This past Saturday, Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) was the host of SNL. So, I set-up the DVR to record it and watch later.
On Sunday, while you all were watching people play dress-up for 10 hours (aka the Oscars), I watched the taped SNL.
I have to say, I am far from impressed with the quality of SNL. The opening monologue was pretty funny (Rainn went through the SNL backstage and it was like The Office). There was a good skit or two, but apparently not good enough for me to remember (One was a SNL Digital Short [pretty much the only reason to watch the show now] about a company trying to come up with ways to save costs and as they go around each speaker gets more ridiculous). But besides that, it was almost unwatchable.
For me the turning point from watchable to god-awful was the Fred Armisan/Maya Rudolph skit about the Noonies (sp?). These characters have been around for a couple of years now and have yet to be even the least bit funny. So, I guess it’s only a matter of time before they get their own movie (see: Superstar). The recurring skit is like a father joke (you know, the lame puns your dad would make up and then keep repeating them as if they were funny the first time. A classic example would be the old, “working hard or hardly working” line). It is just horrible.
The SNL weekly update has fallen off the chart since Tina Fey left (by the way, last week’s 30 Rock was the funnest show out of the Thursday night comedy block [Earl, Office, Scrubs, and 30 Rock]). Amy Poehler and Seth Meyer’s comedy stylings are too similar and when featured together it is just bland (they could go Poehler and Keenan [or is it Kal] and that would probably give it a little boost, but Keenan/Kal is too liable to laugh during the sketch).
Last the amount of show to commercials is unbareable and I watched this show from the DVR. We got to see one little skit that flops and then fast forward through 5 minutes of commercials. I don’t see how anyone could watch SNL live (is that redundant?).
The one thing I did note is that all the “good” bits were right at the front of the show. So, if you were to watch live, you could just tune in for the first half hour or so and then move on. Which brings up the question, “If everything good is done by 30 minutes, why is the show still an hour and a half?” Shouldn’t they just cut down the amount of time the show runs? Then if someone with real comedic weight was to host (i.e. Eddie Murphy, Mike Meyers, Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, etc.) strecth it out to an hour or maybe the full hour and a half. How would this be a bad thing? On the down weeks, the staff writers would have to bust their asses to make their skit good because there is such a limited amount of time. Then if a big star were to come on, the amount of viewer entertainment would go up. How come Lorne Michaels isn’t calling me about how to run his show? Come on now.
Posted by Mikey 
