Saturday Night Live

I thought Nasim was great early on, but she's gotten so little screentime lately i can't even remember the last time she stood out in anything.

though man the more i think about armisen's jack-off sayonara the more i hate it. "Wow, 10 years of playing every race...but in the end, I write shitty songs and have some gen-x rocker pals. Thank you."

― da croupier, Sunday, May 26, 2013 10:32 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought the tie-in with Carrie Brownstein's AMEX ad was a nice touch.

ha i still haven't seen that

though man the more i think about armisen's jack-off sayonara the more i hate it.

I hope the maudlin farewell doesn't become a regular SNL feature, it's kind of gross. And I'm pretty sick of Armisen in the context of SNL as it is, so just leave so I can forget about you before Portlandia comes back.

I kind of felt like Kristen Wiig deserved a sendoff, but Armisen got his own because nobody had any better sketch ideas.

yeah but Wiig's actual sendoff was turrible

trying to remember if they 'did' anything for carvey's exit or if was just a big deal in the press (eg THE COVER OF ROLLING STONE). phil hartman's the only cast member before that i can remember getting a specific farewell like wiig's (vs something like those last couple of digital shorts samberg did or stefon's wedding)(and tbh i thought stefon's wedding was gonna work as a farewell for hader and myers until i heard myers isn't leaving until halfway thru next season). and wiig's made sense - god know fbofw she carried that show on her back for a few years and she came back for a full season after a huge hit movie even though she'd definitely done her time.

Carvey's last appearance as a cast member was as Prince Charles turning himself into a human tampon. No send-off.

Phil Hartman's sendoff was a little song he sang with Chris Farley's head on his shoulder seated on the steps center stage with a spotlight. It was sweet.

Now they're both dead, which makes it really bittersweet.

i think people knowing they definitely wouldn't be back in the fall by the time of the season finale was just less common back then. Hartman knew because NBC had already picked up Newsradio.

A couple other big sendoffs:

Jimmy Fallon: Got a Grease-inspired musical skit at the end of his last ep, w/Tina Fey as Sandy.

Will Ferrell: Mock-retrospective skit, complete with testimonial from recent cast re-addition Chris Parnell about Will got him back on the show, topped with Ferrell admitting he got Parnell fired in the first place.

poor Parnell, only guy to get fired from SNL twice.

o right i forgot fallon's sendoff, should've known that the son lorne never had sure as hell was getting a sendoff

parnell's probably had one of my five fave post-snl careers and he's never remotely been the lead in anything i've loved him in

yeah i wouldn't be surprised if he never has a lead role in anything bigger than a 10 minute sketch or web short, that's just the kinda guy he is

In a parallel universe, the best send-off would be the film of John Belushi dancing on their graves.

let me think - julia louis-dreyfus, will ferrell, tina fey, eddie murphy, do i put parnell ahead of chase and aykroyd and o wait bill murray ok so parnell's not one of my top five fave post-snl careers but still

Sending off Darryl Hammond, who I hated, with that bizarre "Goodnight Saigon" sing-a-long was one of my favorites.

The last "classic" Lorne season, 1979-80, ended with everyone all crying onstage with a final shot of the "ON THE AIR" light flickering off.

it never even occurred to me that the "Goodnight Saigon" sketch was Hammond's last, just seemed like standard 'weird' Will Ferrell showcase

huh didn't know that. was 'goodnight saigon' a sendoff for hammond really, chalked it up to pure ferrell insanity, even if the premise is standard sketch material - guy who has vietnam flashbacks visited as a tourist like two years ago - the execution was pure ferrell esp w/ the billy joel element. was thinking earlier that it would probably be more fun for the audience and maybe the cast member if they'd just let them do some sketch they could never get on the show in that last ten to one slot.

xpost

it certainly wasn't a farewell like Wiig's or Hartman's, but there was some sort of sly "this is my last night in New York" line from D.H.

i'm cool with send-offs but christ at least make them cast-centric if not funny. let fred reaffirm his friendship with aimee mann on his own show.

i mean it's a 90 minute show, if you've been on it for 5+ years we got time for a group hug

eh i figured that was the one shot of seeing most of those ppl onstage on snl, almost as much 'goodbye generation x' as 'goodbye fred'.

when will Michael Penn write the true "goodbye generation x" send-off

ha now that you say it, Armisen actually is (and probably will always remain) the last SNL cast member who was bron in the '60s

i do love that arguably the person fewest people would recognize (definitely the least current cachet) was the only one with a solo top 40 hit

not to mention a best new artist grammy!

