Saturday Night Live

Farley the best of the three and not bad really but Sandler and Spade are just awful

xp

a number of the most talented cast members (eg Danitra Vance) were abominably underutilized.

It's truly a shame that Pat is Julia Sweeney's SNL legacy, because she was so much better than that.

her WTF episode was great

I tried to watch her stage show (I think it was about cancer?) and couldn't get through it

I think Fey is spectacularly overrated, and i would have put Murphy ahead of Belushi. And Hartman #3

I've got nothing against Belushi (either of them, tbh), but the saintly adulation of John is totally mysterious to me.

Fey is incredibly important, though, and may have even been underrated in this list.

Also think Norm McDonald got the shaft.

You're high if you think Fey is better than Murphy or Belushi

i watched an episode of this a few weeks back with that country singer dude in it and it was hands down the worst tv show ive watched in several years.

Norm - again, I like Norm, but he falls into the same category as John Belushi for me where I think he's okay, he's funny, but nowhere near worthy of that kind of adulation.

Norm's standup is better than his SNL work

I remember that Michael Jordan/Public Enemy episode very clearly. Being a 15 year-old kid in Illinois super into the Bulls and Public Enemy meant that this felt like a really big "event" in a way the show had never seemed before.

As usual I cant get RS's f'ed up site to work but if they didn' t put Hartman at number one then its probably not worth looking at

Tho lol at young Gilbert Gottfried looking like Drake

man, a 3-1/2 hr anniversary special; how fitting. "What's the difference between life and SNL 40?"

got to vintage Belushi period last night - he really was compelling, his best stuff really holds up/still elicits laughter

like him berating Ed Koch during the opening monologue

Chevy Chase said that by the time SNL hit the air, Belushi was already half the performer he'd been onstage a few years earlier bcz of drugs. Normally i'd be skeptical of CC but not esp in this case.

You be the judge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuBhwEgi8qU

got to vintage Belushi period last night - he really was compelling, his best stuff really holds up/still elicits laughter

― Οὖτις, Friday, February 13, 2015 1:19 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Star Trek thing still kills me

even though i did watch the '76 Olympics, whenever I heard "Bruce Jenner" in the last 35 years i tended to think of

http://www.hulu.com/watch/2345

because

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNU90DQn5lw

another thing all these reruns has hammered home to me is what a bummer it is that there's this treasure trove of musical performances that will basically never see the light of day because of rights/publishing issues. I mean if they put out a box set of just the musical performances from the first 10 years or so I would totally buy it.

a DVD box set that is

I have the Year One box, those episodes are intact I think? Same with the standalone season sets, but I guess you're not looking to own those.

I had year 1 for awhile and got rid of it tbh

also don't those standalone sets stop at 25

s5 I mean

XPS That doesn't help in the case of the Ebersol years, which'll never get collected that way (losing us anthology of appearances by Fear, Funky 4+1, etc)

Yeah, they stop at 5.

I lost most of mine in my apt fire >:( so I'm planning on coppin em on iTunes

They are probably not gonna be making more of them tho

the Ebersol years, which'll never get collected that way (losing us anthology of appearances by Fear, Funky 4+1, etc)

1980 musical guests alone:
Kid Creole and the Coconuts
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band
Aretha Franklin
James Brown
Linda Rondstadt
Cheap Trick
Jimmy Cliff
Todd Rundgren
Funky Four + 1
Prince
Delbert McClinton
Jr. Walker

1981:
Rod Stewart
The Kinks
Miles Davis
Fear
Rick James
the Gogos
Billy Joel
Meatloaf
the Spinners
Allman Bros
Sparks
Elton John
Mink Deville
John Cougar Mellencamp
Charlie Daniels

I mean COME ON

i manage to rip a copy of the ornette coleman performance (from the infamous milton berle episode) from Hulu, and it's fucking fire.

(from 1979, i think? or 1978. something like that.)

That Sparks appearance is amazballs: host Danny Devito letting Ron Mael introduce "Minnie Mouse" by talking about vermin diseases, which he follows up on by breakdancing during the instrumental break.

aarrrgh why you guys tease me

I guess I shouldn't bring the Miles Davis comeback appearance wherein unknown to the audience or even Davis himself that he was performing while having a stroke.

I seem to remember a very brief clip of Miles on the 25th anniversary SNL dealie. As with most Miles of that era, unfortunately, it wasn't particularly remarkable -- nor could you tell he was having a stroke.

Kinda ticked: I went searching for those Sparks clips, found them, but the host site had embedded them from somewhere else (presumably YouTube) and the original uploader blocked embeds before probably having to delete said vids because NBC.

As with most Miles of that era, unfortunately, it wasn't particularly remarkable -- nor could you tell he was having a stroke.

Yeah, the biggest tell is he's wandering around as he plays a lot (or at least more so than usual). In his auto bio he said that the only thing that kept his mind off the pain was walking, so he'd been in continuous motion since the afternoon at least.

so fits with the comedy on the show for the last 35 years

this list is super fucking accurate

http://jacobreed.tumblr.com/post/110939031244/saturday-night-live-all-142-cast-members-ranked

Really strange watching the first ep last night. Carlin actually bombed a couple of times ("Have you heard these jokes before?"), but it was weirdly refreshing to see two (!) musical guests within the first 30 minutes.

jacobreed in the fine tradition of beating a slender joke to unfunniness

it was weirdly refreshing to see two (!) musical guests within the first 30 minutes.

well you wd've loved the TV Variety Show 1947-75, then

The other day I was driving around, and out of nowhere I wanted to remember the name of that guy who did that thing. Maybe five minutes later it popped into my head: A. WHITNEY BROWN! What happened to that guy?

After he left SNL, he was one of the original correspondents on The Daily Show. He's kept a mostly low profile since then, though.

OMG they're doing a red carpet pre-special special for this 40th anniversary thing. That's sort of ridiculous.

In the new Rolling Stone (which has that cast ranking thing as the cover story) there's a side bar with a list of the 10 best episodes. The Michael Jordan/Public Enemy ep came in at #1. Had forgotten that one gave us Schmitt's Gay: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/679770/ (lesser quality, but has the original music, which the 'official' online versions don't).

OMG they're doing a red carpet pre-special special for this 40th anniversary thing. That's sort of ridiculous.

I dunno, if a red carpet ceremony is going to happen, I actually think it makes more sense to do it for the 40th anniversary of a show that changed the television landscape than for an annual back-patting awards show.

(Except, isn't it like 10 below in NYC right now?)

sheesh what is the deal with Chevy Chase?