Saturday Night Live

*on a weekly national tv show

awkward guys named Colin get a minimum 18 month tryout at the Update desk

Dude has been an SNL writer since 2005. That is a LONG TIME in the world of SNL. He knows what works on the show and what doesn't, especially now that he has Seth's old job (well, both of Seth's old jobs). With that amount of experience, he absolutely should know that being on camera is not where he's supposed to be.

For the record, Colin Quinn never did get good at WU. He's good at some things (I loved Tough Crowd), but that was not one of them.

Quinn was leaden as fuck to the point that you felt like finishing his jokes for him to put everybody out of their misery

Yeah, but Quinn was drafted in more-or-less at the last minute after Norm MacDonald was fired.

And at least Quinn could do the "What? You didn't think that was funny?" thing after a joke bombed. Not that I think he did it well, but at least it gave some indication that he was aware an audience was present, which is more than I can say for Jost.

Still unsure why Cecily needs a co-anchor, fwiw.

nobody is worse than Quinn. NOBODY

xxp

I can't stand him, but he at least seemed like a sentient being. Again, more than I can say for Jost.

Strong should just co-host with a paramecium.

different update eras used to have their own tone (even curtin-murray felt different from curtin-aykroyd), since fey-fallon there's been this kind of happy sincere tone, maybe modulated somewhat (i'm not gonna deny that fey-poehler was definitely its own thing) but that continuity that comes w/ coanchors and in turn w/ not really having the huge cast turnover every four or five years like in the old days(and you can be sure both of these are very deliberate moves by lorne), makes it harder for someone (in this role at least) to distinguish themselves at this point, it's a model they've gone thru twice already this century. there's this yay team vibe. last season you had them pause to welcome cicely, say goodbye to seth, and then welcome colin. none of these were as funny as harry carey calling colin quinn 'norm'. think if jost was an actual pretty boy asshole instead of a medium between fallon and myers it might work for him. they have no problem being snarky or catty and maybe they'll add some degree of outrage which worked for seth and amy but nobody's actually very mean or outright hostile about who they're telling a joke about. late night is filled w/ snarky but toothless buddies. ferguson is an exception kinda (he definitely more different from fallon/kimmel/conan/myers than any of those guys are from each other) and when letterman is interested he's capable of being a real asshole but those dudes are gone soon. it's a kind of toothless geniality that reminds me of how update was during the ebersol years.

i know i've seen brad hall weekend update segments but i have no memory of them

the late 80s very early 90s era is 'my' era and i'm pretty convinced is in fact the best era but i watched most of the ebersol years as a little kid, i came in somewhere toward the tail end of the eddie murphy era. i can remember where i was when buckwheat was shot. pensacola florida. it occurs to me now i was catching these in reruns during the summer when i could stay up til whenever. pee wee herman occasionally popped up (i'm not sure ppl grasp the extent to which he was around pre-pee wee's big adventure), father guido sarducci popped up alot. gumby. then came the steinbrenner year and fernando (amazing to think that all of that was just ONE season). i'm not sure i ever watched any of the anthony michael hall year, i do remember hearing the announcement that it had been canceled on the radio on the way to school. i can remember starting to watch again when classmates started quoting 'yeah, that's the ticket' all the time.

Hall and Christopher Guest (the other Ebersol "Saturday Night News" anchor) were meh at best. Hall was dull in everything else too, but Guest was reliably hilarious in his many other SNL bits.

'84-'85 was one of the best SNL seasons. The "White Like Eddie" film, Fernando, the male synchronized swimmers, Lifestyles of the Relatives of the Rich and Famous, Jackie Rodgers Jr's $100,000 Jackpot Wad, Jesse Jackson hosting ("the question is moot!")...

(amazing to think that all of that was just ONE season)

Not only that, it was a strike-shortened season!

one thing about those ebersol seasons i did like is they had a looseness (some might sloppiness) to them that the other seasons didn't quite have. they would have spalding gray or penn & teller just pop up and take over the show for a segment. it wasn't quite as inspired at letterman at the time (ok it wasn't anywhere near as inspired as letterman at the time) but it had a similar energy.

They've had that same update set for going on 15 years now!

Kinda weird that in a 21st century full of tweets, Spider-Man reboots three years after the first series, 15-minute shows on Adult Swim and whatever other cutesy ADHD examples I'm forgetting, SNL is all stodgy and consistent very much unlike its first 20th century incarnations.