haha wait doublecked, that was MTV best new artist. Still!

pretty sure Penn was the only one out of the bunch who was ever a musical guest on SNL too!

i think he may have been a guest twice - i know his brother got him the gig when he hosted during what i think was the anthony michael hall year and i think he may have been back circa 'no myth'.

imdb says he only appeared that one time his bro hosted, which actually 1987, though that was still a year or two before No Myth. Man, if it wasn't for that, letting the host's brother co-musical guest with LL Cool J would be even more hilarious

credited as "Michael Penn & The Pull"

ll did 'go cut creator go' and it was awesome iirc

ll never came back, i wonder if it's because he had to give the second slot to the host's unsigned brother despite going platinum

I wonder if MP's SNL gig helped get him a deal.

i don't know, he'd been doing studio work behind the scenes for a few year by then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C9Bng7NPPY

Will Ferrell: Mock-retrospective skit, complete with testimonial from recent cast re-addition Chris Parnell about Will got him back on the show, topped with Ferrell admitting he got Parnell fired in the first place.

― Sheela-Tubb-Mann, You Real Know-It-All (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, May 26, 2013 8:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There were tons of send-offy sketches on Ferrell's last show. Practically everyone he'd done an impression of showed up: Alex Trebek, Robert Goulet, Neil Diamond (the latter of whom either was an insanely good sport, or never saw Ferrell's impression).

Mike Myers didn't get much of a send-off, did he? He left halfway through the 94-95 season and barely appeared in his final episode.

Don't forget the sketch where Farley, Sandler, and Jay Mohr ended their runs by jumping into the Polar Bear pit!

I wish Armisen's final episode was a 90-minute Californians sketch

here's hoping they won't attempt to continue the Californians w/o Armisen and Hader

farley and sandler were fired after the season at nbc's behest so that definitely wasn't meant to be a send off

oh for real? why'd they get canned?

this was during the saturday night dead era (which i suspect might be better than it's rep and just suffered from being in the immediate shadow of the best era of snl) so ratings and rep were poor and nbc was untouchable in primetime w/ must see tv and more importantly had scored a huge huge success w/ friends which apparently the suits had had heavy involvement in developing and so they felt they knew everything and iirc this was probably the time the balance of power between lorne and the suits was most out of whack - they were suggesting not doing it live (which would save a ton of money), using phil hartman's clinton on leno (this happened), other crazy stuff. also new blood w/ specific demand that sandler, farley, and tim meadows be fired (which is odd cuz sandler and i believe farley had had some movie success by this point), michaels managed to save meadows job (i don't know if it was cuz he figured sandler and farley would be just fine or if he recognized meadows as a hartman glue type). i would also guess that network may have said 'hire more women' (this was also in the immediate aftermath of the garofalo stuff in the press and some sexual harrassment claims about farley) though maybe michaels took the initiative there. i don't know if there was any bad blood as a result - farley came back to host very shortly before he died (i've never caught a rerun but i recall there were alot of jokes about how it was obv chris farley was going to die soon) but sandler's never hosted and somehow, unlike w/ eddie murphy, his not coming back has not been remarked on much in the press or whatever.

yeah Billy Madison and Tommy Boy were both #1 at the box office in the months before they were fired. i don't think anyone really had a concept of how popular they were or would be, though, especially Sandler.

alec baldwin has a line in the oral history about how he never imagined some of the cast members he worked w/ would become movie stars and it's pretty apparent he's talking about sandler. interesting to me also that michaels produced tommy boy and black sheep but didn't produce any of the sandler movies even though there were definitely snl ppl - sandler and mcdonald and farley obv but also robert smigel and jim downey and tim herlihy - involved w/ billy madison. maybe there's bad blood there but there have been plenty of ppl whose exits or stays were less than graceful who came back at some point - ben stiller, chris rock, hell even norm macdonald came back to sing 'goodnight saigon'.

Lorne-produced movie careers so rarely work out well, kinda makes sense that Sandler did so well without that 'help.' but weird to think that Lorne was evidently not too hot on Sandler considering that his mini-me Fallon was later his golden boy.

billy madison-happy gilmore-wedding singer straight classics in my book, no shame in saying it. will rep for 50 first dates to some extent also (not the soundtrack though). beyond that (and not counting punchdrunk love or funny ppl or whatever outlier) not so much, though i do figure he's paid for at least a couple of steve buscemi and john turturro's homes and grown ups has a great soundtrack (movie is horrid).