Have You Given Up On SNL?

I gave up on them in 1992, so...yeah.

 

Will Ferrell is the only thing they've had good in ten years. I'd go so far as to say that he's one of the best on the history of the show. Any "best of" collections for him should be two tape sets.

And I'll say that the years with Sandler, Farley, Spade, et al were the worst ever. I mean really, really bad.

 

Last year was really weak, but there have been a couple of good skits this year, Queer Eye for the Straight Girl for example.

 

I guess you weren't watching for the sake of comedy then. The SNL: Best of Chris Farley tape has to be one of the best in their collection.

 

Yeah but if you watched the actual show youd be watching 1 hour and 25 mins of crap and then 5 mins of Farley. It looks all great and nice on a VHS that takes out all the crap for you.

Also during those years they had Norm McDonald who was THE top guy on WU in history.

For me the first few years of In Living Color blew away anything SNL EVER did. I say first few years because after a while everyone started going Hollywood and they never were able to replace the cast. I guess the samething that happened to SNL but atleast Wayans had the decency to stop the show from sucking for 30 years.

 

For the first time in at least five years I watched the show last night (season opener), with my 16-year-old niece who's visiting this weekend. I have to say, I thought several of the skits were very funny -- the Karl Rove / Hardball skit, the Arnold press conference and the "Punk'd" parody all had me laughing out loud. I thought it was funnier than she did. Not everything worked, but that's SNL tradition.

Aside: Despite his maufactured pop background and a target audience that absolutely doesn't include hetero married 32-year-old men, Justin Timberlake has loads of talent (and some top-notch songwriters, whoever they are).

 

I'm afraid I have to agree with you there - after watching last night I couldn't help thinking how he came off as....likeable. Charismatic. Talented. If he keeps his head on straight and wants it, he'll be one of those people whose careers last for decades, because he's versatile enough to be an entertainer.

What's wrong with me, then, by the way, because I thought that first couple episodes this year were at least decently funny. I thought even last year had some funniness mixed in with the inevitable junk that SNL throws up. I don't make it appointment viewing, but if I'm home and have nothing better to watch I'll turn it on.

 

That was hilarious. Haven't they only had 2 shows this year? I've seen bits of each, each time with Ah-nold skits.

 

Last SNL I watched live was in 1990. I hasnt really been worth watching since sometime in the 1980's. It's only all the sheep who dont know the difference between what the show once was, and the crap that it now is and has been for more than a decade, that keep it going, by tuning in like lemmings every saturday night.

 

My sense is that the show has been hugely cyclical for its entire run. But certainly there have been some great seasons post '80s: Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, and Phil Hartman all are from the early '90s.

How bout we turn the question around? Which was the best cast/season?

http://snlarc.jt.org/season/

Season Two: (76-77) Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd, Jane Curtin, Garret Morris, Laraine Newman

Season Ten: (84-85) Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Harry Shearer, Martin Short, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Pam Stevenson, Mary Gross

Season Fifteen: (89-90) Dennis Miller, Nora Dunn, Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, Mike Myers, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson, Jan Hooks, Phil Hartman

I don't think any of the recent casts can match those three, but they have at least been better than the Anthony Michael Hall lowpoints of the early 80s.

Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon are probably the two best from recent years, IMO.

 

The Ferrel/Shannon/O'Teri/Hammond etc cast was probably the best since the early 90s. And it seems Tina Fey has been doing a decent job as head writer (and the Fallon/Fey combination for WU is way better than Colin Quinn or Norm McDonald imho).

I like Jeanine Garafalo and Jay Mohr, but they were both horrible on SNL.

 

If this thread did not exist, I would have created a new one.

Justin Timberlake was one of the best SNL hosts ever. They guy has serious acting skills and comic timing. Best of all, he actually memorized his lines. It is so rare to see a SNL host do that. I don't like his music and never cared for him before this show - it came as a total surprise for me.

 

Timberlake was surprisingly good.

