America's premiere sketch-comedy show returns for its 35th season LIVE from Studio 8H in New York City. This season, the cast includes Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, Andy Samberg,...
Sketches include Wrappinville Cold Open, Jimmy Fallon Song Monologue, Family Feud, (Do It On My) Twin Bed, Barry Gibb Talk Show, Weekend Update with guests Jimmy Fallon, Michael Bloomberg and Billie ...
America's premier sketch-comedy show returns for its 38th season LIVE from Studio 8H in New York City. This season, the cast includes Fred Armisen, Vanessa Bayer, Bill Hader, Taran Killam, Seth ...
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Title: Saturday Night Live (1975– )
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Does not include musical performances or sketches containing licensed music. America's premier sketch-comedy show returns for its 43rd season LIVE from Studio 8H in New York City. This ...
| Series cast summary: | |||
| Don Pardo | ... | Himself - Announcer / ... 727 episodes, 1975-2014 | |
 |
Lenny Pickett | ... | Himself - Bandleader / ... 416 episodes, 1985-2018 |
| Darrell Hammond | ... | Various / ... 362 episodes, 1995-2018 | |
| Kenan Thompson | ... | Various / ... 305 episodes, 2003-2018 | |
A late-night comedy show featuring several short skits, parodies of television commercials, a live guest band, and a pop-cultural guest host each week. Many of the SNL players have spun off successful independent comedy and/or movie careers from here. Written by Tad Dibbern <DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu>
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What promised well from the early seasons has become, more seasons than not, a safe and homogenized sketch comedy. It's basically the McDonalds of TV sketch that has pushed worthier competitors out of the way for years.
Performers and writers are basically encouraged to ruin sketches with one-note repetition/dragged-out premises, breaking character (essentially on purpose) and smug self-satisfaction... and all of this in the least interesting way possible. What could have been an American version of the avante-garde sketch-breaking started with Monty Python has instead evolved into the pettiest of petty irony "lol I'm in a sketch" onanism; professional 'high school pep assembly' sketches.
The teleprompter-life-support terrible acting that has plagued the show since the 80's or so deserves its own separate paragraph.
The next part may be tough to talk about in a year as politically polarizing and maddening as 2016 is, but I'm nothing if not willfully oblivious: The sketch and satire has picked a direction instead of bravely throwing punches at all valid targets. However, due to the nature of most kinds of satire, from the Ancient Greeks onward, this political directionality itself is forgivable, even if the occasional punch in the other direction would be more intellectually honest. But far, far worse is that instead of an open-minded, sharp, liberal satire, it has chosen, especially in the last 15 years or so, a sophomore-level, party-line Democrat 'satire'. So instead of leading in their own particular apologize-to-no-one way that satirists should do (and as South Park does and The Daily Show and Colbert Report almost always did- they are not always right, but they are always satirists), they follow the party line.
Instead of the 2/10 that I'm giving for the occasional good sketch, would you find it reasonable to give a 1/10 to a show that has for 40 years: had essentially its pick of the litter on writers and performers; had a decent budget; has cornered the market (merely by being first to market) on the national attention that no other show of its kind has come close to rivaling; and for all that has given us a batting average of good/rewatchable sketches somewhere around the 5% range?