Saturday Night Live

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).

wedding singer is enough of a harmless rom com to me that i can stomach it, but in general i'm done with sandler, he's the white tyler perry to me.

Murphy did come back; he hosted the '84 x-mas show (which included the best thing he ever did, the "White Like Eddie" film). His not hosting since then probably isn't about bad blood, but more likely due to not having any connection to/relationship with Lorne (Murphy's tenure was during the Ebersol years).

nice info tarfumes

nah they've invited him back for the anniversary specials and he's declined. in rolling stone last year (or maybe the year before - whenever he made that shitty brett ratner movie w/ ben stiller that was supposed to show us that 'old eddie' is back) he said he had considered coming back to host and then david spade made some crack about him on hollywood minute and he wrote snl off. i'd always chalked up billy crystal never coming back to host to him being ebersol era (by all accounts he was loved while he was there and actually wrote sketches for other ppl to star in which is kind of unheard of for snl cast members) but julia louis-dreyfus and obv martin short have come back from that era so who knows.

xps aw, I liked Grown Ups.

i laughed twice, both times chris rock lines

Ah, I'd forgotten about Short and Julia. I remember the David Spade kerfuffle, but figured Eddie had let it go. Evidently not.

xp

Norm and Crystal came back for the 25th Anniversary special too. McDonald joked in his segment that he was just passing through on the way to a party at Eddie Murphy's. Hadn't realized Crystal never came back to host--I saw him on the 90s Muppet Show fer chrissakes!

Maybe it had something to do with being 21 in 1995, but I loved that season. Polar bear sketch and everything.

Not a surprise, but after a will he/won't he atmosphere for two seasons, Sudeikis has left: http://tvline.com/2013/07/24/jason-sudeikis-leaving-saturday-night-live-snl-official/

You can tell he's quitting because he's grown a mustache.

Paging all funnymen with solid Joe Biden impressions in their repertoires:

Please none of you actually attempt this page.

Auditioning for SNL.

HADER My audition was me as Vinny Vedecci, doing Al Pacino talking to his maid staff. Tony Blair talking about the new “Star Wars” movie in Parliament. James Mason with an expired gift certificate for a dozen doughnuts.

would kill to see this

That was the only thing in the piece that made me laugh out loud.

He elaborates a little on his SNL audition of the episode of WTF he did with Marc Maron a few weeks back.