like music, everyone thinks SNL was the best when they were high school
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when did SNL stop being good (if it ever was)?
- Thread starter nomadcowatbk
- Start date
Do you care to expand on your opinion?
people complaining about SNL sucking is almost as old a SNL itself
Some years ago a streaming service (Netflix?) had all the old shows from the first season briefly available to watch in their entirety. It was...interesting. I fondly remembered the sketches like "The Olympic Cafe" and musical performances like Elvis Costello going off script, but there was a lot that I had forgotten. For good reason. Sketches that didn't quite connect. Jim Henson's decidedly non-Sesame Street muppets. Some of it was (apparently) weird just for the sake of being weird. Some of it looked like it had been written and performed by people who were..enjoying some of the excess of mid 70s New York comedy culture.
SNL has always sucked.
I was 20 when SNL premiered in 1975, no longer in high school. Its peaks were 1975-79 and 1986-93. It hasn't been watchable since, but when I have tuned in, it comes across to me like they only care about being a NYC local show, with the rest of the country being along for the ride.
I heard from someone that when SNL first started, if he was at parties on Saturday nights, everyone would stop what they were doing to watch it.
I have tried SNL on many occasions over the years, but find it is not culturally a match. As someone who has lived outside the U.S. for most of my life and one who is Hispanic in every way except blood lines, I just don't "get" it. To me, it is like insider humor for a specific group based on culture and ideology and I am not a match.
To say Saturday Night Live has "never been good" is by itself a completely subjective, reactionary, and extremely biased statement. It would be better to simply say "it isn't funny to me (anymore)". Or as @DavidEduardo stated, he never "got it".
The bottom line is, there is a reason it has lasted all these 49 years (the official 50th anniversary isn't for another eight months), and it isn't simply because the show may be inexpensive to produce. NBC is obviously getting something back for their continued investment in those 90 minutes and if they weren't, they would have long ago plugged Tonight Show reruns in that slot or given the time back to the stations. Adapting to the changing times with the coast-to-coast live clearance was an excellent move.
Ultimately, SNL is just like any other comedy series in that it's strength lies in both the writing and the ability of its performers. Using that criteria, some eras were stronger than others.
Personally, my favorite SNL eras are, in no particular order:
1) mid/late '80s (Carvey, Hartman, Miller, etc.)
2) turn of the century (Fey, Poehler, Ferrell, Morgan, Fallon, etc.)
3) early/mid '90s (Farley, Rock, Sandler, Meadows, etc.)
4) original cast
5) early '80s (really Murphy, Piscopo, Louis-Dreyfus)
6) late '10s/early '20s (Thompson, McKinnon, Strong, Jones, etc.)
And currently, Colin Jost and Michael Che continue to do a great job on Weekend Update.
The bottom line is, there is a reason it has lasted all these 49 years (the official 50th anniversary isn't for another eight months), and it isn't simply because the show may be inexpensive to produce. NBC is obviously getting something back for their continued investment in those 90 minutes and if they weren't, they would have long ago plugged Tonight Show reruns in that slot or given the time back to the stations. Adapting to the changing times with the coast-to-coast live clearance was an excellent move.
Ultimately, SNL is just like any other comedy series in that it's strength lies in both the writing and the ability of its performers. Using that criteria, some eras were stronger than others.
Personally, my favorite SNL eras are, in no particular order:
1) mid/late '80s (Carvey, Hartman, Miller, etc.)
2) turn of the century (Fey, Poehler, Ferrell, Morgan, Fallon, etc.)
3) early/mid '90s (Farley, Rock, Sandler, Meadows, etc.)
4) original cast
5) early '80s (really Murphy, Piscopo, Louis-Dreyfus)
6) late '10s/early '20s (Thompson, McKinnon, Strong, Jones, etc.)
And currently, Colin Jost and Michael Che continue to do a great job on Weekend Update.
when attention spans are decreasing, short skits translate well onto youtube
he'll die on the bench like Scalia or RBG
pretty much, SNL is Lorne Michaels and Lorne Michaels is SNL, pretty much he's the man who's in charge and knows how the show works, in the 5 years of SNL without Lorne, the show was doomed without him, he saved it big time, and now it's celebrating 50 years on the air as one of America's longest variety sketch comedy show. hell, in the mid 1990s-late 2000s, it had competition with Mad TV on Fox and somehow managed to outlive it and stayed fresh in a time when Mad TV was just the edgier version of SNL with less time to fill as Mad TV was on for a full hour and SNL for 90 mins. Mad TV had the advantage of being on at 11 PM ET/10 PM CT in select markets (not sure if Fox aired it at the same time on all East Coast Fox affiliates or aired at different times) and also being associated with Mad Magazine featuring the famous Spy vs. Spy series from the magazine getting animated shorts during the early years of the show.