Wheelan's out:

http://www.avclub.com/article/brooks-wheelan-fired-saturday-night-live-206907

saw him do a short standup set a few months ago and he led with "I'm a Saturday Night Live cast member... for now"

he already seemed like dead weight, but when they straight-up let him do a stand-up routine on Weekend Update it was pretty clear they were running out the clock

According to her twitter, Noel Wells is on a self-imposed "internet break" until September, so who knows when we'll hear her fate as far as "featured players who did jack shit last season" go. But with Nasim leaving she might get lucky.

Compared to a couple of the guys in the featured cast, Noel Wells might as well have been a regular cast member already.

i'll give you whelan (moot point) and (sadly) milhiser, but beck bennett, mike o'brien and kyle mooney have done a ton more spotlighted work than wells

gonna miss don pardo saying HWHEE-lan

so weird that bennett and mooney have this little fiefdom w/ phone commercials

man i never even heard that Nasim is leaving, although i guess after FIVE YEARS she didn't seem like a dominant presence so she might as well go do a sitcom.

Who else was brought in to replace Michaela Watkins and Casey Wilson besides Nasim? Was it Abby Elliott? I don't even remember now.

Jenny Slate

abby elliott was brought in same year as watkins and wilson (so ironic that she survived them in hindsight), Jenny Slate and Nasim came year after they left, with vanessa bayer replacing slate

lol I'd already forgotten about Jenny Slate.

she just had an art house hit!

so weird to think of moynihan being the 2nd most veteran cast member, damn that makes me feel old

Tina Tina Chaneuse is still one of my favorite sketches from that era

she just had an art house hit!

I hadn't actually forgotten Jenny Slate. I just forgot she was on SNL one season.

yeah did not care for slate on snl, but she's great on kroll show and i wanna see that movie

i've heard hit and miss about the movie. she's great on parks & rec. i like abby elliot. lorne firing casey wilson and esp michaela watkins was super fucked up but i don't hold that against elliot even if 'she's young and cute' is how she made the cut. nasim almost left last summer when mulaney almost got picked up before the new nbc head said he wasn't interested in any sitcoms that ostensibly looked like nbc sitcoms (ergo brooklyn 99 ending up on fox). i hope she gets to be funny on the sitcom; she's gorgeous but she reminds me of kristen wiig where she almost has to overcome or cover up her attractiveness to do what she's funniest at.

Nasim is such a weird case (but maybe not if I'd spent more than a couple minutes thinking about it). She came out of the gate really strong, especially for a featured player. She had recurring characters almost immediately, some of them even successful in the context of the show. Then she retreated the past couple years and it got to the point where it was clear she didn't want to be there or didn't care about screentime, and her last batch of characters have been mostly terrible.

even if 'she's young and cute' is how she made the cut

I think she made the cut because she was Armisen's girlfriend at the time.

well chris elliot's daughter didn't hurt either. i thought she was fine in the show and she's been fine since though obv she doesn't have a happy endings to her credit (still not over it) and she hasn't had the inspired supporting turns michaela watkins has had in wanderlust and esp trophy wife.

yeah nasim last season reminded me of david spade's last season, where he didn't remotely feel really a part of the new cast and was just biding his time until a sitcom gig opened up. last season had a problem w/ generally a cast member having a strong week and then seemingly disappearing for weeks after that. paring down the cast should help that.

https://screen.yahoo.com/annuale-000000661.html

totally apropos of nothing aside from Casey Wilson being adorable in it

<3 that the "Adobe" commercial autoplayed after that one.

"These days, everyone's talking about the Hyundai, and the Yugo. Both nice cars, if you've got $3,000 or $4,000 to throw around. But, for those of us whose name doesn't happen to be Rockefeller, finally there's some good news."

Always thought a clay cupholder was a good idea.

Noël Wells and John Milhiser are out

so basically every whose funniest sketch was "new cast member or Arcade Fire?" is out

Shame about Noel Wells. Milhiser might as well be the last cashier I had at CVS, because that's as much time as I got to spend with him.

Felt like Wells could've done something not-uninteresting given decent material to work with.

i wonder if whelan, wells and milhiser had a "drunk uncle" or "man with baby's body" bit they just never got to do. even paul brittain had that little lord fauntleroy thing they foisted on us twice, jenny slate the doorbell seller.

Wells had Nancy Grace, but that didn't hold up on repeated viewings (and was sometimes met with dead silence).

I would've liked to have seen Wheelan's character from the Critter Control sketch with Ed Norton brought back in something else, but it never happened.