Actually SNL is an hour and a half, which could be part of the problem. I’ve long thought they should cut it back to one hour. Keep the fake news segment, the two music slots, the Digital Shorts, the fake commercials and add two or three of the best sketch ideas of that week. They just use too many weak sketches to fill the time. Less quantity might equal more quality.
They could go back to their roots and concentrate more on music. The first shows had two or more musical guests.
At least once in the hour and a half would have been an improvement.
And they also forget how many of the early cast’s skits bombed. The skits you don’t see in the “Best Of” compilations. When I see the old shows, even the “Best Ofs”, they don’t seem as funny to me as the better new shows. My sense of humor has changed.
I thought Weekend Update was funny last night and I enjoyed Rihanna’s sets. I like the idea of pairing R&B/urban/hip hop vocals and a rock band. She’s easy on the eyes also, IMHO. The digital short thing was funny-ish and she did a good job with it.
The show a couple weeks ago with the guy from “Third Rock” was good too.
NBC is about as likely to cancel Saturday Night Live as it is Today and the Tonight Show. I think that fact has been apparent since the show recovered from its mid 90s doldrums. When Lorne Michaels retires, he’ll just anoint a successor to take over the show and it will go on as long as the network exists.
As for last night’s show, I think they should’ve opened with the Tiger Woods sketch and put the Obama/gatecrashers on later if only for the sake of mixing things up. I believe that with the exception of just one episode, every SNL this season has opened with an Obama-centric sketch.
1.) As mentioned, it’s relatively cheap, and it hits a much liked demographic.
2.) I’ve seen worse from SNL. I actually laughed a few times last night.
3.) SNL replaced The Saturday Tonight Show – reruns of The Tonight Show. SNL has to be better than that*.
4.) NBC has had a comedy show with an ensemble cast, blackout sketches, and a fake “newscast” making fun of current events since long before SNL. First it was That was the Week That Was, then it was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. If they dropped SNL, I’d bet they would eventually resurrect yetanother comedy with an ensemble cast, blackout sketches, and a hack newscast poking fun at current events.
*Although, when it first deuted, SNL alternated with Weekend, a sort of “60 Minutes on Acid” hosted by Llloyd Dobbins and the luscious Linda Ellerbee. I loved that show, and was sorry to see it go. If NBC replaced SNL with something like Weekend, I wouldn’t mind at all. But probably lots of other people would.
Hmm. SNL finally starts poking fun at Obama regularly. SDMB thread about cancellation posted. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
FTR, with very rare exceptions, I think SNL hasn’t been funny for decades.
I do watch it very occasionally. I see supposedly hilarious routines described here. And I see supposedly the funniest clips on YouTube. And I don’t think any of that is worth watching. So how good could the rest be?
(And CNN presents a program DEBUNKING ONE OF SNL’S COMEDY SKETCHES ABOUT OBAMA, for fuck’s sake!!! Has any news show EVER done that?)
What I don’t get is people who come in and say, “It’s not funny” like that is some kind of objective truth. If I say I thought it was funny and you say it is not, what are you saying, that I was faking my laughter? It’s not funny…to you. Obviously it is funny to others, like the people who told you to watch the YouTube clip because they thought it was (wait for it) funny.
A 60 minute show would be better since the weakest skits would be gone. Carson did 90 minutes for a long while but cut back to 60 minutes which he said made the show much better.
Wow, this board skews old.
Teenagers eat up SNL these days; “dick in a box” and “I’m on a boat” are the biggest catchphrases of the last few years. I think I’ve outgrown the show’s humor too, but it’s not going anywhere so long as it generates buzz among the young white male demographic.
The alternation benefited SNL rather dramatically by giving them a week off to recharge and come up with good ideas. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report both benefit from two weeks on, one week off.
And I agree, Weekend was great, as was the later Overnight.
“Dick in a Box” was hilarious. Maybe they should just cut the show down to 60 minutes as was suggested. Maybe get rid of the musical acts as well.
Say what now? They might benefit from four shows a week instead of five, but I don’t think they do two weeks on, one week off.
Yes, but The Daily Show does political and media-related humor much better four nights a week than SNL manages in its one night a week.
I checked Wikipedia, andit claims they work 42 weeks a year, so you’re right. I suppose my perception was thrown off by the more frequent breaks during the holidays.
Maybe they should just give Andy Samburg and Lonley Island their own show?
Now there’s an idea, but what would they call it…
The point of SNL is not quality. It’s irrelevant whether a show is GOOD or not; what matters is if it’s profitable. And the hidden side of TV shows is cost.
Exhibit A: “Rome” was an immensely good show that got cut short. Why? Too expensive, even with good ratings.
Exhibit B: All reality shows. Almost all of them are repetitive, mindless shit. But they stay on; “Big Brother” has been on for years despite being absolutely retarded. Why? It’s cheap. Even mildly successful ratings generate far more in ad revenue than the show costs.
SNL’s VERY cheap to produce. The cost of production is very low, and the actors aren’t paid much. It has effectively no competititon. I can’t foresee any circumstance whereby it wouldn’t be profitable. And the only reason a profitable show would ever be cancelled is if the show’s key players wanted to quit - cf. Home Improvement, which was cancelled solely because Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson got tired of doing it.
But SNL has no primary players. When a Mike Myers or an Eddie Murphy leaves they just hire some other promising comedian or Second City player, and they carry on for better or for worse.
So I cannot see why the show would ever be cancelled.
I thought the “man with a lady wig” sketch was hilarious and then today, during the Saints game, I saw the actual commercial they were making fun of and I thought the actual commercial was even funnier.
If I hadn’t seen it on SNL, I might’ve looked at the dude in the commercial and said “WTF?” but then I would have ignored the rest of the commercial.
Saturday Night Live is a show that HAS to be watched with one finger on the FF button on the tivo remote. I have a good sense of telling when a sketch is going to be horribly bad, and some of the recurring ones (Gilly, Target, the Techno talk show, the Digital Shorts) I will immediately skip ahead on. Also, more often than not, the music guest is someone I hate. It usually takes about 20 minutes for me to watch an episode.
Anyway, as bad as the show is, what else is NBC gonna air at midnight on Saturday? As long as there’s a crew willing to make the show, I don’t expect it to go anywhere.