I didn't like Jane Wickline's Weekend Update character at first, since it seemed like just a rehash of what Adam Sandler used to do on Weekend Update, but she's grown on me.
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when did SNL stop being good (if it ever was)?
- Thread starter nomadcowatbk
- Start date
To be fair, that's kinda been Tuna's M.O. here for the better part of 17 years. Take personal taste and opinion and state it as objective fact. I give him points for sticking to his guns, but to come in after a takedown illustrating just how lazy a take the original post from someone else was and double down seems like a losing argument to me.
I have a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, and while I can't stop myself from getting older, I hope I never get old like THAT.
I don't like everything my daughter introduces me to, musically, but I like some of it, and that pleases me.
The answers are "nearly never" and "never".
I've expressed my own lack of interest in the show for cultural reasons, but I still admire it for what it is, its history and its consistency over so many years. .
This thread has given me a fever.
And the only prescription for it is...
And the only prescription for it is...
Often? No. It's been many years. I don't watch junk.
Just expressing my opinion. Sorry if it doesn't match yours.
The show has always been uneven. It's had good moments and not so good. Good hosts and not so good. But, heck, in baseball if you hit 300 you're considered a great player. It was at the top of its game in the "Not Ready for Primetime Players" era. No bad in the Eddie Murphy era. The last really good show was when Betty White hosted (and was in every sketch). But that said, I liked SCTV better and they didn't hit one out of the park each time, either. Mostly the show seems fat and lazy and Lorne Michaels has stayed way too long. They seem more interested in doing political bits and getting written up in the Sunday papers than in being funny. The cast is three times the size of the Not Ready for Primetime Players and not one of them stands out.
I watch the cold open and the news (without the "interviews") the next day on Roku, maybe once in a while check out a sketch or two but that's all I can stand. The current bunch is Not Read for Open Mic at the Comedy Club.
I watch the cold open and the news (without the "interviews") the next day on Roku, maybe once in a while check out a sketch or two but that's all I can stand. The current bunch is Not Read for Open Mic at the Comedy Club.
My favorite radio station played standards until 2015 and switched to 60s and 70s oldies, and I discovered I liked this song. Not for the lyrics, but the music. I don't hear the cowbell. The station has since moved on to 70s and 80s and I discovered the signal of the 50s and 60s station is actually listenable even where the other one was better.
Counterpoint: They've limited the political stuff to the cold open and Weekend Update since the election. But you wouldn't know, because...as you say below, that (and maybe once in a while a sketch or two) are all you can stand.
In other words, you wouldn't really know.
Counterpoint: They've limited the political stuff to the cold open and Weekend Update since the election.
Kenan Thompson is Not Ready for Open Mic at the Comedy Club? Colin Jost? Michael Che? Heidi Gardner? Sarah Sherman? Bowen Yang? James Austin Johnson? Ego Nwodim?
C'mon.
And beyond that, Mikey Day is one of the strongest utility players the show has ever had, Marcello Hernandez is on the verge of being the next breakout star,. Chloe Fineman isn't my fave but she's very good and very versatile. Andrew Dismukes is solid, as are Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker.
The weakest members of the cast are the ones still finding their voices---Ashley Padilla and Emil Wakim. Jane Wickline has found a groove in a recurring character on Weekend Update, as radiofan2023 noted, but needs more than that...and I think she'll probably get there.
None of them compares to Ackroyd, Belushi, Murray, Radner, Curtin, Murphy... If I don't watch more sketches because they aren't funny and don't hold my interest. But maybe it's the writers. With bad writers, we'll never know how good any of the current cast might be.
I've watched for 50 years. Those people are all unique talents. So are the ones on the cast now.
In 1975, someone was looking at them and saying they weren't Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Actually, given the time gap, more like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.
You can only know what will hold your interest by watching it.
The writers are fine. If it's not to your taste, that's fine. It's also not the same thing as "bad".
Well now you've made me have a flashback to my first paid radio gig in 1987. It was a small market CHR, and the general manager had way too much input on the programming. And by that I mean he insisted that one of his favorite songs - Incense and Peppermints by the Strawberry Alarm Clock - had to be in the "gold cards" in the studio. So if you picked the next card out of the box, it was entirely possible that you could go from the latest Janet Jackson record into a 20 year old song that was only there because "the kids today...they don't know real music!"
We always skipped that one. Of course personal taste is highly subjective, and as such should be kept as far away from making creative decisions based on what you used to listen to or watch when you were growing up decades ago. I wouldn't presume to be able to program a CHR nowadays, much less oversee a sketch comedy show, but then I'm at least a little self-aware.
BTW, Sarah Sherman's bits with Colin Jost are hilarious.
50 years is a long time, yet to me it doesn't seem that long ago. Time bends as you age. When the show was new, I watched regularly for the first 5 years. I drifted off after that, but still would check in occasionally. Every era had some stand out members. It's a tribute to Lorne Michaels that the show is still around...
What’s wrong with a good fart joke. Leslie Nelson made a career out of them.
On another site they say she needs to go and was hired because she's related to someone.
15 million people watched Sunday night. Seems people care.
Indeed they do.
And people voted for Trump, too. I watched some. It sucked. I stopped. People is no assurance of quality. "The people, sir, is a great beast." - Alexander Hamilton.
I had an old boss who referred to SNL as “not ready for prime time players”
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