This weekend featured the season premiere of Saturday Night Live with host Steve Carell (The Forty Year Old Virgin) and musical guest Kanye West and after a slow start I can truthfully say two or three sketches could be rated an “A”. I’ve always been a huge comedy fan and have regularly watched SNL since the eighth grade. I remember my first episode on New Year’s Eve 1999 with host Matthew Broderick and I have seen almost every show since that night. Most people can attest to the fact I have seen some of these episodes too many times as I can reenact several skits based on having taped several seasons and then watching them again to see how the skits faired the second time around. For the particularly great episodes (Jim Carey and the first Britney Spears come to mind), I would make it a point to ensure all my friends could enjoy these great comedy moments.
The show has suffered through its ups and downs over the years and I mainly feel you can attribute success to the talent of the cast. Personally, I feel the greatest group of actors combined the final years of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey with the early years of Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and Rob Schneider. This ensemble performed dead on impersonations, memorable musical numbers, and had the creativity to develop their own characters. Things fell apart during 1994-1995, but producer Lorne Michaels rebuilt the cast with Will Farrell, Chris Kattan, Cheri Oteri, and Ana Gasteyer to string together another run of successful shows. I would like to add a quick comment regarding the original cast containing Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtain, and Dan Akroyd by saying I find these episodes to be atrocious. Saturday Night Live’s debut served as a groundbreaking event in television history because there was nothing else like it and while the episodes of this era receive much acclaim, I find them to be awful. The development of the impressions, writing, and characters has come so far it would be like saying a horse would be as good of a way to travel as a car. This group may have been considered a sure thing at one time, but there's a reason most of them have not been successful. With that being said, I feel the current state of the show could also use a makeover
Presently, Tina Fey who took over duties during 1999-00 and began co-hosting the news segment, Weekend Update, the following year, supervises the writing for SNL. I initially found myself to be a huge fan of her clever, sharp-witted style, but my opinion significantly changed after Fey began promoting her movie Mean Girls. With each passing interview, I observed a person who didn’t really seem to have much life experience and based her writing on a keen sense of knowing what would make people laugh. She would talk about being a social outcast and it began to strike me this is a person who spent her high school and college careers vicariously living through other people. I envision her cracking a joke and gossiping about some freshman being stuffed into a trash can. because she spent her days at lunch eavesdropping on the tables around her. While she tried to play it off, she struck me as someone who spent her life being angry and jealous of never being a member of the in crowd while trying to pretend staying home with her friends and mocking the popular kids was a good time. This isn’t a good time for anyone and while being denied by your peers during your teenage years can be tough, you still have to find your niche. The world doesn’t only include cheerleaders and quarterbacks and other pockets of people exist where one can go to develop an identity. Based on her media appearances, I feel this is a person who not only lacked any depth to their personality while growing up, but continues to not quite get everyone has a difficult time as a teenager and that most people get over it. All her jokes about hip hop and pop culture only occur because she has witnessed other people laughing at them and I began viewing her work differently.
While riding the success of her movie, Fey appeared to have been granted more power last season in the content of the programming and I feel NBC ended up showing 20+ episodes of her personal ultra democratic political agenda. This led to some badly performed political comedy from someone thinking they were making a point and so much time would be devoted to the political humor the rest of the content suffered. There were few original characters developed and there was little to no skill with regards to impressionism. With Fey currently out on maternity leave, I looked forward to watching last night’s episode because I hoped she wouldn’t have much influence. The program opened, however, with a George Bush skit concerning reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the big crowd reaction punch line they used about “Who is in charge” completely ignored the legal ramifications of why the federal government couldn’t go in and say they now ruled Louisiana. After yelling at the TV and lamenting another painful season, I survived a mildly amusing skit about the JetBlue emergency landing before falling asleep. This morning Bethany and I watched the rest of the show over breakfast and laughed on several occasion with the highlight being a cameo by Mike Meyers with Kanye West. In addition, Bill Hader of Punk’d fame has joined the cast and nailed some dead on impressions including Al Pacino. It’s too early to give a full verdict, but I hope the Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite, New Reese Witherspoon Ghost/Romantic Comedy) hosted episode next week continues to build on this week’s promising start until the college democrat returns to sink the righted ship.
