Saturday Night Live

[MHPFAN]

I love this show. It is my own personal tradition to watch every Saturday. It hasn't been that great lately, but I don't mind too much. It still manages to make me laugh and I'm just so used to it by now. Hopefully it'll keep going for many more years to come.

[leah49]

Originally Posted by featherfish81

A replay of the Daniel Radcliffe episode tonight. I may be alone, but I thought the HP sketch was only okay. While I appreciated the joke about peaking when you were 18 (which they also did with Zac Efron a few years ago with High School Musical) I got distracted by the inconsistencies. Think about it - if Harry graduated 10 years ago, there's no way Draco could be dropping off his daughter for orientation, unless there was more scandal going on at Hogwarts then we knew about. Snape was funny, though.

Yeah, I agree with you. SNL has gone downhill. If this was ten years ago I think Dan on SNL could have been so much better. I hate to admit it, but Taylor Lautner had a better appearance.

[Coldwindblows]

I haven't been watching lately... I've sort of fallen out of love with it...
See, this is what happened; I got into a show called Whose Line is it Anyway (it was cancelled a few years back but anyway...)
...the humour on that show was at first like "huh? I don't get this at all. This isn't funny" to me. That was because I was in the SNL humour zone. My sense of humour was radically pointed towards SNL like a compass almost. I find my "Humour compass" has to be pointed in a certain direction for me to find something funny. I don't know why.

When I finally "got" WLIIA, I got addicted and now love it to pieces. I found a huge change in my sense of humour, and now SNL isn't registering as much any more.

However, I haven't watched it in a while, and seeing the Valentines Day Garth and Kat (Aston Kutcher episode) had me losing it with laughter, like, breathless, it was so funny. That never fails to get me laughing like a maniac.

Any thoughs on any cast members maybe leaving this season? I like Fred Armisen a lot and I hope he can equal Darrell Hammond's record or surpass it. I like Bill Hader too, but if he left SNL now, I feel he'd be offered some big comedy parts. Like, career-enchancing parts.

Opinions?

[IenjoyAcidPops]

News!

Season 38 will premiere September 15 with host Seth MacFarlane and musical guest Frank Ocean (I've no idea who that is). MacFarlane wasn't on the list of people I wanted to see host - I find his sense of humor too juvenile and irritating at times - but he can be very funny, so we'll see.

Five days later, Thursday the 20th, will see - no surpRise as they've done this before - the first of two primetime election specials.

On September 22, Joseph Gordon-Levitt hosts for his second time, musical guest Mumford & Sons. Very glad to see JGL hosting again.

Thursday the 27th? Yep, the second primetime election special.

The October 6 show will have host Daniel Craig and musical guest Muse. As a Bond nerd, and a big fan of Daniel Craig's Bond, I'm very curious to see how this goes. He'll probably play straight man in most of his sketches, but still, it's a surprise to me that this is happening.

Unfortunately, Abby Elliott won't be coming back this season. I've always liked Abby - she's a pretty terrific impressionist - but she's never been used all that much. Nasim and Vanessa stand out far more, and they were still always overshadowed by Kristen, so it's not a surprise that Abby won't be back. That's Kristen, Andy, and Abby gone, with Jason Sudeikis still unconfirmed. (I wouldn't be surprised if Jason left after the election, especially if Romney loses.)

[IenjoyAcidPops]

Lorne Michaels has confirmed that Jay Pharaoah will be replacing Fred Armisen as Obama, which I think is good news, because Jay's a proven impressionist and Fred's Obama has never been very good, IMO. Lorne also said that Jason Sudeikis will be on the show at least through January, maybe through the whole season.

[IenjoyAcidPops]

The new season premieres tonight, and we'll be seeing [url=http://www.nwitimes.com/news/headlines/snl-adds-new-performers-for-upcoming-season/article_d7407118-7708-510b-93a0-d49c04d2214b.html]three new featured players: Aidy Bryant, Tim Robinson, and Cecily Strong.

