This was awful. I’m a big fan of SNL, thanks in part to having spent years at a job that had me sitting alone in an office with a TV and not much to do at that hour. And this was TERRIBLE. Not least because I loathe everything about Dane Cook.
I really did like the creative meta-approach of the water-bottles, though. It went from dreadful, to over-long, to funny because it was over-long, to conscious of being funny because it was over-long. Like a Family Guy sketch with an added level of self-awareness.
I’m surprised at how much the loss of Rachel Dratch (for whom I never thought I cared much) has weakened the cast.
This is the second time I’ve heard this term in a week, the first was on Studio 60. What, exactly, is a “cold open”. Hollywoodspeak is like a foriegn language to me. I wish they’d just speak English.
Although the show apparently has a problem with basic math – they celebrated their 25th anniversary at the beginning of the 25th season, in September 1999. At the same time that all the “news” sources were pretending the 20th century was about to end, SNL apparently couldn’t subtract 1975 from 1999 correctly. Frustrating time for me.
Watched about half the show last night, and lost interest. Actually didn’t recognize Dane Cook clean-shaven at first.
So true. I’ve been thinking about that, and what it means.
The monologue on the opening night of a new season of SNL, a season overshadowed by two shows on its own network that will be making fun of the show’s decline, an opening night that everyone in Hollywood will be watching closely, a monologue done by the supposedly hottest young comedian around, got a laugh or two. From the studio audience.
Think about that. Dan Rather could have come out and received more than a laugh or two from an opening night audience, primed (pun) and ready to explode into laughter. A loser off the Last Comic Standing could have killed in such a spot. Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson could have made Abbott and Costello blush with inadequacy.
But Dane Cook manages a routine so exquisitely and extraordinarily unfunny that it gets “a laugh or two.”
He should get out of show business now. Forever. He’s a disgrace to the profession.
It was definitely up and down. The Clinton and Rice thing for Weekend Update was just…ehh. Dane Cook is definitely not my favorite. I don’t know if he should just quit, because, as it’s been pointed out, he does have some good comedic timing. I see him going the way of the Sandler: not funny by himself, not even funny movies, but he’s going to make gobs of money because someone thinks he’s funny.
I remember arguing with some old friends in New York about Dane Cook. I watched one of his standup specials and might have giggled a couple times. They thought it was funny. I told them all that he wasn’t funny and they’d see it when they weren’t as drunk or high. Therefore, his targeted audience is stoners and drunks.
Thae guy’s Pacino was…odd. He certainly looked nothing like Pacino, yet his voice was dead on. One of those things where you’d have to be out of the room to appreciate…or do what I did…and hold your hand over the right half of the tv screen where he was.
I liked the water bottle bit. It drug on too long, but that might have been part of it. Surreal, definitely. Sadly, that might have been the best sketch on the show. How much would it take to lure Mike Myers, Norm MacDonald, Will Ferrell, and Cheri Oteri back?
I also get the feeling that the loss of Tina Fey might be a crippling blow to SNL unless they get a winfall of very good, very young, funny writing.
Dunno about purposely, but from past experience, the first episode of the season has very often been weak. They seem to need awhile to find their groove, or something.
I thought it was pretty funny, overall. The cold open was weak, and the first half of Dane’s monologue was quite poor, but the monologue, and the show as a whole, definitely got better. The water bottles sketch was quite funny, and Brian Williams was hilarious. The homeland security thing was pretty good.
Basically, it was 30 minutes of funny in a 90 minute show, which I’m OK with, given how much of the 90 minutes is ads and musical guests. Sometimes, SNL is only 5 minutes of funny in a 90 minute show, and that’s when it’s really as bad as people say it is.
Really? What did he do? Almost everyone in “Live from New York” mentioned awful behavior by him each time he returned, yet he was still asked back. I’m curious as to what crossed the line.
Apparently he spent the entire week verbally berating the cast and crew. Since then, his only appearance was at the 25th anniversary show when everyone was invited back.
There’s no way there was more than five minutes of funny last night, and five might be generous (maybe if you count the ENTIRE time water bottles are falling out of the closet). To be fair, I was completely sober at the time because I had done the driving earlier in the evening, so they had to work a little harder than usual to make me laugh… but really, I don’t even know that they got that close
He is the actual, real-life anchor of the NBC Nightly News.
