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First episode of Saturday Night Live!
- Thread starter YCoCg
- Start date
ManaByte
Member
The show was legitimately good for its first 30 years or so (except for season 11, and they just posted a GREAT documentary about that season and what went wrong. but it did give us Lovitz and Miller).
The show started to die when they weren't allowed to make fun of the president the way they did in the past, and then it went into the toilet when they abandoned the tradition of allowing a cast member to play the president and instead brought in a celebrity guest to do it.
I do think they've heard those complaints and seen the ratings reflect it, so in the last 8 months or so they seem to SLOWLY be adjusting. Alec Baldwin isn't playing Trump anymore, for example. And they have a rare great skit once in a while:
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od-chan
Member
That's interesting, since I pretty much assumed the show was always basically shit, which I just attributed to the concept/nature of the beast. When you have a full ensemble and only have a week to put on a full production and have to do this every week with accommodating all of these people, then it's not exactly surprising that 90% of that will be slop. I'm not an avid SNL watcher, I only ever watched a couple of clips, but that's what it always felt to me like: Reject theater kids who will not stop beating the dead horse, because they're very well aware that there's an hour left they have to fill.
Obviously SNL is still a net positive overall because it gave people like Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader and soooo many others (Conan, Will Ferrell, the list goes on for a while) a way to get started in the industry; but the show itself was just never something I would want to watch for a full hour, much less so week after week.
It's kinda funny in a way because I actually started watching 30 Rock before I was really familiar with SNL itself, and I always assumed they dumbed the humor down for the in-universe show to make it seem more goofy. Surely the actual SNL would be actually funny, right? Well...
I do wonder if I would've seen this differently if I would've been alive (and old enough) back in the day to watch it in the 80s or so already, since I can at least appreciate that it did really break some new ground and really did try some new approaches. I just genuinely assume most of the sketches always sucked and had that theater kid vibe. 80s Letterman for example (to name something different, but comparable, from that time) is amazing, so I'm kinda thinking this just circles back to the nature of the beast I was mentioning earlier.
Oner
Member
Being the epitome of a GenX'er (imho) I used to love watching SNL during the 80's & into the 90's while my Brother was still alive.
We would chill, drink (Soda, Beers, Wine Coolers whatever), smoke (Cigarettes & some 420), grab some food + snacks/sweets and kill time playing Video Games (NES/SNES/Genesis etc) waiting for SNL to come on ~ and then we'd switch over, throw on some music and enjoy what cannot be described ~ watching it LIVE back then. It was a regular occurrence and friends, girlfriends, cousins & whoever would stop in throughout all those years.
After he passed in '97 a lot of the things I used to do with him just stopped as it was too painful just having the experience without him there. I would pop some on here and there but noticed the shift hard Left and it stayed off. Never gave a F@#% for any of it afterward.
Fast forward to today some 30 years later ~ looking back over the past 10 years and it is complete & absolute TRASH. Some Political joke/satire is fine for SNL ... BUT ON OCCASION. The overt biases and overbearing narrative injection made it disgustingly obvious what was going on. Stick to the jokes. Hone the craft of being a comedian. LIVE PERFORMANCE THEATRE. The public doesn't need stooges pushing propaganda.
Just be funny.
Edit: Spelling Corrections/Context
We would chill, drink (Soda, Beers, Wine Coolers whatever), smoke (Cigarettes & some 420), grab some food + snacks/sweets and kill time playing Video Games (NES/SNES/Genesis etc) waiting for SNL to come on ~ and then we'd switch over, throw on some music and enjoy what cannot be described ~ watching it LIVE back then. It was a regular occurrence and friends, girlfriends, cousins & whoever would stop in throughout all those years.
After he passed in '97 a lot of the things I used to do with him just stopped as it was too painful just having the experience without him there. I would pop some on here and there but noticed the shift hard Left and it stayed off. Never gave a F@#% for any of it afterward.
Fast forward to today some 30 years later ~ looking back over the past 10 years and it is complete & absolute TRASH. Some Political joke/satire is fine for SNL ... BUT ON OCCASION. The overt biases and overbearing narrative injection made it disgustingly obvious what was going on. Stick to the jokes. Hone the craft of being a comedian. LIVE PERFORMANCE THEATRE. The public doesn't need stooges pushing propaganda.
Just be funny.
Edit: Spelling Corrections/Context
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Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Late 80s to late 90s was the era for me. Myers, Carvey, Sandler, Farley, Rock and co. to Ferrell, Oteri, Fallon, and Shannon.
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
Weekend Update and SOME sketches (like the new guy whose name I am forgetting... But he's Latino and young) like the Latino mom (somehow they get Pedro Pascal for it every time) crack me UP!
I don't laugh out loud for everything I find funny. Usually I just smile or smirk when I find something funny ... But those times I laugh GENUINELY out loud... It's mostly weekend update. I miss Punky Johnson on the show.
I don't laugh out loud for everything I find funny. Usually I just smile or smirk when I find something funny ... But those times I laugh GENUINELY out loud... It's mostly weekend update. I miss Punky Johnson on the show.
Aesius
Member
All this, plus the cast members have gotten progressively less funny/interesting/memorable as time has gone on. The last time the entire cast went on to be even B-level stars was when they had Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, etc. And that was nearly 20 years ago.
There's not really the same path for the cast members to go straight to movies and other TV shows after a few years on the show like there used to be, and that hurts the show because casual viewers tune in and have no idea who they are. There's no trust built-in with the audience like there was when the cast members were legitimate stars in their own right.
And of course the show's writers are I'm sure exclusively millennials and Gen Z now. The influence of guys like Jim Downey and Robert Smigel and that entire crop of genius comedy writers is long gone.
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TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Yeah that was genuinely great skit and reminded me of the old SNL.
sadly I don't think the Tom Hanks one recently does them any favours.
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Grildon Tundy
Member
The best era of SNL is whenever you were 12-20 years old, imo. Pretty cool that it's been an institution for so long and for so many generations.
Starting with Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew in ~2006, I think there was a big push to start creating skits that could go viral on the internet, which sort of diminishes an integral part of SNL: the "Live" part of its name. But all things change.
Starting with Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew in ~2006, I think there was a big push to start creating skits that could go viral on the internet, which sort of diminishes an integral part of SNL: the "Live" part of its name. But all things change.
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
The Tom.Hanks one ... You mean from Black Jeopardy? That was funny as heck! It's a reference to his other appearance on Black Jeopardy... Which was also funny as heck.
And they missed a great opportunity to have Eddy play Akeem from Coming to America like Chadwick played T'Challa on there.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
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DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
It was! I just expected Akeem ... But he did a great Tracy LoL
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
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MrTroubleMaker
Member
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