The show has suffered through its ups and downs over the years and I mainly feel you can attribute success to the talent of the cast. Personally, I feel the greatest group of actors combined the final years of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey with the early years of Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and Rob Schneider. This ensemble performed dead on impersonations, memorable musical numbers, and had the creativity to develop their own characters. Things fell apart during 1994-1995, but producer Lorne Michaels rebuilt the cast with Will Farrell, Chris Kattan, Cheri Oteri, and Ana Gasteyer to string together another run of successful shows. I would like to add a quick comment regarding the original cast containing Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtain, and Dan Akroyd by saying I find these episodes to be atrocious. Saturday Night Live’s debut served as a groundbreaking event in television history because there was nothing else like it and while the episodes of this era receive much acclaim, I find them to be awful. The development of the impressions, writing, and characters has come so far it would be like saying a horse would be as good of a way to travel as a car. This group may have been considered a sure thing at one time, but there's a reason most of them have not been successful. With that being said, I feel the current state of the show could also use a makeover
Presently, Tina Fey who took over duties during 1999-00 and began co-hosting the news segment, Weekend Update, the following year, supervises the writing for SNL. I initially found myself to be a huge fan of her clever, sharp-witted style, but my opinion significantly changed after Fey began promoting her movie Mean Girls. With each passing interview, I observed a person who didn’t really seem to have much life experience and based her writing on a keen sense of knowing what would make people laugh. She would talk about being a social outcast and it began to strike me this is a person who spent her high school and college careers vicariously living through other people. I envision her cracking a joke and gossiping about some freshman being stuffed into a trash can. because she spent her days at lunch eavesdropping on the tables around her. While she tried to play it off, she struck me as someone who spent her life being angry and jealous of never being a member of the in crowd while trying to pretend staying home with her friends and mocking the popular kids was a good time. This isn’t a good time for anyone and while being denied by your peers during your teenage years can be tough, you still have to find your niche. The world doesn’t only include cheerleaders and quarterbacks and other pockets of people exist where one can go to develop an identity. Based on her media appearances, I feel this is a person who not only lacked any depth to their personality while growing up, but continues to not quite get everyone has a difficult time as a teenager and that most people get over it. All her jokes about hip hop and pop culture only occur because she has witnessed other people laughing at them and I began viewing her work differently.
While riding the success of her movie, Fey appeared to have been granted more power last season in the content of the programming and I feel NBC ended up showing 20+ episodes of her personal ultra democratic political agenda. This led to some badly performed political comedy from someone thinking they were making a point and so much time would be devoted to the political humor the rest of the content suffered. There were few original characters developed and there was little to no skill with regards to impressionism. With Fey currently out on maternity leave, I looked forward to watching last night’s episode because I hoped she wouldn’t have much influence. The program opened, however, with a George Bush skit concerning reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the big crowd reaction punch line they used about “Who is in charge” completely ignored the legal ramifications of why the federal government couldn’t go in and say they now ruled Louisiana. After yelling at the TV and lamenting another painful season, I survived a mildly amusing skit about the JetBlue emergency landing before falling asleep. This morning Bethany and I watched the rest of the show over breakfast and laughed on several occasion with the highlight being a cameo by Mike Meyers with Kanye West. In addition, Bill Hader of Punk’d fame has joined the cast and nailed some dead on impressions including Al Pacino. It’s too early to give a full verdict, but I hope the Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite, New Reese Witherspoon Ghost/Romantic Comedy) hosted episode next week continues to build on this week’s promising start until the college democrat returns to sink the righted ship.
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