They need to show full-length reruns of the first generation episodes to end this worshipping of the original cast. There were moments of brilliance but most of the show, especially the second halves, weren’t even funny if you were high and the skits dragged on minutes longer than they should’ve, unless you were high, when they dragged on for hours longer. Good Lord, did none of you see the shows Milton Berle, Louise Lasser, or Desi Arnaz hosted? Nor will you.
Exactly. I think people who hate SNL just generally don’t really like sketch comedy - because I really haven’t seen much of it done that was any better than this.
I dunno. Mad-TV could suck more and SCTV was more consistent through each episode, but they are/were hour shows. Ninety minutes is too long to fill.
Did SCTV have two musical performances like SNL always does, though? Including commercial breaks, that probably eats up 15-20 minutes right there.
While the original cast included some dynamic personalities that went on to great things, I also agree that the old shows haven’t aged well, and people who are familiar with little clips of the samurai baker, the killer bees, “Jane, you ignorant slut!”, and the Blues Brothers movie don’t really remember how uneven it used to be as a whole. With all honesty, I think the current cast of the last few years (including Will Ferrell and even Jimmy Fallon, who had his uses) may have been the best SNL cast ever.
Then again, with few exceptions, I hate the Carvey/Myers/Hartman/Lovitz/Sandler/Spade/Farley/Schneider era, and think it’s terribly overrated.
Hmm? Does Mad TV not suck now? Because I watched it for some years; in fact, I watched it from the first season it was on, and it was hysterical, but I finally gave up on it eventually when it became so incredibly unfunny that I swear my cringing muscles got achy. I haven’t watched since then - has it gotten less incredibly, horrifically lame?
Yeah, those episodes in particular are mostly a pit of unfunny when they broadcast them nowadays. Though I still say that the Cheri Oteri/Molly Shannon years sucked harder.
OK, I can’t argue with that either, but the Carvey/Myers era gets a lot of love to this day, whereas most people don’t remember the mid-to-late '90s cast that fondly. I remember when Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, and Ana Gasteyer (by far the least obnoxious of the three) were getting all these critical accolades for “bringing funny women back to SNL,” and I never saw it. Aside from that one “Delicious Dish” sketch with Alec Baldwin talking about his “Shwetty Balls,” the three of them were pretty annoying and horrible throughout their SNL tenure. I honestly think Amy Poehler is the most versatile female cast member in the history of the show (sorry, Gilda), and the Amy/Tina/Rachel/Maya (and later Kristen Wiig) era was the best in the show’s history as far as the female cast.
I didn’t really mind Ana at all. But mostly she played straight-man (straight-woman?) types so it’s hard to find her particularly memorable. But uck, Cheri Oteri and Molly Shannon were utterly intolerable. As for now, all five of those women are excellent and they’re all pretty versatile in my opinion. I’m not a fan of the Target sketch, but Kristen Wiig has done a number of very good impressions. Maya in particular is just hysterical to me, though I think she’s somewhat subtle and cerebral and it probably means a certain disconnect with a lot of viewers.
As for Dana Carvey and Mike Myers and that era, I have to admit that I haven’t seen more than a dozen episodes or so, and those were reruns and mostly trimmed to an hour long. I never found either of those two particularly funny. The difference between, for instance, Sprockets and the current Nuni/Nüni sketches, is that in the first (at least the times I’ve seen it) it was just Mike Myers doing incomprehensible and zany things, whereas the sketches with Maya and Fred were about the confusion someone normal felt trying to interact with the bizarro foreigners. And how about Adam Sandler? It’s incomprehensible to me, but I’m sure someone, somewhere once laughed at Opera Man, but was that really the stuff of comedic legend? Sadly, as with Rob Schneider and his Sensitive Naked Man, it still beats his subsequent movie career.
The Mike Myers/Dana Carvey era was great! Remember, it also had Phil Hartmann and Conan O’Brien was writing for them. They had great characters - Wayne and Garth, the Church Lady, The Scottish guy (It’s it’s not Scottish - it’s CRAP!), Dieter (would you like to touch my monkey?), frozen Caveman lawyer, etc. Tons and tons of great characters. And the commercials at that time were great, with Phil Hartman doing the narration. Happy Fun Ball!
I think that was the best cast ever.
I think people have great memories of the first cast because, back then, it was shocking to hear bitch on tv, and people thought, uh oh, what are they going to do now? it was more irreverent and NEW.
Can’t recapture that, unfortunately.
“Hey, nice penis!”
My two cents worth on the Original Cast:
I have watch the show since it went on, I saw a few of the first season and most of the next 7 seasons. I found the 80’s inconsistent and not very funny until the Late 80’s & Early 90’s. This was the second best cast period. The current cast is the worst since the second cast.
The original cast was not perfect, but it was edgier, more confrontational with the powers that be and far more professional on screen than the current cast.
Gilda was funny almost always. Belushi was great. The news and the recurring characters were awesome and it all benefiting from being new and hip and different and of course my technically being too young to watch it and staying up anyway. (I am only 39, you do the math, and only a few of us in my class were watching the show the first 2-3 seasons).
I watched a lot of SCTV and it wasn’t as humorous to me as some people here are making it out to be, I recently watched the first season again and almost nothing held up well with time. So much of what Belushi, Ackroyd & Gilda did is still very funny today. Amazing really as much was topical.
I fully admit it benefits from trimming away the worse 1/2 hour on reruns, but the late 90’s and 2000’s cast cannot even provide a solid hour of humor.
Jim
tears up a photo of Lorne
Fight the real enemy!
I totally don’t remember that one. Fondly remember Julia Child, Invisible pedestrian, Samarai anything, Buck Henry was great, the odd musical guests, ones who weren’t being promoted by lables but you’d never heard them before.
Buck Henry WAS great. It helped he was one of the few hosts NOT coked to the gills at the time. Elliot Gould, too. He was like Christopher Walken (a surprisingly good song and dance man because when they came up kids from NYC with acting pretensions leaned to sing and dance) without so much of the creep factor (Gould was married to Barbra at the time, so he had some). Modern hosts are all so, I dunno, SOBER that it hardly seems like SNL. I mean, even the jocks can read cue cards!
HOWEVER, say what you will about the overdone, unfunny bits that managed to be made into movies, Michael Jordan on Stuart Smalley’s show was one of the funnier bits of the early 90s.
Franken was always good. I can’t wipe the memory of him in a huge diaper out of my mind though (first time I ever saw him).
I’m happy to live in the Al Franken Century.
Hey, Parrot! i get lonesome here late on weekend nights. Join up.
Will do, zone.
Lets reminisce (sp?). Farley was so good (in a van) as was Murphy.
Worst cast member? Tough to choose between Denny Dillon and Robin Duke.
Who was the youngest ever? Murphy? oldest?
He only took tips.