Saturday Night Live

best of t. hanks compilation has the mr. belvedere fan club sketch which is like best ever!!

I don't think many people know this Billy Joel song they are singing, but it's pretty nice/communal as a season ending sketch.

Cameos from:

Norm MacDonald
Tom Hanks
Amy Poehler
Anne Hathaway
Paul Rudd
Maya Rudolph
Artie Lange

did I miss anyone? I feel like I am.

Guessing it's Darrell Hammond's last episode?

Looks like it. I think Anne Hathaway was thanked at the end too, but I don't remember seeing her.

Pretty awesome season finale. Would have loved to see Norm at the update desk though since he was around.

Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men.

I was thinking it's either Hammond's last...or his birthday.

Anne Hathaway was thanked at the end too, but I don't remember seeing her.

She was one of the many in the Billy Joel song sketch immediately before the close.

Guessing it's Darrell Hammond's last episode?

Would explain why he was in more than 2 sketches.

i liked it when he used sketches to work on nailing the voice and otherwise had no idea what he was saying/.]

That "Goodnight Saigon" thing capped off maybe the best SNL I've seen in years. That Charles Barkley TNT thing with the "Mark" promo about had me in tears.

Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men.

just found out the other week that she's engaged to fred armisen.

Huh.

Casey Wilson reads internet comments

lol

I kind of love her, but whatever.

Even chuckled at Tom Hanks' meta saying "sibilance" into the Jeopardy pen.

That was great...I was wondering if anyone else caught that.

Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men.

just found out the other week that she's engaged to fred armisen.

Also, according to Wikipedia, a Scientologist. WTF

"That "Goodnight Saigon" thing capped off maybe the best SNL I've seen in years. That Charles Barkley TNT thing with the "Mark" promo about had me in tears."

^^
this

that ending sketch almost made me cry, really. if the show itself were to end, that'd be the way for it to go.

hammond's leaving? i'll miss him, but it's beyond time for dude to do something else.

i saw him live years and years ago, doing stand-up. hilarious, leaned-heavily on various impressions, was drunk outta his mind.

they kinda need to run the TNT/corner promo thing into the ground, that trend is obnoxious and deserves to be ridiculed as much as possible.

Agree completely.

Fox and TNT/TBS are the worst offenders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Live_(season_35)

So far, Seth Meyers is the only confirmed returning cast member. Yeah, it's still plenty early, but it will be interesting to see who makes it back in the fall.

that sounds ominous.

i know this has probably been said a gazillion times, but part of me wishes lorne could just fire most of the writing staff.

"bitch pleeeeeeeeeze" has me in stitches everytime they bring it back

which reminds me, i need to start a new SNL related thread that i think will be interesting - stand by

From your lips to God's ears.

The majority of this cast is fine by me, but the writing is terrible almost all the time (Will Ferrell's ep and selected sketches throughout the season notwithstanding).

Also, HIRE A NEW SOUND GUY!

yeah, exactly - people always bitch about the cast members, but they're not the problem and never have been (in most cases, anyway).

it's like blaming the waitstaff for the horrible cuisine coming out of the kitchen, or something

Just caught the Goodnight Saigon thing, which was weird and great. Jeopardy was great, Tom Hanks was awesome in it!

Pretty sure it's Lorne who demands all the sketches be long, obvious and repetitive, not the writers

I mean he's the constant between copier guy, mary gallagher, and gilly, not anyone on the writing staff.

Good point. But he does do the hiring.

I'm just glad every other sketch isn't in a talk show format anymore.

i like this explanation about SNL

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200905/?read=interview_smigel_odenkirk

BOB ODENKIRK: You’re defending SNL there, and how hard it is, and it is very hard to do, just on the face of it. People ask, and comedy writers especially ask, “How come the show isn’t better?” I look at SNL as a sporting match, and the question is: “How come the game isn’t better?” The contest is: You take this cast, they’re the team, and they compete each week against not being funny. And every time they’re funny they score a point. So every week you’re watching to see if they score a few points. And if they score, like, three goddamn points, they fucking won, you know? But it’s a shame that it’s set up as nothing but this contest, because I think the preparation could be overseen better, and the show could do more than just score a point or two each week. That’s my grand theory of SNL … But I would add that after years of watching, never directly, just out of the corner of my eye, I’ve concluded that I might be wrong and Lorne Michaels might have it exactly right.

