Saturday Night Live: Season 342343414

Let me wiki that for you.

Holy geez, what a shitty ep the Ryan Phillipe one was. It wasn’t his fault - the writers are simply creatively bankrupt. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every skit was a rehash of one they’ve done before (I think the only new one was the “I Got This” game show, which I fast-forwarded through about 15 seconds in). Hell, they even re-ran a fake commercial that was first on just a few weeks ago.

I think the only thing I laughed at was Will Forte as Father Swim Coach Scoutmaster.

I thought that was pretty funny too, Jerri.

I didn’t think it was a terrible episode… I know there were a few skits I laughed at, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them. Oh, the Underground Rap bit. The digital short was… I don’t know. Why was that a digital short?

The first Ke$ha performance was not very good, and the acappella part at the beginning felt a little bit too much like trying to prove she has a real voice the same way Lady Gaga did when she was on. But then they threw it all out for the second performance which seemed to be lip-synced. It’s too bad, I thought the neon body paint was fresh. Do kids say that these days?

I nearly bust a gut at the longer, frenetic underground rock festival promo that they did a couple of months back. That was great. And of course the digital short with Jon Hamm as Sergio! was brilliant.

I didn’t know what a Ke$ha was going into watching this, but there’s only room in my life for one dance-pop musician with visual spectacle as the centerpoint of her performances, and Lady Gaga is it.

Kedollarsignha was terrible, but I for one was glad to see the triumphant return of the Hip Hop Kids. That “One Guy Doesn’t Know Sports and The Other One Talks About How Gross Vaginas Are” skit needs to die a horrible death and soon. Forte and Sudekis are great, but man has this reached its expiration date.

Oh, I thought the shake weight parody was pretty great. So, two good skits, a smirk-worthy digital short, and an hour and ten minutes of crap? Fairly standard SNL fare.

They really need to turn over the writing staff in its entirety.

I always want to see what gets cut from dress rehearsal every week. Whenever they have an episode composed almost entirely of re-hash sketches, I assume they wrote an equal amount of new material that didn’t make it through dress because it was too weird or unfunny, or whatever. But, at least it would be new, so I wouldn’t be bored and angry.

That’s one of the reasons I’m always interested in what they put in the death slot (last slot before credits, after the last musical number), because its either terrible or hilarious, but too weird, so they put it where they know nobody will watch it.

I think so - not (just) because they’re bad, but because they’re totally out of new ideas.

And Papageno, I wish you hadn’t mentioned Sergio! Makes me wish Jon Hamm could just become the new permanent host. Of course, then there would just be a new skit about ham every week - John Ham, Ham and Bubbly, etc.

I actually really enjoy the two sports guys–Forte and Sudeikis are both super-committed to the characters.

And to jerri, see, I found the first Jon Hamm episode pretty great, but the second one (with the exception of Sergio!) pretty so-so.

Oh right, the shake weight thing. That was funny as well, although what was the other show that did a parody? The Daily Show? I liked their take on the stoic faces

Nope. They use “neato” or “swell.”

They need to just cycle hosts between Justin Timberlake, Alec Baldwin, and Christopher Walken. Those guys can make even the worst skits somewhat watchable.

SNL must be like a comedy sausage factory at this point. They have ridiculously talented people working there (seriously, go check out SNL writer John Mulaney’s stand-up record - he’s hilarious) and every now and then a glimmer of an interesting idea will bubble up, but these past couple of seasons have been lazy even for them.

I’m hoping it’s just because the Lonely Island crew has been working on the MacGruber movie and so haven’t had the opportunity to contribute as much. Or maybe it’s because Lorne Michaels fires funny women for being too fat.

What I’ve been wondering is how the Daily Show and Colbert Report make me laugh every episode with amazing and brilliant writing 4X A WEEK, yet SNL can’t manage a crappy single episode once every couple of weeks. Is this just a side job for writers, or is this full-time work?

…and Tina Fey. She was great in the last episode despite a few poorly written skits.

I don’t think it needs to be pointed out that SNL has a TON of writers, and each are really different. Imagine having 15 writers on a screenplay, where they each get 10 minutes of movie. Chances are you’ll like some of the 150 minutes, but not all of it, simply because of the different aesthetics.
Really, the way to watch SNL is on Hulu. In clips.

The Digital Short wins the night.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, The reason I can’t SNL for the last 20yrs or so is it used to be a show geared towards adults, and watching it high school was awesome.
Now it’s geared to high school kids and even if I was in high school and not old I’d still think it was weak.

At first I was going to disagree with you and then I began to think about the early-mid 80’s shows, including (though the Martin Short stuff originated on SCTV):

Nathan Thurm
The Joe Franklin Show
Willie & Frankie
Jackie Rogers jr
Mr Robinson’s Neighborhood
Synchronized Swimmers
Irving Cohen
Fernando’s Hideaway

Though you can argue that they may be dumb or immature, they really weren’t dumbed-down.

The show has always been geared towards people in their teens & early 20s. The quality has probably gone down, but part of the problem is that you’re no longer the target demographic.