Saturday Night Live: Season 342343414

Our favorite SNL is our high school SNL! So says Lorne Michaels and I think he’s right. Unless you had the Anthony Michael Hall/Joan Cusack/Terry Sweeney years when you were in high school.

From Rolling Stone:

Adjusting to new casts and new writers is always painful, Michaels confesses. Fans are likely to mention a certain era they hold near and dear to their heart —the producer predicts that a person’s favorite version of SNL usually corresponds to the time they were in high school. (As in, when they were powerless and with nothing better to do on a Saturday night.) Every cast reinvents the show — and every cast starts out as something less than great. “All babies are ugly unless they’re your baby,” Michaels says, adding that it takes three or four years before everyone agrees that said metaphorical baby is cute. But even when talking about those beloved early years, Michaels doesn’t glorify them: “I’ve been there for all the golden years, and I can tell you, they weren’t golden at the time.”

I started watching about when I was like 10 or so, as Bravo, and Comedy Central had rebroadcasts. One of my favorite eras is the Chris Farley/Phil Hartman/Dana Carvey/Mike Meyers years. But, my actual favorite era is the late 90’s early 2000’s, which was Will Farrell/Molly Shannon etc crew. (which was when I was in high school)

The new cast has really started to come into it’s own. The 2010’s crew is basically all gone (Kenan stayed) and it is good. Alex Moffat and Mikey Day are great additions, Leslie Jones was so rough in her first few seasons, but has been really awesome lately. I love Cecily Strong (and she might be my favorite cast member) Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney are both great as well. And Kenan is always the secret MVP. And Kate McKinnon is the real face of the show now, and that is pretty good.

McKinnon just kills it almost without exception. She is amazing. Kenan is great too, always the solid backbone/semi-straight man. Cecily Strong always cracks me up with her “Weekend Update” walk-on characters, from “Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party” to Cathy Anne to the one-time “Susan from HR” or whoever.

“Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party” is one of my all time favorites.

“All this ‘mercialism’ around Christmas? It’s an outrage, it’s a ‘tragesty’!”

“You need to wake up and smell the music, Seth!”

“Is that what George Washington had in mind when he started 'merica? It’s like, read something, Seth! Learn a book!”

“We need bipartisan ships!”

“Also, I’m sorry, but why can’t Secret Santa just be openly gay?!”

That time for me would be the Eddie Murphy years, and outside of him, the show wasn’t all that great then. Joe Piscopo would often get treated as the next best thing about it, but that was mostly due to him always staying in Murphy’s orbit. I’d put the original crew, the late 80’s-early 90’s seasons, and the late 2000’s cast all ahead of the early 80’s unit.

The current bunch is pretty good too. One thing I like is they don’t rely on the catch-phrase-isms that’s defined the show throughout nearly its entire run, or the lets-run-this-one-mildly-amusing-joke-into-the ground-ism that plagued the Fallon/Kattan/Sanz era. The closest they come to that now I guess is Kate McKinnon’s UFO abductee/old-Hollywood-actress characters, where the gag is always her recounting being treated like a human pinata, but the stories are detailed and varied enough to keep it fresh.

We have an older (10 years maybe) DVD of SNL Christmas skits. They start with the original cast and get to the Farley years at least, maybe a little later. Given decent writing they are all funny.

Yeah, but the year right after him was my favorite.
Great cast - Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jim Belushi.

Great characters, Ed Grimley, Jackie Rogers, Jr., Frankie & Willie, Fernando, Nathan Thurm,Phil and Ricky, Paul Harvey, Doug Henning, Joe Franklin.

And all time classic skits - Jackie Rogers, Jr, $100k Jackpot Wad, 60 Minutes counterfeit novelties, Fernando’s Hideaway, Strictly from Blackwell, Eddie Murphy returns with White Like Me and Mr. Robinson, Kate and Ali, The Folksmen, Tippi Turtle.

There were simply not enough Ed Grimley sketches.

This echoes my own feelings. Phil Hartman, what a legend he was.

I also really enjoyed the Kristin Wiig, Andy Samberg, Chris Parnell era.

What did you guys think of the opening sketch this week, where Robert Muller is telling a Bacholerette that his investigation is probably not going to yield what she thinks?

I just loved it. I have never seen the Bachelor, but if it’s like this sketch, I found it really compelling viewing. I love the way they did the dual split screen cameras even when the two people are on the same couch. I’m assuming that’s something that’s cribbed right from the show.

I just found the whole thing so funny and fresh. Maybe just because I’ve never seen the show they were parodying?

I did find the overall message a little sad that Stormy Daniels is not going to amount to much and neither is the Russia investigation. I’ll take that part just to be pure speculation since SNL writers don’t really know what’s going on to that degree, it’s just a funny speculation on their part.

I thought it was pretty good. It was modeled directly off of the big finale of the Bachelor this season. The guy proposed to one girl, then after a month or two together he got antsy and told her that he was longing for the girl he turned down. It played out really closely to how they showed it on SNL, only 100x more awkward and awful. And the guy was a complete douche and not the Savior of the Free World.

They may end up not being able to pin full out collusion on Trump in the end but I’m pretty confident he’ll be charged with something by the end of the investigation.

EDIT - I only know the above because of what SadleyBradley posted below, not because I watched part of it on Hulu or anything.

I unfortunately know way more about The Bachelor than I want to because my wife gets really into it. So I can provide some background.

The Bachelor finale was this past week, and the “big surprise” was that the Guy chose Girl 1 over Girl 2, but then a few months later, he broke up with Girl 1 so he could go be with Girl 2. Because Reality TV is constantly trying to figure out new depths to sink to, the producers decided to film the breakup and then air all of their footage without any editing or cuts, with one camera focused on the guy and the other on the girl.

Compelling, maybe, but the end result is some of the most cringeworthy 20-30 minutes of Reality TV you’ll ever see. The grossest part was that everyone – Guy, producers, showrunners, everyone – knew ahead of time that he was going to break up with her. It’s just all the worst parts of Reality TV.

Most of The Bachelor is not that compelling, If you want some good Bachelor satire, find the series Burning Love, with Ken Marino. I think it’s still on Hulu.

On the topic of SNL, I liked Charles Barkley last week. My favorite Barkley sketch was actually the one at the end with him and Kate McKinnon. I think it’s just my particular brand of humor, but their deadpan delivery and the absurd physical comedy really worked for me.

Sterling K Brown was great. One of the best episodes of the season. One of my favorite moments of the year was probably when Alex Moffat as Eric Trump was spooked by, and then fascinated with the pop up book.

What was really confusing to me in watching that episode is the St. Louis tourism ads. Normally during SNL, it’s really obvious which ads are from SNL, and which ads are real ads. But when Sterling K. Brown is hosting the show, and during the show they’re showing a series of unique ads staring Sterling K. Brown telling you to visit St. Louis (or “Saint Lou” as they call it in the ads), I kept wondering, wait, is this part of the show, or this another ad for Saint Louis?

They had to have aired at least four unique ads for visiting Saint Louis, maybe more.

No love for the “Dying Mrs. Gómez” sketch this last episode?

Moffat’s Willem Dafoe impression during the Family Feud sketch was pretty funny as well.

Also, lol at Chris Redd playing Jordan Peele, telling Kenan “Sketch comedy is great, but at some point you have to move on.”

Yeah, that was great too. Really good episode