Lorne would erase the Ebersol era (-Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Short) if he could along with the 85-86, and 94-95 seasons
episodes of MAD TV were taped a month before they aired
I've watched SNL since it's inception. I'd have to say the original cast was exceptional. Quite frankly, the lulls in talent level have mostly been brief as there have always been some good talent on the program.
My take is SNL is about like baseball. Each skit is your time at bat. Only a few are home runs. Most sort of fall flat or, say, foul balls. For example, at this point, I think weekend update is a highlight minus the guests.
I think SNL has always had an issue of being too 'New York City' in their sketches. There's just some stuff the rest of the country just doesn't 'get'.
My take is SNL is about like baseball. Each skit is your time at bat. Only a few are home runs. Most sort of fall flat or, say, foul balls. For example, at this point, I think weekend update is a highlight minus the guests.
I think SNL has always had an issue of being too 'New York City' in their sketches. There's just some stuff the rest of the country just doesn't 'get'.
Which is good and bad. Bad if something timely happens that "needs" to be mad fun of. Good because they can tape multiple times to get a sketch right. It's not live, but it is done right. Maybe part of SNL's charm is like auto racing, when a car goes out of control and hits the wall. It's sometimes funny to watch a live sketch fail, and sometimes it's painful. The same can be said about In Living Color. The product that went to air was what they wanted to air and not what the "hoped" would air. SNL was the first of its kind and therefore different and exciting. It boggles my mind how it lasted 50 years considering it's not new any longer, and the comedy to me has always been questionable. ABC aired Fridays, an SNL clone for a couple of seasons. Even with a very young Larry David, it just didn't cut it. SNL was first with the live comedy and that made them unique.
Trivia. SNL did not start as SNL. It began as "NBC's Saturday Night. There was another program already named "Saturday Night Live" It was a variety show, done live on ABC and hosted by Howard Cosell. True. NBC's Saturday Night eventually morphed into Saturday Night Live after the quick death of Howard Cosell's attempt at variety.
"SNL sucks now" is as lazy a take as there is.
Every Monday evening, 22 weeks out of the year, people who left work at 1:00 a.m. Sunday come back in and there's a blank board in front of them, as well as a new host to create material for/around.
Sometimes it's a return host, sometimes a newbie. Sometimes a total pro at performing live, sometimes someone from film or TV who only knows the world of multiple takes.
At that moment, they have 48 hours to write, from scratch, at least 90 minutes worth of a monologue, sketches, Weekend Update and pre-taped fake commercials and sketches requiring location shooting.
On Wednesday, there's a table read and a meeting where they decide on the pieces that might make air (they need to have more than the running time of the show for stuff that gets cut for time, doesn't work in dress rehearsal, whatever). That's when the crew gets to work building sets. It's 72 hours to air at that point.
The rest of it you can learn by reading any of the dozens of pieces on how SNL comes together. Hint: the final 72 hours are even more hectic than the first 48.
The very end of the process is performing it live twice---first in a dress rehearsal in front of a live studio audience, and then, half an hour after dress ends, live on national TV with a different live studio audience. And in those 30 minutes between dress and air, more changes are made.
Bottom line: you try doing what SNL does 22 weeks a year.
The miracle is that the show is as good as it is. And some weeks, it's very good.
I've found there are two types of people who say "SNL sucks". The first type tunes out the first time they think the monologue or a sketch or a musical artist is lame (it's usually a personal preference issue).
The second type hasn't watched the show in years---maybe even decades and has no damn idea what they're talking about.
Every Monday evening, 22 weeks out of the year, people who left work at 1:00 a.m. Sunday come back in and there's a blank board in front of them, as well as a new host to create material for/around.
Sometimes it's a return host, sometimes a newbie. Sometimes a total pro at performing live, sometimes someone from film or TV who only knows the world of multiple takes.
At that moment, they have 48 hours to write, from scratch, at least 90 minutes worth of a monologue, sketches, Weekend Update and pre-taped fake commercials and sketches requiring location shooting.
On Wednesday, there's a table read and a meeting where they decide on the pieces that might make air (they need to have more than the running time of the show for stuff that gets cut for time, doesn't work in dress rehearsal, whatever). That's when the crew gets to work building sets. It's 72 hours to air at that point.
The rest of it you can learn by reading any of the dozens of pieces on how SNL comes together. Hint: the final 72 hours are even more hectic than the first 48.
The very end of the process is performing it live twice---first in a dress rehearsal in front of a live studio audience, and then, half an hour after dress ends, live on national TV with a different live studio audience. And in those 30 minutes between dress and air, more changes are made.
Bottom line: you try doing what SNL does 22 weeks a year.
The miracle is that the show is as good as it is. And some weeks, it's very good.
I've found there are two types of people who say "SNL sucks". The first type tunes out the first time they think the monologue or a sketch or a musical artist is lame (it's usually a personal preference issue).
The second type hasn't watched the show in years---maybe even decades and has no damn idea what they're talking about.
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