Ian McKellen had a part in the skit Weekend Update. He was imitating an old British actress predicting the Oscar winners. When mentioned who would win for Best Supporting Actor, the “actress” said Ian McKellen, of course. Throughout her predictions, she was flirting with Jimmy Fallon. At the end, when it was time to go, she kissed Jimmy.
Ian also had a part in other skits, one of them being an ad for a Broadway show.
Last Friday’s show was a rerun. Next new show will be April 6.
Those Comedy Central “fun size” reruns buttress my long-held notion that Saturday Night Live needs to contract by a half-hour. That gets rid of a whole bunch of weak sketches and produces a pretty solid show.
Pack O’ Assgoblins? :eek: Sounds like some sort of heavy metal Celtic group.
If we’re ever at the same party why don’t you let me pick the music? 
Marc
Can’t get me to disagree here. Kattan is one of those few trick ponies where he mostly gets by on “annoying guy annoys people” which gets boring as all get out very quickly. And that’s what most of the other characters in the other sketches do too.
There is hope. Amy Poehler is from the Upright Citizens Brigade and I’ve always liked her. She can stay too. She did a good Tanya Harding on Weekend Update.
BTW, good site. I think it’s new http://snl.jt.org/index.phtml
Side note: Wierd fact! There has only been 1 cast member with a last name that started with ‘J’ and it’s not Jones or Johnson. But there have been 2 cast members whose last name started with Q. Anyway amazing site, check it out.
Chris Kattan I think was the replacement for Rob Schneider, and he actually manages to be LESS funny than Schneider. I cannot for the life of me figure out what they saw in either one of these hacks!!! Do they just need a weird looking short guy with dark hair in the cast or something??
As for musical guests, I miss the days of having lesser known acts on the show–Leon Redbone, anyone?? I will never forget seeing the Talking Heads on the show when I was in 7th grade–I was transfixed watching David Byrne do “Take Me to the River”. I also believe they had Mariah Carey perform when she was virtually unknown and she turned in some of the better vocal performances of her career on SNL. Now they go for the current pop “musician” of the minute. I couldn’t stand watching when they had Destiny’s Child “perform”.
I really think the main reason the show is still on is the familiarity of it. It really is an institution. Cancelling it would almost be like cancelling the baseball season or something (Hey, that’s not a bad idea!!!)
I miss Joe Piscopo.
I dunno…sometimes.
But I thought he looked totally hot in the goth talk things.
Maybe I just like goths…
I seem to remember seeing on VH1 that the band Counting Crows performed there before they even had their first album out, and that’s really what made them big. VH1 IMHO still has some cool shows, although I hate to see the good ones on the same network as** Pack O’ Assgoblins **. It’s a sort of guilt by association.
Most of the show is forgettable, and the last half-hour in particular is almost always a crap-fest. But there ARE good points to the current cast.
<ul><li>Darrel Hammond is a very talented impressionist - IMO he’s as good as Phil Hartman on that score. (Certainly his Clinton was better than Hartman’s.)</li>
<li>Will Ferrell is also a solid performer who has a lot of comic range. People talk about great SNL cast members like Belushi and Eddie Murphy, and they forget that those “star” cast members always - ALWAYS - played themselves as filtered through a costume. Ferrell, on the other hand, disappears into the characters he plays. Plus, his Dubya is a delight and the one good thing about Bush stealing the election.</li>
<li><i>Weekend Update</i> is better than it’s been in YEARS. Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon have good chemistry and the “news” items feature some really tight, funny writing like W.U. hasn’t seen since the Dennis Miller days. (BTW, does anyone know how Tina got that scar? Just curious)</LI></ul>
I agree that the music usually sucks, but not always. Alicia Keys was on recently and blew me aWAY.
Aw, darn it!
Can a moderator PLEASE change my HTML tags to vB code?
Please?
Mr. Peepers makes me ill. I have to mute the tv for it (same with Goat Boay)…
Mango got old a long time ago.
Who the hell put Colin Quinn on TV>?!?!?!?
Opal, at least he is not doing Weekend Update any more.
“Goat Boy” remains the single most irritating recurring character ever on SNL, but Kattan’s “Gibberish Guy” is not far behind. Is there ever an actual joke in any of those sketches? Every single one is him saying “KaSEEM narang, naRANG, gottago chREE, h’sup. Golla? Golla good! Go!” and the other characters staring at him in bewilderment. This is comedy?
Mango is funny not for Kattan himself, but for the actors they get to fall deeply and madly in love with him. I can’t look at Garth Brooks, Samuel L. Jackson or Ben Affleck any more and not think of them screaming “MANGO!”
