There are a great many consistencies in the universe: death, taxes, getting slapped when you ask the hot chick at the bar for a handjob, and any thread on the internet related to SNL where someone bemoans “oh, I remember when it used to be funny.” :rolleyes:
Seriously, fuck you. First, if you don’t find the show funny, stay the hell out of the thread or at least shut your piehole. This is no different from people commenting on other shows that they don’t like… just shut the fuck up.
The show over the years has had its ups and downs. The latest Ben Affleck show was funny as hell. Of course it featured almost no Horatio Sanz or Maya Rudolph which helped a lot, but guess what, there were unfunny years almost since the show’s incursion. Remember the very early 80’s with Charles Rocket or whoever the hell that was? He was not funny. How about that English chick on during the time of Crystal and Murphy, she was not funny either (I think her name was Stephenson?).
Fuck, even during the great days of Phil Hartman and Chris Farley, people bitched about ‘it’s not as good as when Akroyd was on’. Guess what, the beginning years were funny and irreverant, but so are the later years. The show will hit and miss, it is the nature of having a different host each week and changing writers over the 30-ish years the show has been on the air.
Besides, if you want not funny, I need only point to A. Whitney Brown, most smug, unfunny little shit to ever grace the airwaves (though Colin Quinn gave him a run for his money).
What’s next, people bitching about Simpson’s not being funny anymore?
Well, SNL does suck right now. It always goes through phases, and now is a low point for the show. And, I don’t know where you have been, but there have been a number of threads here bemoaning the demise of The Simpsons.
I have an issue of newsweek from like 1987 or so with a whole full page story about how SNL has fallen and would likely not last more than another season.
I don’t “remember when SNL was funny”, because it never WAS funny. Clear back in the '70s they had worked out their basic operating procedure: take a moderately amusing premise which would work well in a five-minute skit, and run it for ten minutes. Then, repeat essentially the exact same overlong skit eight or ten times during the course of the season.
Then they take the skit, pad it out to 90 minutes, and release it as a feature film. Sometimes this works (Wayne’s World), more often it doesn’t (It’s Pat!).
People who remember when it was funny are usually thinking of individual moments, not the show in its eternal entirity.
(Friends of mine who indulge in such things tell me that the show is actually amusing if you are stoned. This may explain the show’s sucess.)
So threads about television shows should contain absolutely no cricitism? If you honestly think there has never been a bad SNL show, season or limited stretch, you need to get out more.
Every time I begin to think that SNL has fallen and won’t get up, they seem to surprise me. For example, near the end of the 90’s, I thought the show sucked huge donkey cock. Then I happened to catch a Celebrity Jeopardy skit. The rest of the show was terribly unfunny, but that one skit made up for all of it.
The show is only funny when they have the right cast members. The good ones go off to Hollywood, and the rest stay there until they get fired. Since Hollywood will always be picking off the funniest ones, they will always go through stages of awesomeness followed by stages of suckiness.
I must also accept your kind offer for the trip to the Underworld.
SNL (Lorne Michaels) has always capitalized on the popular skits and tried to repeat them, but that repeat frequency hit the stratosphere starting in the nineties to the point where the show’s wheels bogged down into the mud.
This fact is reiterated in the book Live From New York (a very good read!)
They talk about how people like Sandler where pushed to the front of the line constantly because of their sound-byte humor, while the more inventive and complex members’ humor got pushed back.
I see this as true. I have watched SNL ever since the first episode.
It is NOT as funny and creative as it used to be.
Yet, I keep watching and hoping. (the last truly inventive skit I remember was a few years ago with Tracey Morgan and Maya Rudolph(?) who were on a subway singing about their poor love)
I also lament the fact that Michaels will not let the Dick Ebersol years be shown in sydication. That is a pure asshole move.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that you cannot have a thread discussing anything about SNL without some fucktard making the smug comment “oh, they stopped being funny back in the 70s (or early 80s or what have you)”.
What I am saying is that these people are either elitist, clueless, or just generally full of shit, because as was mentioned above, it comes and goes with quality depending on the current cast and writers. This season has been weak, but the most recent Ben Affleck episode made up for it in spades.
Sheesh. I remember when threads roasting SNL complainers were really good. There haven’t been any of those kind of threads in years, though. The last really good threads like that were from the late 80s.
Yes, the show has its ups and downs, and guess what? It’s DOWN right now. Last Saturday’s Ben Affleck show? A BIG, FAT, TURD. Not funny. As in completely devoid of humor. As in I didn’t laugh when I watched it.
When was it funny? It was funny when funny people were in the cast, and funny writers were writing. Like Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, and Phil Hartman, and writers like Al Franken and Conan O’Brien. By the way, the Phil Hartman era WAY surpassed anything they ever did in the 70s.
Yes, it has sucked in the past, and people SAID so. It sucks now, and people say so. Doesn’t matter how much of a piece of shit a show is, somebody will always come along and say they like it. Too fucking bad, 'cuz I’m gonna call 'em the way I see 'em.
If anybody’s going to hell, it’s the ninny, crappy-show apologists. “Oh, but I like Gilligan’s Island” “I like Three’s Company”, I like Mr. Belveldere". “I like The Flinstones.” “Waaah!, stay out of my ‘Up with Flinstones’ thread.” Fuck that noise.
Sure, but like Stewie said, Leno’s out there every night with fresh material. If Jay were just phoning in recycled crap once a week, he might get a less charitable treatment.
shrug but what do I know? I stopped watching SNL back in '93. Does that guy still do that really funny thing? You know, when he says that line?
