I beg to differ.
How old was the original cast?
I’d say it was geared to people in their 20-30’s, just look at all the drug humor they used to do.
Also I don’t think high school kids were into Leon Redbone, or pre “Touch of Gray” Dead.
At the hight of disco, they had on guys playing obscure old Chicago blues.
Bill Murray was 25, John Belushi was 26 and Dan Aykroyd was 25.
Jason Sudeikis was 27, Tina Fey was 26 and Seth Meyers was 27.
I’m not sure how this bolsters your point. I guess Jane Curtain was 31 and Gilda Radner was 29, but Laraine Newman was 23. Their oldest cast member was Garrett Morris, at 38. The current cast has Kristin Wiig, 36, Will Forte, 39 and Fred Armisen, 43. Even their current crop of new players, Jenny Slate, Nasim Pedrad and Bobby Moynihan are 28, 28 and 33 respectively. Only Abby Elliot, at 22, gets down to Laraine Newman levels.
That Betty White episode was great. I don’t think I hated any of the sketches.
Agreed for the most part, but the “old timey lesbian” sketch started pointless and then went on too long from there.
The best season of SNL was whenever the person picking the best season was 14 years old.
I think Tina Fey must have helped with the writing on this one (and maybe Betty White?).
The census sketch was deliciously absurd. And I knew Betty White was old, but man, 88 and still as active as she is? That’s inspiring.
Great episode, was curious how much input the departed cast had in this one. Given how hit and miss the show is under Meyers, I don’t doubt that they wouldn’t leave it quite so much to chance with his usual team.
I laughed the whole way through that one. “You know what I wouldn’t miss? Balls.”
It really was a great episode. One would hope that this means that the higher ups would realize they should get hosts who can do comedy instead of just whatever young hottie has a movie to promote.
Precisely.
Similarly, everyone remembers the great, old cast and sketches 10 years or so after they were aired. The shitty ones from those same casts, remarkably, get completely overlooked.
I usually find stuff to love and hate with every year’s cast. Others must as well because it keeps chugging along and I am thankful for it.
Ascertain…that was my stripper name.
The last sketches are notoriously throwaway, but I said to my wife that it was not the case with this one.
Oh, not saying Betty White’s delivery of her lines wasn’t great, I laughed too.
But there was no point other than “Betty White saying lesbian is amusing.”
I’m not sure what your point is.
If ‘Betty White saying lesbian is amusing’ is the point and you laughed, then bravo, a sketch well planned and excellently executed. If all SNL sketches went off that well, people’d bitch a lot less about how much better it was in the olden days when sweet silver angels such as Joe Piscopo and Anthony Michael Hall ruled studio 8H in the GE Building.
It was a great episode. I’ve found SNL to be very cyclical with respect to my funny bone. I started watching back in 91 when I came to the U.S., but that included many re-runs on a new channel called “Comedy Central” that launched that year, which started off by showing SNL for 24 hours straight. That was the Dana Carvey/Mike Meyers/Phil Hartman/Adam Sandler, etc. era.
Then it became stale, then it became really, really bad (again, for me) in the Will Ferrell era (except for the occasional exception, like when Alec Baldwin hosted, or the cowbell sketch). During that time was also my least favorite Weekend Update host too. Then it became better, and then it became so good that i remember enjoying myself every week with only one exception for a couple of seasons. This was during the Tina Fey/Jimmy Fallon, etc. era, and the one exception still sticks out in my mind because it was the worst show I’d seen since the Will Ferrell era, and it was when Donald Trump hosted the show. I didn’t find a single sketch that week funny, and that started a downhill slide again for the show.
I’ve never really stopped watching since 91 though. Even when the show was its absolute worst (again, for me, since humor can be very subjective at times) during the Will Ferrell/Christ Catan/Norm McDonald phase, I still tuned in weekly to at least see if they’d gotten better yet.
Dude! You didn’t find the Trump Fried Chicken restaurant sketch funny? I nearly bust a gut with how into the song (a rewording of “Jump” by the Pointer Sisters?) Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph were.
Other than that I’m sure “The Donald” was a pretty terrible host. That one sketch made me laugh hard, though, mostly due to the young women in chicken suits singing their hearts out.
I thought it was a pretty dead-on parody of those old movies and novels where one sister is the incorrigible tomboy until the Right Man appears to make her wanna be all girly and such and realize marriage was all she ever wanted (see, e.g. Jo March in Little Women). I like that the marriage lasted from 1905 to 1906. :)
That’s exactly what I was about to mention (the Little Women connection…mmm, Winona Ryder…drool…but that’s another discussion).
Betty White got SNL their biggest ratings since the election.
Ah, I’ve managed to avoid that genre thus far.
Did a bang-up job on her performance, too.
In my house we’ve decided that SNL should just have a handful of rotating hosts: Alec Baldwin, Jon Hamm, Justin Timberlake and now Betty White.
Sure, it’s always been hit or miss, but it just seems to me it was aimed at an older audience way back when and then they slowly started gearing it towards younger and younger demographics like all other marketing.