“Mr. Peepers” is just a series of actions: yelling “BAHP!”, looking around rapidly, eathing an apple Cookie monster-style and finally the humping. It’s not funny by itself, but only in context. for example, Kevin Spacey managed to keep a sketch going because he was deadly serious throughout, while Kattan slobbered all over Ferrel. The Rock as Mr. Peeper’s father was amusing, as was Jennifer Aniston doing a “Sex and the City” spoof.
Kattan isn’t funny enough to carry a premise by himself. At best, he can do schtick while good writing and other actors carry the ball. When those are absent, you may as well count the cricket chirps, 'cause there ain’t gonna be any laughing to drown them out. “Corky Romano” is Exhibit A.
Incidentally, the single best season of SNL was 1983-84.
Yeah, that’s what I thought at first. Then I bought their latest CD, and they…well, think “Rage Against the Machine lyrics sung by MC Hammer, but with a Ska beat”. I think that about describes it.
Their duet with Connie Dover kicked unholy ass, however.
Well, it’s almost universal - Darrell Hammond is exquisite, and Chris Kattan is creepy. So why is Kattan all over the place, and Darrell Hammond is a rarity, even on SNL itself?
But I think I stand alone when I say I think Tina Fey is creepy, too.
‘That goat is weird! He has devil eyes!’
Well, screw it all to hell and back. I like Chris Kattan. There, I said it.
I like him. I think he’s terribly funny. I think Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Darrell Hammond, and Will Ferrell are all funny. I like the new girl too…the Latin girl who reminds me of Rae Dawn Chong. Very funny. Honestly, I think the show’s funnier than it’s been in a long time.
Goat Boy sucked ass.
Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, and David Spade are sorely missed.
Here comes something else I’ll probably get slammed for: Chris Farley sucked. The “I live in a van down by the river” skit was always hilarious, and of course the Chippendale’s skit with Patrick Swayze was masterful, but for the most part, I couldn’t stand him.
Belushi? Yuck. Drunken slobbering oaf. No thank you. I’m sure my Gen X card will get taken away for saying it, but I don’t care.
Wow. I like Chris Kattan. Guess I can be a pariah with shrew. I HATE Jimmy Fallon. He seems on the verge of cracking up no matter what skit he’s in, which while it can be entertaining is also really unprofessional and bugs the hell out of me. I also find his delivery on Weekend Update to be monotonous and boring, though not nearly as bad as Colin Quinn was. I miss Dennis Miller’s Weekend Update. Love Rachel Dratch, love Tina Fey (but what the hell is that scar?? It bugs me!), can handle Will Ferrell in teeny doses – what I love best about him is that he almost never loses his composure, but is really good at making everyone else crack. But he’s just too creepy for me. Hate Tracy Morgan, who does too much “HEY I’M THE TOKEN BLACK GUY!!” stuff, much more so than Tim Meadows ever did. Like Horatio Sanz because he can do stuff beyond “HEY I’M THE TOKEN FAT GUY!!” which Chris Farley never seemed to be able to break from. Darrell Hammond is pure genius on toast. Maya Rudolph cracks me up, but Ana Gasteyer is definitely beginning to wear out her welcome (am I the only one who thinks she’s REALLY creepy-looking?). I’m not at all impressed by the new cast. The show really sucks lately, I can’t argue with that. Poo. I confess to being stunned that Ian McKellan did the show – and what a fantastic job, too! If they can attract high-
profile actors like that, they still have a reason to be on. I think it’s great to see people poke fun of themselves like that. The hosts make the show, IMHO.
My favourite recurring skit is the Dratch/Fallon pair from Massachusetts. Being a MA native myself I can appreciate both how perfect the accents are and how many inside jokes they fit in to the sketches (the episode with Jonny Mosley, for example, had them on Mt. Wachusett, a ski resort in MA – how many people outside of MA would’ve gotten that?). I also like the Dratch/Ferrell old lecherous couple. I like Mr. Peepers and Mango. Chris Kattan is a physical comedian along the lines of Jim Carrey and I am kinda impressed by him. [sub]Please don’t kill me.[/sub]
Goat Boy was atrocious, as was everything from that chunk of time. Have you noticed that the show seems to go in five-year cycles? Five good years, five HORRENDOUS years, five good years… I don’t know what phase they’re in right now. The best years so far were with Myers, Carvey, Miller, Nealon, Jackson, Hooks, &c. Circa 1990, I suppose.
That was so rambling. Oh well.
Chris Kattan has made me laugh exactly once. That was during his sketch with Sting, when he was auditioning to be one of Sting’s back-up dancers.
I can’t really explain why it was so funny, but to this day when I think about it, I can’t help but laugh. Maybe it was just Sting’s total look of surprise and disgust?
one vote for “his characters suck real bad (especially the garbled-guy and mr. peepers), but he might be a nice guy as far as i know”.