I don't watch it live anymore (huzzah for VCRs), but I just can't give up on it. At its best, SNL was one of the best, most influential shows on television, and I just keep hoping for a revival of some sort.

After reading "Live from New York," though, I'm not sure the current writers rules (one recurring character sketch for one new one) really will give any sort of new blood. I know the recurring characters have always been a part of the show, but it just seems like it's so much more now - like the same characters are in nearly every episode.

RS

 

I haven't paid attentin to SNL in years, but I did see it a few months ago and thought it was pretty much garbage, except for one skit called "The Falconer."

Has anyone seen "The Falconer?" -I just found it really funny, but maybe it was because it was late and I was tired...

 

I missed it on Saturday, but I haven't really given up on it completely... and I don't consider myself a sheep who doesn't know what it was like a long time ago (or whatever that pretentious twit said).

SNL has enough laughs left in it to make me happy. I've seen some really hilarious things over the last couple years. I think they've added some good, talented cast members over the last few years too.

I remember seeing Rachel Dratch at the second city a few years ago. She was so amazingly funny that I made remembered her name but wondered if she was too funny-looking to really make it. She seriously had me in tears at second city though. I was very excited to see that she made the cast of SNL.

The one I'm watching now is Fred Armisen. I think he's really talented. He's versatile too. He's really good at playing quirky characters. Example... he was always funny as the drummer with bad timing in that awful recurring bit with Chris Kattan as the old comedian.

For the last few years, SNL has suffered, I believe, from their overuse of recurring characters that just weren't funny... Most of what Chris Kattan did, the cheerleaders, Cheri Oteri with that "Simmer down now" garbage...

Some of the hosts have sucked too. Robert DeNiro should be embarrassed at his performance. He was absolute crap.

Some of the hosts have been really funny though... some of them have been surprising. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was a really good host, and I was shocked.

Al Gore had one of the funniest lines I've ever heard. I laughed to the point of tears during that bit about him being the accountant brother of Willy Wonka. When he was complaining about putting up with so much including riding around in that "INSANE PSYCHEDELIC BOAT!" I had to rewind and play that over and over, I was laughing so hard.

Almost everything during the 2000 elections was funny. That was the best SNL had been for years.

Anyway, I still like it sometimes. Some things are lost on me these days... because I don't watch any reality game shows... like Survivor and Who Wants to Marry whatever or the bachelor or any of that junk... (though I do watch queer eye when I can and trading spaces [esp. the one where kids redo each others rooms...]... a lot of the current SNL skits are lost on me... but that's to be expected.

 

I'd like to state my agreeance with everything iceblink said. Espescially with fred armisen comments. I really think he and rachel dratch are the only remotely funny people on the show. Other than that, its unbearable, espescially with all the recurring sketches. ugh....

 

I think Weekend Update is the only thing really worth watching.

And I will say it too, and I don't care what anyone else thinks, Chris Farley was HORRIFIC on SNL. He was always getting lost and trying to READ his lines. Absolute horrible performances for a professional.

Those years were terrible for SNL.


edited for spelling.

 

The Aston Kutcher episode from last year was possibly the worst one I have ever seen.


I also didn't think the Farley/Sandler/Spade years were that bad. What followed that was bad. Colin Quinn (who I don't find funny at all) doing WU was REALLY bad.

 

Whenever I'm on holidays in the States I end up catching an episode sometime or another... In early August there was one Golden one (it had a skit with the black guy with the funny visor thing from Star Trek popping uip at the end). I also saw the "Best of Molly Shannon" episode, and it was perhaps the worst piece of late night comedy I've ever witnessed.

 

SNL has ALWAYS sucked, to varying degrees, but it has always had moments of brilliance. It's just the balance between the suckiness and the brilliance that changes, but it goes in cycles.

And even if every skit sucks goat balls, there's usually a Tina Fey one-liner in WU that makes it worthwhile.

 

> I think Weekend Update is the only thing really
> worth watching.

The political skits are almost always gut-busting.