This will probably be a difficult year for SNL, a rebuilding year of sorts. The show's lost its two biggest stars in Kristen and Andy, one of its great impressionists in Abby, it's probably going to lose one if its best all-purpose guys in Jason, Seth and Fred are almost certainly at the end of their tenure. The show is in good shape - there are always people who say it's going downhill, it's been that way since 1979, but the show was inconsistent from the very beginning; we're not in one of the strongest periods, but we're not in one of the weakest either - but I'm worried that we may be heading into one of those middling years, like '93-'94 or '04-'05. Either way, SNL will find new stars, as it always does.

[IenjoyAcidPops]

I do hope someone else posts in this thread in the not too distant future. But for now, it's still me.

I thought that was a damn good season premiere. I didn't know what to expect from Seth MacFarlane, and he really impressed me, as did most of the episode. He was especially funny as Ryan Lochte (rare to see the host on Update).

Other notes:
-Jay's Obama isn't that funny yet, but neither was Dana Carvey's George Bush. It's already better than Fred's ever was (and Fred's wasn't terrible, it just always disappointed me). It's a good impression, it was a good sketch, and I got a kick out of Ferd opening the show by introducing the guy replacing him and saying, "Wouldn't want his job, right?"

-It was a bit odd having a good chunk of the monologue dedicated to a vocal conversation between Peter and Stewie. MacFarlane's great with voices, of course, but usually when a comic/comic actor just stands on home base and does their thing, there's more of a visual or live performance element. It wasn't bad, I'm just saying it was a little weird.

-I knew we'd be getting a riff on the Clint Eastwood-talking-to-an-empty-chair incident (Lorne actually said they were choosing between three different takes on it; I'm curious what those others were). Nicely done.

-That thing with Seth pressing that button and bringing in Bobby as "Psy" to cheer Kenan up baffled me. I was so wrapped up in, "What's the hell is this? Am I supposed to know what this is? Should I care that I don't know what this is?" that I had to like nuttiness of it. More than that, though, Bobby's dancing cracked me up. That guy is good. And then the real "Psy" came on at the end, and apparently this is the latest YouTube thing. I'm okay with having no idea.

-I can't remember the last time I really hoped we'd see a character return - not that all the recurring characters are bad, but the ones that stand out more are the ones I wish they hadn't brought back so much - but I hope we see Bill's demented Vietnam vet/puppeteer again. Best sketch of the night. Kenan was good in that, too. I'd like to see Bill's character come back in a different context, though - I always prefer seeing a character that odd come back in different ways, rather than just rehash the first sketch. (What they did with Stefon worked out wonderfully - I loved the introductory sketch for him, where he was Ben Affleck's brother pitching a family movie along with him, but the crowd wasn't as into it, so instead of doing that again, they brought him back like a year later as an Update correspondent, and he's been introducing families to the most nightmarish clubs in New York ever since. )

-When Seth introduced Honey Boo Boo, I was hoping it'd be Bobby playing her. I don't know why, I just was. But Bobby was there anyway, and he and Vanessa were very funny.

-Among the new people, we saw the most of Tim Robinson, but Cecily Strong was the only one who had a piece of her own, as Mimi Morales on Update, and it was a pretty funny commentary - good, not great. This Update was all about Seth MacFarlane as Ryan Lochte for me.

-The "I was like..." sketch was the only one I didn't like. There were a couple funny moments, but it got old almost immediately, and to me, it would have been funnier if everyone around them weren't also doing the "I was like..." thing incessantly.

-That last bit, the Amish Wooden Spoon Warehouse? I admired that - it was funny, and it was really short. I don't know if it was that short because they only had like two minutes 'til the goodnights, but I'd rather think it was meant to be that brief, and it worked so well. Get in, hit the joke, get out. SNL all too rarely does that, so when the timing works out so right, it's actually a thrill.