Saturday Night Live, with a good cast, has entered yet another Year of Terrible Writing.
I've got Saturday Night Live credentials that are so solid that they're embarrassing. I've been watching since it began on a cold, winter's night in 1947. I hung on after Uncle Milty stepped down as host. I persevered through the Jo Anne Worley years, through the two years when Yoko Ono directed it, and even through the Half Decade of Mime. I've watched it when it was a generational touchstone and when the peak of the season was a sketch about a Roman vomitorium. I'm going to keep watching this year, too, but it's becoming clear: SNL is deeply into suckitude.…
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26 - David Weinberger
I only saw the first half of the Oct 4 '04 show and I thought it was pretty good. I liked the opening sketch about the debate. I thought the Bush imitation was particularly devastating, although I get tired of the obvious jokes about Kerry being a flipflopper and Clinton being a letch. Too easy.
Amy Pohler may be a problem as a weekend updater, although she may settle into it.
The opening gag commercial about erectile disfunction I found to be crude but not funny.
I generally liked the James Carville-Kerry skit. The Carville spoof was funny, I thought.
And I happen to think Ben Affleck is funny.
So, I'm not rating it as a disaster. At least not yet. It's a good cast, which hasn't always been the case.
27 - Temple Stark
I KNEW IT
Parallel universe. In some parallel universe Oct. 4,2004 is a Saturday.
I can't watch anymore. it's haard to wait for the two funny bits in the whole show - when there'a a whole big bad world out there.
On a related topic - anyone been watching,the top 100 SNL most memorable moments? And is anyone else wondering why they show maybe two seconds of each moment, not enough to make anyone laugh. I don't remember more than about a third of their moments.
28 - David Weinberger
SNL TiVos real good. You can watch the whole thing in 25 minutes.
29 - Eric Olsen
I agree wih Dave that the political humor was the best, especially the opening and hte Carville thing, and I also like Affleck on the show - he has a ton of characters he portrays very well.
Amy wasn't in the groove on the news, but it may take a few times to find the right persona.
Another interesting thing is that with Kattan, Morgan, Ferrell and now Fallon gone, there is no "star" male on the show, hence the two women on Update. It will be interesting to see who does and doest not assert themselves this season - it's up for grabs.
30 - Kelley Ender
Temple Stark: Yes, I did watch the funniest SNL moments. It was a joke. In my opinion, they should have cut it back to something like the top 25 moments and then shown the clips in full.
Maybe copyright prevented them from doing that. I don't know.
I also noticed that Wayne's World was the number one skit. That skit is funny, but not THAT funny. Oh well.
31 - Ricky Neva
SNL does not suck, the author is just stuck somewhere between when he started watching SNL and the present. His appreciation of contemporary humor was lost somewhere also. SNL still rocks if you have kept up with the contemporary scene and I think I have and I am 64 years old so man like get hip or quit!
32 - Whitney
SNL hasn't been funny for the past 3 years, sure it has it's moments but those are few and far between. It can be summed up like this: Great cast, bad material.
I myself have since went to the dark side and starting watching Mad TV. Mad TV sketches may not be as "dry" or "mature" as SNL, but at least Mad TV has the balls to go further and knows when a sketch needs to die rather than let it drag on like SNL.
I think SNL lost me when they went overboard with their political Kerry/Bush sketches. They weren't funny, they dragged on too long, and The Daily Show with John Stewart is much superior in the political humor department than SNL is.
33 - T
SNL has been so awful for so long now, but the past year and a half has hit lows so bad that some are even looking back on the Will Ferrell years as being funny in comparison (they weren't).
Virtually every cast member comes across with a smug attitude that screams "I am hilarious", when in fact there's nothing funny about any of them. Just as well that the writing is terrible, because none of these performers could pull it off if it were.
This show is ripe for cancellation, and I don't buy the idea that the show goes through up and down cycles; this show has been devoid of laughter for years. The Daily Show and MadTV have surpassed SNL. At the very least, chuck Lorne and the cast out, trim down the length of the show, restrict the musical guest to one song, lay off getting untalented young flavor-of-the-week actors and musicians to guest on the thing and get some quality control focused on that program. Anyone at NBC Studios who still thinks this show is putting out decent sketches is deluding themselves.
34 - HW Saxton
Outside of the odd funny sketch now and
again, S.N.L has been in the toilet for
more years than I care to remember.
It seems to function mainly as bullpen
for up and coming comedians.Most of whom
turn out to be of very limited comedic
ability once they are removed from the
realm of three minute skits.
35 - Hugo René de Luna Castro
Ever since Tina Fey took charge in the writting process, it all went to hell from that point on.
What does she think with those stupid jokes? They're not funny!
Take Tina out of SNL! She's tearing it apart!
