SNL hits rock bottom

I think they’d have an awesome 30 minute show, and a reall good 1-hour show, but 1.5 hours is just too much. It’s definitely almost exactly 30 minutes too long.

I do think they have one of the better casts in a long time.

And complaining about people complaining about SNL is so… actually, I think that was also in the 90s. Now is the time for a backlash against the backlash! Seriously, if this is what they need to do to fill airtime after a gap of several months, they should just hand over the last half hour to the infomercial people.

It also nicely dovetails with Patton Oswalt’s complaint that the writing process begins by forcing the writers to feign excitement in stupid, title-driven sketch ideas until something sticks. “How about we turn that line in ‘There Will Be Blood’ into a fake Food Network show? Oh, and hey, we can have the props department make him a BIG STRAW! And then we’ll just throw in characters from other movies that are out right now, like Chigurh and Juno!”

I like Bill Hader, so I thought it was pretty funny until Armisen’s terrible version of Chigurh showed up.

The show back after the strike was probably the strongest I’ve seen in a while. Bill Hader and Kirsten Wiig are Jason Sudeikis seem like they’re genuinely funny in the way that Phil Hartman was, without restorting to talking very loudly like Will Ferrell

I’ve been a fairly big SNL fan generally across whole casts since the very first one when I was a teenager, and there have always been moments of brilliance-- Dick in a Box, Natalie Portman’s Gangsta Rap, “You like-a the juice, yes?”, the first “Really?! with Seth and Amy” sketch, the first couple with Kristen Wiig as the lesbian reporter and the attention-whore one-up girl, Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer, etc. Weekend update is usually one of the funniest parts of the show, except when they bring on some “special guest” whose schtick just sucks or should last 1 minute instead of 4.
I really think it’s the writing that is really uneven, and I’m not saying it’s only a recent phenomenon–there have been unfunny SNL sketches since the beginning. Sometimes they seem to be unable to cut off a sketch after just a couple of minutes when it’s clearly not working. They also insist on repeating sketch ideas that just didn’t work the first time (Molly Shannon’s Joyologist comes to mind, even though I loved her Mary Catherine Gallagher sketches).

This was me. I don’t go to the movie theater anymore, or watch much commercial TV, so all of the references went completely over my head. I had to find the original milkshake scene and some clips of the assassin guy on youtube for it to make any sense. I didn’t find the scene surreal or funny, it just made me curious why they focused on some guy that wants to drink someone else’s milkshake.

Over/Under on how long until the first ESPN talking head uses the phrase “I drink your MILKSHAKE!” during a highlight reel?

“LeBron James at the top of the key and you can’t guard him with Wally Sczerbiak, and King James says ‘Wally, I drink your milkshake!’”

“3-1 count to Pujols and Zambrano needs a strikeout here, but Albert says ‘Oh no, I drink your milkshake!’ and it’s two-nothing Cardinals in the first.”

SNL is still on the air? :)

Peter

SNL has been hitting rock bottom for almost 20 years now.

And, simultaneously, so '80s! :)

Peter

I turned on the tv Saturday night and this sketch was playing. I watched the last 3/4 of it and wondered what the holy fuck was going on. I kept wondering if there was something that was vital to the sketch that made it funny… or coherent.

I think it’s really pretty rude of them to make references to movies that some people haven’t seen.

Wally is a Cav now. He was traded to them a month or so ago. :-)

Anyway, as for SNL, someone pointed out in another thread that the problem is that they do to many TV/movie parody sketches. If you think back, SNL used to have a lot of sketches that were more about situational comeday and not parody. That seems to be what they’ve lost in recent years.

I don’t see much ESPN these days, but I’d be surprised if it hasn’t already happened.