SNL:Gaborey Sidibe host

[msmith537]

@The_Second_Stone

As for last week’s the digital short with the cherries was uproariously funny. When Samberg is funny, he is really, really funny.

I have no idea why that was funny, but it was freakin hilareous.

The Weekend Update guest going on about Girl Scout cookies was pretty funny too. Surprising that no one else ever adopted their business model where you could only buy their product from a weird army of little girls in beretts and sashes if you work in the same office as one of their moms.

[Wheelz]

@msmith537

The Weekend Update guest going on about Girl Scout cookies was pretty funny too. Surprising that no one else ever adopted their business model where you could only buy their product from a weird army of little girls in beretts and sashes if you work in the same office as one of their moms.

I also like that the writer (John Mulaney) appeared on-air to deliver the commentary rather than handing it off to one of the cast. This reminded me of when Don Novello and A. Whitney Brown used to do that sort of thing. Cool.

[anu-la1979]

I thought the Cherry Battle (digital short), the Steve Harvey sketch, the monologue and Stefon (Weekend Update) were all pretty good. I’m still cracking up over teddy graham people and human fire hydrants. Oh, and one throwaway line in the “crazy lady” sketch-“he used to sell Wikipedias”.

[bump]

I always thought funny SNL was a cyclic thing; there were the:
[ul]
[li]Murray/Belushi/Ackroyd/Curtin/etc… era,[/li][li]Murphy/Piscopo/Crystal/Short/etc… era[/li][li]Carvey/Myers/Farley/Hartman/Spade/Sandler/etc… era[/li][li]Fallon/Ferrell/Kattan/Hammond/etc… era.[/li][/ul]
There’s a lot of overlap between the eras; not all the players are on the cast at the same time, but in between, there’s usually some pretty lame stretches, with the occasional flashes of brilliance of a cast member destined for something greater, like Dennis Miller’s Weekend Update in an otherwise atrocious 1985-1986 season.

I think we’re just in a sort of down cycle now.

[Rushgeekgirl]

I laughed at Cherry battle. That’s it.

[Viridiana]

I thought she screwed up a lot, but she was way funnier than Jennifer Lopez.

Jon Hamm, on the other hand, I found awesome. In fact, that’s what finally made me watch Mad Men.

[gonzomax]

@Wheelz

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.

It is not SNL, hit and miss but comedy is hit and miss. They do maybe 10 skits a night. Nobody will like them all. Nobody ever did. Misses are part of trying and stretching.

[amarinth]

@DMark

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.

You & your friends in the dorm were drunk.

Really, as much as we like to think that once upon a time SNL was wonderful, it really always had a mix. Recently they put out DVDs of the entire episodes of the early seasons of the original casts (not just the highlight reels) and it’s amazing how much of those seasons was utter dreck. But those parts weren’t shown for ages, only the sketches that actually had merit.

[Cliffy]

@amarinth

You & your friends in the dorm were drunk.

Really, as much as we like to think that once upon a time SNL was wonderful, it really always had a mix. Recently they put out DVDs of the entire episodes of the early seasons of the original casts (not just the highlight reels) and it’s amazing how much of those seasons was utter dreck. But those parts weren’t shown for ages, only the sketches that actually had merit.

Disagree!

The first episode, which was the Carlin one, was horseshit from beginning to end, and the next several were pretty rough. But the second half of that season and the first half of S2 that I’ve watched so far, if not always funny, were consistently funny. And edgier, and more creative, and with better musical guests. Much better hit and miss ratio than any three episodes I’ve seen since.

–Cliffy