people I would get really Shakey Mo about if he died. The others would be people like Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney.

that was my favorite line, ally!

Eh, better Horatio Sanz than Carlos Mencia.

i partied with horatio sanz & hes a bro + suprisingly introverted/reflective

Dan, that's like saying better Stalin than Hitler.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/80/80a.phtml

This is the all-time worst show they ever had.

i was too busy hating fallon to get around to hating sanz

Eh, better Horatio Sanz than Carlos Mencia.

pretty much this. I guess the years he was on snl i just wasn't watching (was pretty much done with it post-Norm), because the only thing I remember with Sanz is SNL Best-of parody that's all "he's not dead yet - but he will be!" and maybe some lame skit where he's in a Mariachi band. Defintiely not good, but mostly benign. But everybody hates this guy so much! I guess I'm lucky I never caught much of him...

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/80/80acarters.phtml

This sketch in particular actually made my parents turn off for the entire rest of the season.

horatio improv >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> horatio snl

S Chow = Rex Reed Award-winning reverse barometer of comedy

Hmm, that's not very funny either.

― Spencer Chow, Monday, October 20, 2008

See, it works!

WHY DID AMY POHELER MAKE GUN NOISES WITH HER FINGERS INSTEAD OF A FAKE GUN

Secret Service?

made visual connection with Fay-lin's gun-finger pew-pew-pew?

Fey-lin

See, it works!

Still neither.

Speaking of Fallon hate, soon he will be gracing our televisions every night at 12:40

I hope he lasts as long as the Chevy Chase late night show, but otoh nbc seems to have a real tolerance for these kinds of useless time wasters. Carson Daly's show has been on for years and years.

Amy Carter: [ chipper ] Like the slaves!

still can't wrap my mind around that. he's the W of comedy. hey, he sucked at everything else, let's make him pres.

I guess this analogy would work better if he were landing the Tonight Show gig. But hey, he's got nothing but time and Conan in his way now.

xxpost

i thought the wahlberg animal sketch was hilarious. i just hope they don't do something stupid and try to make it recurring or something.

Was Fallon -ever- funny? Why the hell did they pick him?

....fallon gets a tv show??

He's taking over Late Nite once Conan goes to the Tonight Show next year.

wow!

has that 1980 season of SNL been repeated at all? I kind of want to see those.

The Wahlberg sketch is already reoccurring:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/12/mark-wahlberg-slams-satur_n_133948.html?page=22&show_comment_id=16738196#comment_16738196

has that 1980 season of SNL been repeated at all? I kind of want to see those.

― akm, Monday, October 20, 2008 4:51 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/1337_part_5.png

~barf~

it's a morbid curiosity

I posted xkcd because he psotred something baf too

this past episode = lots of my favorite characters (suze orman, jean k. jean) doing comparatively weak sketches. i loved "narc school."

always good to see "macgruber" too

"This is the all-time worst show they ever had."

no show that features a short film by jonathan demme is the worst show ever. worst show ever was dice clay nightmare.

I remember the 1980 ep with Malcolm McDowell being quite terrible (w/ MM sending up John Lennon a few weeks before his murder)