36 - Cerulean
The writing does suck. It's also adolescent and misogynist. The problem is producer/creator Lorne Michaels. I gather that he's gynophobic gay male with some missing pieces. It's time for him to be fired. Females have had a hard time on the show. In the past he explained a preponderance of male performers (which they had then) by saying that there just weren't talented females around. Right. The scripts about female guest hosts are usually degrading and juvenile. There's often a connection between this kind of mindset and a lack of talent. This type of climate can repell talent, or, in the case of SNL, I'm guessing they actively exclude people who have better things to offer, like intelligent female writers and the more politically outspoken female performers. Nora Dunn quit in disgust years ago over the appearance of a particularly misogynist comic. The employment of more than their share of ditzy, non-political, non-threatening female performers over the years is designed to provide an appearance of inclusion while insuring innocuous content from women and the isolation of the perpetrators from any real feedback. Think about it. How many seminal male comedians came through SNL but what about females? Anyone like Roseanne, Margaret Cho?
The character of a magazine or a TV show can come down to the preferences and limitations of one person. In this case it's Lorne Michaels. He sucks. Time to fire Lorne Michaels.
37 - Joe
The show would be funnier if the cast would learn their lines instead of reading the teleprompter all the time. It kills the comic timing and it's lazy.
38 - Nicolette Rivers
Roseanne did host SNL.
Tina Fey, with the backing of Michaels, was one of the main creative people behind Mean Girls
That being said, there is much proof that SNL is unfair to the female talent.
39 - Rude
SNL will never be the same and I always enjoyed the past better than the present. I’m very open to today’s SNL, but I don’t think you’ll see many stars out of the current cast like some of those in the past.
40 - Rodney Welch
Yeah -- where are the Garrett Morrises, the Laraine Newmans, the Tony Rosatos and Joe Piscopos of tomorrow?
41 - Barbie
nice to be seen
42 - Bob A. Booey
Yeah, the show sucks. Tina Fey's smart, but she's writing the show for 13 year old girls.
Does it really annoy anyone else that Will Ferrell made more than anyone in Hollywood this year? $40 million freaking dollars and the guy has never proven he's a box office hit. I think "Old School" might have made him a hot commodity to try and get the mythical 14-year old boy moviegoer who will see a movie 8 times, but Will's never proven he's worth the $20 million a year he's getting now. And he's just not very funny.
I have a lot of the same problems with Jimmy Fallon, but he's not making $40 million a year.
That is all.
43 - Stephen
The show needs to go off the air. SNL is TERRIBLE this year, not funny at all. There are no laughs. And the cast--including Fallon, Poehler, etc. are lame.
The entire cast, all of them, need to be fired and a real producer, not an "executive producer" needs to find 12 people and put them on one-season contracts. The same goes with the writing, which is abysmal.
Either do that or pull SNL and give us all a rest. Belushi & co. must be turning over in their graves.
44 - DJRadiohead
Replace "AGAIN" with "STILL" and you have the right idea.
45 - Al Barger
Stephen, I see that your comment is dated for today, but you don't seem to be responding to the actual show. For starters, Fallon has not been on the cast for awhile now, and there's only been one show so far this season.
It doesn't sound like you even watched it. You're just looking for an excuse for nay saying. In fact, this season opener was outstanding, and sketch for sketch would go up against most of the stuff from the classic 70s cast. For starters, the characterizations of President Bush are much more funnier and more nuanced than Chevy Chase doing Ford.
46 - Eric
Earth to TV critics and magazine writers:
Tina Fey sucks. Jimmy Fallon sucks. Will Farrell sucks. They collectively have the comic caliber of someone that should be booed off the stage in Branson, MO. Please please please stop keeping their careers afloat with bad movies and shows.
47 - FerrelKiller
Will ferrel is a talentless screen filler (I will not call him actor out of respect for real actors). Same old stupid crap every movie, this guy has as much depth as a piece of tissue paper. I find that people who like his requrgitated "humor" are either 1) children or 2) adults who are as mature as children. Come on people you going to stand in front of me and say elf was funny? talladega nights? Blades of Boredom? Save yourself the embarassment that he wont himself.
48 - Had enough
Okay, so this article was posted originally seven years ago from 2008, and just to inform you all
The SHOW SUCKS, still
Yes, I had it good and remember the golden age of SNL and all the great Skits of the 90's, but please -- FIRE TINA FEY. She is NOT funny. If she is the head writer and responsible for the crap, fire her. Also, Lorn Michaels may once have been a genius, but he seems to be losing touch -- FIRE HIM. He has lost his edge in his old age.
I just watched the Obama Sketch 2008, and it was terrible. These writers have no clue how to make funny sketch scene, and instead let scenes drag on. I'm not comedian, but I know when a scene should end, and this crap that have and are trying to pass off as comedy is just -- CRAP.
I think one of the main reasons this pile of junk is still on the air is because people still have respect for the Institution of SNL, not the show itself. "Oh, wow, it's SNL," some pundit says. "Yes, they are so cutting edge."
Yeah maybe in 1995 or 1985.
Will Ferrel may be disliked, and I even find him annoying from time to time, and over rated, but he jumped ship at the right time, because this pile of turkey has been sucking since the beginning of the 21st century, and as long as FEY is the head writer, it's should keep sucking for another decade or so.
I hate Mad TV, too, but they are a lot better at sketch comedy, NOW, than SNL has been in years, and I think Mad TV is pretty much crap, too.
49 - Anon
1947 eh? Where did you come up with that? The show started on October 11, 1975.
50 - Santa
Jimmy Fallon sucks!