Aaaaahhhhh!!! I mean 48 seasons of course. Why can’t I do a better job of editing my posts?
OK, it seems starting the season with 3 new episodes followed by a re-run is the (sort-of) traditional pattern, but considering they’ve barely introduced the new cast members, it might have been better to do another new episode before a repeat. Especially since that first episode was rather weak, based on the comments on this board (and just about everywhere else.) Just my 2 cents.
Taking every 4th Saturday off has been Lorne’s SOP for several years now.
My guess is that every week that ends with a new episode on Saturday night is exhausting for the entire cast and crew, so asking everyone to do too many in a row is asking too much.
As others have noted, that’s pretty typical.
Because it’s live and because of all that goes into it, it takes a lot out of the people who put it together (cast, crew, writers). I assume they need a week off sometimes, and that’s why there are seldom more than three or four new shows in a row.
I’m pretty sure that the entire year’s schedule is fixed before the season starts. Nobody is going to disrupt that just because the first episode was weak. And it wasn’t anywhere near as weak as the third episode, which was among the weakest in history. How should they change the schedule for that?
What do you mean by the schedule being fixed? The guest host and musical guest aren’t fixed, since there have been times when they were changed because they couldn’t make it because of sickness or because the show didn’t want them because of something they did. I wonder if they have to change them because a film won’t premiere until later than planned or an album won’t drop until later than planned. Occasionally the time slot is taken because a major world sports event usurps it. Can you cite anything that says the schedule is fixed?
The schedule is made ahead of time in the same way that, say, the NFL schedule is made ahead of time. People need to know in advance when they will be working. In the NFL, some game times might be changed but you can look at the schedule before the season starts and know who will be playing who before the first game.
This is even more important for the crew than for the players. The NBC technical crew doesn’t work only one evening a week. They have full-time jobs.
Wally Feresten holds the cue cards on SNL. He’s done that for ten years and did an earlier ten year stint. He also does cue cards for Late Night with Seth Meyers Monday-Thursday and for the Amber Ruffin Show, produced by Meyers. Both Late Night and Ruffin share Studio 8G, which is next to SNL’s 8H. Other programming is occasionally set in those studios. Changing one show’s schedule on a whim impacts all the other shows.
That episode was unwatchable. As I was fast-forwarding, it seemed the Un-funny just went on forever. I skipped to Weekend Update, watched that then turned it off.
I’m from the area, I haven’t ever found the sketch funny. It’s just dreck.
I though Girl Talk was good. But otherwise yeah pretty weak.
The number of episodes before the first rerun has actually gone up on average over the 48 seasons that SNL has been on the air.
48 had 3.
47 had 4.
46 had 6.
45 had 3.
44 had 3.
43 had 3.
42 had 4.
41 had 3.
40 had 3.
39 had 3.
38 had 2.
37 had 4.
36 had 3.
35 had 4.
34 had 4.
33 had 3.
32 had 2.
31 had 2.
30 had 2.
29 had 3.
28 had 3.
27 had 3.
26 had 3.
25 had 1.
24 had 2.
23 had 2.
22 had 2.
21 had 2.
20 had 2.
19 had 3.
18 had 3.
17 had 3.
16 had 2.
15 had 2.
14 had 3.
13 had 3.
12 had 2.
11 had 3.
10 had 3.
9 had 3.
8 had 3.
7 had 3.
6 had 2.
5 had 2.
4 had 3.
3 had 1.
2 had 3.
1 had 3.
And I believe the only reason Season 46 went six episodes was because it had a later start (because of Covid) than previous seasons, and the buildup to the 2020 Election. Looking at the schedule, the show then took three weeks off after the November 7 episode.
Melissa Villasenor shares why she left SNL this season. (Hint, it’s for mental health reasons).
Are you from Los Angeles?
I am. The accents were ridiculous but the obsession with traffic directions were spot on. Also, our use of THE before numbered highways is apparently hilarious outside of Southern California.
I liked Californians but I also thought it suffered from being used without adding something to the concept. The hyperspecific driving directions are funny and the fun the participants have with each other is apparent, but it seemed like that was the whole point of the sketch. I feel like a lot of sketches at that time were like that and many of them were Kristen Wiig centric – The Target Lady and Gilly are two more examples of that “Hey, here’s a funny character let’s do funny stuff with it” kind of concept. I think other characters were overused but the best ones used the concept of the funny character as a launching point for the sketch, not the point of the sketch itself.
Same as us. The Californians is hysterical to anyone from Los Angeles. Kind of like how if you’re not from L.A. then the movie L.A. Story makes no sense to you.
She’s back this weekend. Here’s the promo for the show. As usual, it’s a short bit with the guest host, the musical guest, and one of the regulars. If the guest host is also the musical guest, it’s just two people. As usual, they make snide comments about each other:
Here’s another parody of the AMC bit with Nicole Kidman which runs between the trailers and the beginning of the film at all AMC theaters:
