posted
I didn't see it, but I heard she mostly played the straight man while the cast used her as a foil.
I thought it was pretty brave of her to go on, having no idea what they might do or say. I'll catch it on the NBC website when it goes up. I was hoping she'd do a Tina Fey impression, like making fun of her American Express commercial.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I just watched it, if you go to NBC.com there's a link on the front page.
She really didn't do a whole lot other than stand there, but it was pretty funny, not mean spirited at all, and she's a good sport. Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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She's practicing not doing much but standing there so she'll be really good at it in a few weeks.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I saw it. Palin was there but didn't contribute much to the program. I think she was just trying to demonstrate she has the character to be a good sport about her skewering on SNL. They either didn't want or couldn't manage to do anything really funny with her.
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I stopped watching after the last generation started leaving the show, the Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, Anna Gesteyer etc generation. I think the show used to be absolutely hysterical in the late 90's and early 00's, but went dramatically downhill in the last few years. I think it used to be 80/20 funny/unfunny. Now I think it's more like 20/80, and I think most of that funny is from Darrell Hammond, who is like the last holdout from the previous generation of comedians on that show.
I never bother with watching a whole show. It's not worth 90 minutes just to find the two sketches that are actually funny.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Here's what I think: Everyone thinks SNL is really funny when they are relatively new to it and when the subject matter is current. Everyone I've heard comment on the quality of the show says it went down hill at some point. I think how far that point is in the past is proportional to how long the viewer has been watching. (Also note that watching the stuff that people felt was really good at the time, for new viewers falls flat. Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd sketches just suck, now.)
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Actually, I think it was funniest about 5 years before I started watching. I've seen tapes from friends. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:(Also note that watching the stuff that people felt was really good at the time, for new viewers falls flat. Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd sketches just suck, now.)
I totally disagree(with you and others). I watched SNL mostly in the early to mid 90s and thought it was really funny then(Myers, Carvey, Spade, Sandler, Farley, Hartman, Nealon etc...). But watching reruns of the old 70s episodes I think those are the prime of SNL. Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Bill Murray, Steve Martin(as a host)...those years were classic in my mind.
So not only do I think those early years are excellent, but they're not the ones I grew up watching either.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Lyrhawn, SNL started going downhill long before the turn of the millennium.
Too true.
Yeah but that was before my time really, so I joined the skid late.
I sort of agree that it might be best for people when they first start watching it. I've seen some of the sketches from the Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase etc etc generation, and I don't think it's nearly as funny as what was on in the late 90's.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: They either didn't want or couldn't manage to do anything really funny
Well, yeah. That's sort of been SNL's trademark for over a decade now.
Though I generally agree with the sentiment, I think it's a little unfair to quote out of context like that. That isn't what scifi said- but then I've been accused of not "getting it" when people do the clever context game.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Actually, I think it was funniest about 5 years before I started watching. I've seen tapes from friends.
AS I've heard time and again from former cast members and other critics, the fact is that things are always funnier in reruns, and on "best of" editions. You aren't exposed to the real stinkers that went on the air week after week, unless you've actually gone back and reviewed every show from 5 years before you started watching. Then there's the added factor of the comic reputation and your particular appreciation for a particular character who, at the time, was maybe not known as well or appreciated as much for the same things. Just a thought- this is how most nostalgia works.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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The problem with SNL is that they'll take a fairly amusing idea and run it into the ground. Half their skits would be much better if they just stopped them about half way through.
And then they make it worse by taking a skit that went on way too long and repeating it over and over again until you just want to throw something at them. I think Kristin Wiig can be funny, for example, but that thing she does with the weird eyes and sounds makes me turn the show off every time. Who there thinks that's funny, for crying out loud?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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That's my feeling a lot of the time as well. I think part of it probably comes from the writing process- people don't want to sacrifice their jokes in a sketch, and maybe they go on too long especially when someone insists that they will be funnier than they really are.
That's kind of the nice thing about a live show though- the good part of it is that it isn't all overproduced and run into the ground before hand, so sometimes you get comic gold.
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Who watched best-of collections? The friends in question had videotaped entire seasons, and we watched 'em. (This was in response to my asking them why they found the show funny, and their claim that yeah, it really did used to be funnier.)
quote:The problem with SNL is that they'll take a fairly amusing idea and run it into the ground. Half their skits would be much better if they just stopped them about half way through.
posted
It actually amazes me that SNL (and The Simpsons, while we're at it) has been around long enough that people now argue about which three-year-period marked the start of its decline. I wonder when this'll happen to South Park.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I would argue that that has already occurred with South Park. The ratio of good-to-bad episodes has gotten smaller and smaller. Particularly beginning in Season 9 (with eps like "Wing", "Marjorine", "Follow that Egg", "Two Days before the day after tomorrow") the number of bad/stupid/lame episodes drastically went up. That season I'd rate it at about half. From then on, the number of good eps got smaller and smaller, until, so far, this season's new eps have both sucked. And last season I'd seriously argue that "Super Fun Time" was the only good episode, and that's only because of the frontier town actors not breaking character (and it was freaking hilarious).
In fact I was talking with someone about it yesterday 'cause I've tried to figure out why they have gotten so lame. I think it comes down to shallow ideas that then get beaten to death with repitition. So that a single idea that is deep enough, comedically, for 5 minutes of humor, gets stretched to 22. I mean "Hell on earth 2006" (esp with the '3 stooges' of serial killers)? "A Million Little Fibers"? "Night of the living homeless"? "Wing"? For 22 minutes?
Course, its the same thing that happened to SNL when they take 5 min skits and make movies about them. There are exceptions, like "Wayne's World". But for everyone of those, you have a "Stuart Saves his family", "Superstar", "A Night at the Roxbury", "The Ladies Man" or "It's Pat-the movie". Again, not to say there arent moments of humor. But for 90 minutes? The idea simply isn't deep enough, we don't care about the character, and the main premise doesn't need to be repeated throughout the show.
And I think the same thing has happened to South Park. They get one idea with a single point and then beat it to death. Or stretch it out over 3 episodes (like "Imaginationland" or "Go God Go!") when one would have done it justice. I mean, did anyone laugh at the "Britney's new look" episode? Honestly, I just watched the screen without cracking a smile. And they even made a valid point. But none of it was funny. Or the Indiana Jones sequences or Cartman and Butters trying to pass as Chinese in "The China Problem"?
Instead, all the characters have gotten angrier, and over-dramatic, whether it's Wendy, Cartman, Stan, or esp Butters. As if the the intensity of their feelings can hide the fact that the premise for the humor is very weak.
Anyway, had to rant... Sorry [End Hijack]
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I sort of agree that it might be best for people when they first start watching it. I've seen some of the sketches from the Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase etc etc generation....
Eddie Murphy wasn't a member of the original cast. He was part of the early 80s cast that included Julia Louis-Dreyfus , Joe Piscopo, Mary Gross, and Tim Kazurinsky.
I don't think that SNL has ever been fantastically good, but it has certainly had moments of brilliance*, and some of its casts have been markedly more talented than others. The original cast was fairly good, as was the early 80s cast mentioned above. The early 90s was another good era. The period of Tina Fey's reign as head writer in the late '90s and early '00s was better than average too.
*the lampooning of the way TV journalism covers crises in the Buchwheat Assasination series of sketches is fantastic (of course, I haven't seen this in ages; it's possible that I'd rewatch it and wonder what I'd been smoking)
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote: The problem with SNL is that they'll take a fairly amusing idea and run it into the ground. Half their skits would be much better if they just stopped them about half way through.
While I do agree that SNL is often guilty of this, I must say MadTV is actually systematically thorough at it.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Noemon, that Buckwheat sketch really is amazing. I saw it recently, and still laughed. A lot.
IanO,
I agree with you on South Park, except that Night of the Living Homeless was good, and while the most recent one isn't a classic (by far), it was the closest thing to a character study that South Park has done. Everything about Cartman is on display, and while it isn't the most offensive thing he's ever done, it was the strongest opposition he's ever had and the closest they've come to his breaking point on the show. Of course, I'm making a lot out of this little cartoon cutout show, and the episode wasn't really that funny, either.
Posts: 368 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: It actually amazes me that SNL (and The Simpsons, while we're at it) has been around long enough that people now argue about which three-year-period marked the start of its decline. I wonder when this'll happen to South Park.
Yeah. I've quoted this before somewhere, but Matt Groening, in an interview about Futurama, was asked if in the future, the Simpsons would still be on TV; he said, why, yes, but that fans argued that the first 500 years were the best...
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I have seen the Weekend Update skit at least six times. I laugh every time Poehler shoots the moose. It just doesn't get old for me.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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