Hammond quit the show but he still shows up now and then for guest appearances.
I think it’s that “Hollywood” just doesn’t like fat chicks. There have certainly been fat men in the cast, and your argument about the limitations on the characters they can play still stands.
Sam Stone, since you’ve been watching regularly since the start, let me ask you this - do you think that people remember the previous years of SNL more fondly because they have been re-packaged in to “best of” moments, and if you actually sat down and watched shows as a whole you’d find them to not be so good?
I’ve been a fan of Monty Python forever, and had seen a LOT of the sketches. I’d even read many books about the show and sketches. Then, when I finally got the complete Flying Circus boxed set and watched the entire run of the show as full episodes, I realized that, as a whole, the show was about 60% “the funniest shit ever” and 40% “I can’t wait til this sketch is over.”
I’m wondering if that might be the case for SNL, too. Everyone remembers the bits of the shows that were funny but forgets the un-funny parts - 35 years worth - that made up the rest of each episode. And, packaging the funny bits for sale or for TV specials just helps fuel the idea that SNL is a funny show. Except when it’s un-funny.
Seems like every season/cast has its low spots that get discussed while the show is current, but then 20 years later we’ll all be “Yeah but they did ‘Dick in a Box!’” … which is sort of how I feel now about Ed Grimley 
That is exactly the case. I have a few early SNL seasons (including the first ones) on DVD, and you’d be amazed how sucky some of those shows are. Everyone raves nostalgic about the first episode with George Carlin, completely forgetting the ten minutes of torture from some no-name female comic with an awful schtick about being a schoolteacher. Or all the 15-minuter hosts over the years, with the acting and monologue skills of a barking sea lion.
For every Bumble-Bees, Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood, Wayne’s World and Wuddup Wit Dat, there have been ten skits that are relegated to the garbage pile of sketch comedy history, never to be aired again except on heavily-edited reruns on Bravo or some shit.
And I strongly suspect that this level of consistent mediocrity - broken up with flashes of funniness and relevance - is what has kept the show on the air for so long.
If it were even possible to make it consistently funny, it would long ago have pissed someone off badly enough to send it to cancellation-land.
Meh. Who says the ladies can’t just do drag? Or play public figures smaller than themselves. When Keenan’s playing Tiger Woods and multiple cast members are pretending to be Chinese, all bets are off.
ETA Good to see people pointing out that the ‘golden years’ were anything but. I was forced to watch entire early episodes as a kid and I thought they were pretty horrible, even the quotable stuff.
Meh. There’s examples like Keenan as Tiger, and also, who says she needs to be able to do impressions? She’s a chick. She can play any random chick they need in an sketch. I don’t think people see her on screen and automatically start waiting for her size to be the joke.
It’s totally random, but his impression of Keith Morrison (from Dateline NBC) is one of the best things that I have seen on SNL for ages.
Of course, I realise that I am one of only 19 people in the known universe who has any idea who the mollyfock Keith Morrison is, so I suppose there is not a lot of broad appeal to that bit…
ETA—Bill Hader’s Vincent Price’s Specials are often pretty funny, but they are hit or miss.
I’ve been watching from the beginning as well. The problem is, and always has been, Lorne Michaels and his unholy need to turn recurring character sketches into movies.
You mean the Jean Doumanian season. But the 1981 season, the one where Michael O’Donohue was head writer, was actually one of their very best seasons. He demanded that the writers actually produce good work and killed off recurring characters like Velvet Jones and (memorably) Buckwheat to keep them from getting lazy and turning in the same sketch over and over again.
For his trouble, O’Donohue was trashed in Tom Shale’s unspeakably lazy book by those same slacker writers after he was dead and couldn’t defend himself. Oh, so he made you work hard and would tear up shitty, lazy sketches? Poor fucking babies!
Will Ferrel is (obviously IMO) definitively unfunny, and the “Cheerleader” sketches were the absolute nadir of the show.
Honestly, I’ve never laughed at anything Will Ferrell has ever done. He’s one of those people like Martin Short who has the makings of a decent dramatic actor but perversely insists on trying to do comedy and failing miserably.
The “digital shorts”, though often funny, have nothing to do with the “live” part of the show’s name.
Hell, when they aired older SNL episodes on cable, they’re cut from an hour and half to just one hour, so the worst 1/3 of every episode is only aired once or twice on NBC and then disappears from the public consciousness.
Actually, it wasn’t always the least funny stuff that got cut. The editor would keep the recurring character stuff and tended to cut a lot of the actually innovative stuff that would get pushed to the last 30 minutes of the show.
So true, Sam. That, and that the original cast and the first seasons were the best ever. Nope. I’ve seen a lot of 1970s SNL that just made me go “meh”.
IMO, Fey, Meyers, and Poehler ruined Weekend Update by doing away with the deadpan delivery. The whole point of that segment was to hear absurdities rendered as news-anchor profundities. For them to be laughing at their own jokes throughout the sketch destroys the mood.
I’m pretty sure he’s on only every now and then. Though I gave up watching the show every week.