I always record SNL so I can fast-forward through a lot of the skits, as well as the guest host’s lame efforts at comedy (although I recognize the writing has a lot to do with it). I have always thought that the host portion was weak; actors seem uncomfortable being themselves and (IMO) the skit comes across as stilted and amateurish, so I normally fast forward through the host business. But I was interested in seeing Gaborey as host, and was pleasantly surprised. It was refreshing. A large black woman who seemed quite confident leading a small song and dance production. Plus, she did well in all of the skits (even though most of them weren’t funny). SNL needs to get away from the idea that the celebrity/star of the moment is all you need, and go with someone who can let it all hang out and actually entertain the audience. Just because someone is a good actor, singer, dancer, whatever on a pre-recorded sit-com doesn’t mean they can do comedy successfully before a live audience.
I actually tuned in as well, just because Gaborey was the host. Mind you, I have not yet seen “Precious”, but liked Gaborey in all of her TV interviews - she just seems like a happy person who is fully aware of her great luck and is having fun with it.
She was OK - for someone with a limited scope of experience. But what struck me the most is how badly SNL is slipping - man, I can remember when that show had one funny skit after another, and great characters popping up all over the place. Now - it is really boring. When I think how everyone in my dorm would hang out together and watch the show before heading out on a Saturday night - they have really gone downhill.
The next time I watch SNL will be Betty White on the May 8th show. Otherwise, this was a painful reminder of how bad SNL has become.
I agree! I remember SNL with Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Billy Crystal, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dana Carvey, etc., etc. I record SNL, but fast forward through lots of it. It seems hit and miss – frequently, the very first skit is funny, especially with Fred Armisen as President Obama, but last night’s was a snooze.
Back in my day, SNL was full of jokes about Reagan and that’s how I liked it! NOW GET OFF MAH LAWN!!!111
Ok, but really: I thought it was hilarious. Gabby is great- as always (her enthusiasm and just being genuinely stoked about being there made it for me). Hader and Sandberg were funny. Weekend Update got several LOLs from me.
PS: As a 24 year old, I find most of those old SNLs with Belushi et al not very funny at all. Probably because I don’t get the political jokes, but that’s neither here nor there.
Yeah, SNL has slipped since “the good old days” (whichever decade you take that to mean) but I want to give credit to the guest host. I thought she did a great job with the lame material.
I grant that I’m only in my late twenties, but I feel like I’ve never heard people talk about how the current iteration of SNL is very good. It’s always worse than it used to be, and this was true when my peers were talking about it in eighth grade (at least fifteen years ago).
Here’s a thread from earlier today:
This was a bad episode. Gaborey isn’t good enough for live television, and the skits pretty clearly were designed to keep her on the side. Which is fine - SNL is doing a much better job of that lately (sorry, Sycorax - I disagree with you there), and focus on the ensemble. But they reverted to their overly long drawn out skits in able to give Gaborey just a small portion of each.
I thought the Steve Harvey sketch was fantastic, the digital short always delivers, weekend update was great again (that Bill Hader character is hysterical), but the public servant debacle was horrible.
Did they not have a monologue with the host? I’m watching it online and they went from the opening credits to the Suze Ormon sketch.
The three guests on Weekend Update were funny. Gaborey Sibide wasn’t that great live, but the skit where she was yelling out the window had its moments.
There was a monologue - it was pretty good. It was about how everyone confuses her with Precious the character, and everyone lavishes pity on her for the terrible stuff Precious went through. She sang in that as well - weird that it’s not online.
The song they sang was to the tune of “It’s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)”. My guess is they weren’t able to secure the rights to re-broadcast it.
OT: Is there ever a season that has not been called the “worst ever?” I enjoy SNL, but get tired of the folks saying tha6t this is the year the plug should be pulled. Ten years later, they look back on the season as having one of the greatest casts, with the most memorable skits. No show is more subject to the nostalgia filter as SNL is.
My actual impression is that the rebroadcast is always funnier. What always happens in the live shows is that one crappy skit will ruin the momentum. The rebroadcast will leave that one out. And, of course, if show completely tanks, it won’t be rebroadcast.
SNL was NEVER as good as ppl remember it. I watched it when it first came on the air, and watched it faithfully for more than a decade(and caught about half the episodes every season from there on). There were good skits, bad skits, mediocre skits. I watched it because it, on balance, was worth it. OK, there were some skits that were side-splittingly funny (Dan Ackroyd as Julia Child, Eddie Murphy’s “James Brown’s Hollywood hot tub”), but I contend it was never start-to-finish uniformly great, or even good. It had it’s moments, and that made it worth watching.
“I’m old, and SNL isn’t as funny as when I was in high school / college”
-Everyone between ages 20 and 50
I think people do tend to suffer from selective memory when recalling years past. SNL has always been pretty hit-or-miss.
After George Carlin died, NBC re-broadcast the show he hosted in the first season in its entirety. I was surprised at how slow-paced it seemed and how infrequent the laughs were.
Not that I’m putting down the early years. A lot of outstanding, classic material came from that original cast – but everybody has forgotten the mediocre filler, which has been there from the start. Though the funny-to-filler ratio has fluctuated, you can find some great stuff and some lame stuff in nearly every season.
That said, I personally think the current cast is actually one of the strongest they’ve ever had. They’re a bunch of very funny individuals who work quite well together, and I still get a lot of laughs out of the show most weeks. Their biggest weaknesses are not knowing when to end a sketch and their over-reliance on recurring characters, and neither of those is anything new to this cast.
Yeah. The nature of SNL - A series of unrelated skits - allows people to selectively remember the good ones and forget the bad ones. Plus, all the best-of specials and DVDs reinforce the memory that SNL used to be a series of awesome skits back to back to back.
It’s not like that now and it’s never been like that. However, the haters will always wish for the good ole days. I think this cast will be remembered fondly in the years to come. It’s pretty strong.
Many people say the 80-81 season was by far the worst ever. That was the first year after all the big names like Akroyd, Belushi, etc. left. Also Lorne Michaels left from 80-85. The cast in 80-81 was a bunch of unknowns most of whom never did much after that.
I’ve watched since the beginning. It was never a laugh riot all the way through.
As for last week’s the digital short with the cherries was uproariously funny. When Samberg is funny, he is really, really funny.
As were the sketch comedy shows people remember as being “so much better than Saturday Night Live” - Fridays, In Living Color, Mad TV, Not Necessarily the News, The State, and so on.
A bunch of old Fridays skits have been reappearing on Youtube in recent months, and upon viewing them, I think “I remember that as being funnier than the skits on SNL?” They did have edgier musical guests, though; more West Coast-ish new wave, punk and hard rock compared to the more East Coast-oriented folk rock, soft rock, R&B and pop on SNL. I remember watching the musical guests on Fridays, as opposed to flipping the channel or taking a bathroom break when a musical guest appeared on SNL.
I watched this episode to see Gaboure Sidibe, largely because I have not seen Precious and I wanted to see if she was actually talented or if Precious was just a one shot deal. It may be unfair to judge her based on this one show, and live TV is an entirely different beast than film, of course, but I thought she was simply awful. If she was just nervous, ok, that’s perfectly understandable. But when was the last time a host blew a line in every single skit they were in, while reading every single line off a teleprompter? Did she even go to rehearsal? She wasn’t even convincing in the final skit when she was playing herself!
I’ll give her one more chance in her new TV series. Like I said, live TV isn’t for everyone - but so far I am not impressed.