Part of the reason the Lonely Island digital stuff has broken out is because it's unconstrained by the nature of the show, which rewards sketches that require minimal set prep, swallow a lot of time, and introduce recurring characters Lorne can dream of putting into a shitty movie and on t-shirts.

I'm just glad every other sketch isn't in a talk show format anymore.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:42 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ this. i think for a while post-Wayne's World, they just decided that anytime someone had a vague character/accent/location in mind, they'd just make it a duo and give them a public access/local affiliate morning show.

they're better about just imitating actual ones these days

yeah, the 4th hour the Today Show is probably my favorite recurring sketch lately

all-time favorite: the one-off "Hulk Hogan Talk Show" sketch w/ Ferrell as a quiet thoughtful fill-in host for the Hulk

Fox and TNT/TBS are the worst offenders.

^ which is funny cuz I think it was the day immediately after that SNL that there was an identical Family Guy joke about Fox corner promos (the funniest being a show titled "Slowly Rotating Black Person")

(the best thing about the "slowly rotating" varietal is the part where the person passes dead center and has to re-cross his/her arms in the other direction in order to face the camera over the other shoulder)

Thanks for the believer link. I kind of admire the business soundness of this, but this quote from there kind of makes me hate SNL now:

"But SNL, and Lorne has said this, is designed to appeal just enough to everyone, so that the widest possible audience tunes in, each for the three or four bits they’ll like best. So the way they see it, you think they only score three points because of your taste in comedy. It’s kind of like if you liked everything, they’re not doing their job, because it means someone else—your polar opposite—must have hated everything, and won’t come back."

you hate your fellow man, don't you

It sure seems like Lorne does!

Casey Wilson and Michaela Watkins let go: http://thecomicscomic.typepad.com/thecomicscomic/2009/09/addition-through-subtraction-snl-fires-michaela-watkins-and-casey-wilson.html

Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad have apparently been hired to fill the vacancies. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/new-saturday-night-live-hires-courtesy-of-upright-citizens-brigade/

biiiiitch pleeeeeeez

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9JIK7lI8Zj0/SeQlPGPt7HI/AAAAAAAAA7w/8yFMDSrYb7E/s400/tempura.png

― some dude, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:03 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My reasons for liking Casey were purely self-serving. I thought she was cute and liked seeing her every week. My reasons for liking Michaela, though, had more to do with the fact she's one of the most versatile players the show's had in many, many seasons (male OR female). Lorne has lost his damn mind (especially because Abby Elliott, who remains on the cast, has yet to make me laugh once).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/02/saturday-night-lives-olbe_n_140102.html

he should just hire Ben Affleck

Michaela Watkins was great! Bad decision, as much as I love Jenny Slate.

Watkins always reminded me of a lot of other Nora Dunn/Ana Gasteyer/Jan Hooks-type vaguely WASP-y female cast members who were good at playing uptight and/or older women, which I thought boded well for her future on SNL but I guess not.

She was great! I don't know why they fired her along with Casey Wilson, who deserved to be fired just for having a hand in writing Bride Wars.

that sucks. michaela watkins was awesome.

Also, no offense to Jenny Slate or Nasim Pedrad, but are we supposed to believe that there are absolutely no funny black women in the country right now? Keenan probably has a love/hate relationship with his job. He can't be fired, because he's the only black castmember. But he's probably tired of doing all the black guy sketches.

Even when they've had 2 black guys on the show, there's only been one person doing all the black guy sketches.