Saturday Night Live

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)

wow Laurie Metcalf was on SNL during the 1980 season????

I just learned that Gilbert Gottfried was in the cast that year, too.

yes, weirdly trying to fit in.

yeah there's kind of a whole bunch of famous people who were on SNL in the 80s but didn't have memorable tenures or get a real career boost from it (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Downey Jr., Damon Wayans, Ben Stiller, etc.)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was my favorite cast member from her season!

nobody ever says gary kroeger.

i still have his "my name is needleman! i'm an oral surgeon!" song going through my head.

Wayans wasn't given't enough to do, and when he tried to improvise, was fired. He and the way underrated Danitra Vance were in probably the best sketch of that whole season, "That Black Girl."

joan cusack and anthony michael hall were cast members?

Yup. I think AMH was the youngest cast member ever.

Hall joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL) during its 1985–86 season at the age of 17. He was, and remains, the youngest cast member in the show's history.[6] His recurring characters on the show were 'Craig Sundberg, Idiot Savant', an intelligent, talented teenager with a vacant expression and stilted speech, and 'Fed Jones', one half of the habitually high, hustling pitchmen known as The Jones Brothers (the other Jones Brother was played by short-lived featured player Damon Wayans). Art Garfunkel, Edd Byrnes, Bobby Kennedy and Daryl Hall were among Hall's celebrity impersonations.

Here's an interesting trivia question:

Who appeared on SNL first as a musical guest, then as a host, and then as a cast member?

mckean?

^^ Going with that.

Yep.

nobody ever says gary kroeger.

I seriously think he was the first cast member I ever saw (based on my dim memory that the first episode I ever saw was the Bruce Dern/Leon Redbone episode). That whole 83 to 85 or so era was the only time I watched the show semi-consistently.

I watched every Phil Ebersol SNL, visiting my dad on the weekends. We'd watch the show at his girlfriend's house and then at midnight when the show ended, go back to his apartment.

That guy lighting a cigarette with a blowtorch in the opening credits is the first thing I visualize whenever old SNLs get brought up.

cmon worst ep ever has to be nancy kerrigan

I miss Rich Hall. I remember the David Byrne clothing commercial skit!

well, it's dire just about every time an athlete hosts, but they keep booking them since they're apparently great for ratings (last week's Palin episode was the highest rated since the Kerrigan episode).

xpost

The Joe Montana episode had another one of my favorite sketches:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/86/86istu.phtml

^^ ok yeah, that sketch was classic

I think that Montana sketch was the first time I heard the word "masturbating."

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/91/pics/91asmalley.jpg

The Garth Brooks episode was shockingly amazing

OLD
FRENCH
WHORE

I remember reading somewhere that OFW was Tina Fey's favorite self-penned sketch.

The Garth episode was great. "Just regular cowboy stuff", "thank you for coming to Loews" etc.

how many people got their mental image of new york from SNL credits montages?

I got my earliest NYC images from the old "Late Night With David Letterman" openings.

I was talking about the original open, but this one is a bit crepey in hindsight (starts about 1:00 into clip.)

it was the Tomorrow show for me, but the late 80s era with Hartman, Dunn, Carvey, Hooks, Miller, etc. had the best "ooh like you caught me doing in NYC" montage.

I always remember the raver dude humping the convenience store ride for a split second.

For some reason old SCTVs seem to hold up better than the really old SNLs, the rare times they play either on TV

SCTV was always funnier. And you can get all the 1981-1983 SCTVs on DVD - and those episodes often include segments from the 1976-1980 period.

So how accurate are my images of Toronto, where televisions are constantly being defenestrated?

you mean melonville.

I thought SCTV was originally filmed in Edmonton(?) -- at least in the David Thomas years.

SCTV became markedly less funny when they shifted producers and moved to Toronto.

So "Second City" is in relation to Calgary?

Second City was always based around Chicago and anyone else who they were friends with.

SCTV started in Toronto, but temporarily moved to Edmonton when they reignited the series to the full 90 minute form in 1981 or so.

xp: not really true, I think ... The Toronto branch of Second City developed its own identity, tho some actors moved back and forth btwn it and Chi (Aykroyd & Radner, I think).

One SCTV producer left it for Letterman cuz he was sick of cast infighting.

most awful host of recent memory was de niro a couple years back

he recited from the cue cards like a 4th grader reading a history textbook aloud

at least pretend to try

that's one of the few recent ones I've seen. it was indeed an awulf performance.

awful, too