Brief thoughts on #SNL40

Other people are probably going to write more extensively about tonight's SNL 40th Anniversary special, so I'll leave it to them, but I'll say my piece about a few things:

Most of the show was entertaining; the clip montages were well-chosen and edited, and it was good to see the lesser-celebrated Doumanian and Ebersol years get more "deep cuts" covered in the highlight reels, as opposed to the same Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo clips they normally rely on.  

The music performances weren't bad; nothing on par with Prince doing "Electric Chair" at the 15th anniversary or the Eurythmics and Al Green medleys at the 25th. Miley Cyrus doing "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" was surprisingly good, though.  

Jane Curtin doing Weekend Update with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler was a highlight, and she killed it with her Fox News joke. She was always the secret weapon of the original years, or at least the one hidden in plain sight.  

The biggest misstep of the night was the Californians sketch, which didn't seem to play too well in studio. Despite the participation of Laraine Newman and cameos from Bradley Cooper, Kerry Washington, Taylor Swift and Betty White, the sketch dragged.  David Spade posted a close-up of the script on Instagram earlier, which revealed this was the handiwork of James Anderson and Kent Sublette; for all I know they may be wonderful people, but this was all too typical of their other work on the show*.  The same could be said for Garth and Kat, which ground the pacing of the "salute to musical sketches" segment to a halt.

The "In Memoriam" montage was well-done, but I noticed a few glaring omissions:

• Joe Bodolai (writer, 1981-82)
• Nelson Lyon (writer, 1981-82)
• Mark O'Donnell (writer, 1981-82)
• Terry Southern (writer, 1981-82)
• Alan P. Rubin (band, 1975-83)
• Drake Sather (writer, 1994-95)
• Mauricio Smith (band, 1975-79)

They may have kept to a "more than one season" rule for writers, but I found it odd they didn't count the other band members who have passed.  I believe there were also a few other crew and staff members that had been memorialized beforehand but not here.  That said, it was nice to see some others get their due.  I was most concerned that Charles Rocket, Danitra Vance, Michael O'Donoghue and Tom Davis would get short shrift, and was pleased to see they were counted.  The same goes for Don Pardo, Dave Wilson and Audrey Peart Dickman (from many accounts, she was the engine that kept the show running, production-wise). 

Other than those issues, the special served its purpose: it reminded the audience why this show (and it's history) is special, and it was good to see a lot of familiar faces again.  I hope everyone there had a good time (even Anderson and Sublette).

*A partial list of other Anderlette sketches this season: "Forgotten Television Gems", "Women In The Workplace", "Campfire Song", "Nest-presso", "Amy Adams Monologue", "Singing Sisters", "Soap Opera Reunion", "The Journey", "Casablanca".

Back to reviewing soon

I'll be resuming my reviews of SNL's 1982-83 season in the coming weeks; I've been working on other projects lately, as well as the whole business of working and having a life outside of watching a sketch comedy TV show, though I admit this whole SNL thing has put me into contact with some very interesting people.  

I still haven't decided whether to continue through the rest of the Ebersol era once I finish that, or to skip ahead (or back) to a Lorne Michaels season, but I'm considering having a dual review track for different days of the week, where I have the SNL review on a certain day, and another review (either SNL or another series) another day of the week.  I will not review the upcoming season of the show because there are a number of websites that already do this, and I feel that I can't help but be overly negative (and redundant) when evaluating the newer shows due to my bias against certain performers and writers.

I've also decided to change my regular review process; I originally had it set up where I would do an initial viewing for taking notes, then screencap and finish that specific episode, but I've decided to do my notes for the season's remaining episodes ahead of time, then work on the next review (Smothers Brothers/Laura Branigan) after that's finished.  

A number of the remaining 1982-83 shows are going to be from recordings of reruns where some content is missing or the correct running order hasn't been confirmed; I will review as much of the show as I have access to at the time, but will revise accordingly once I have access to recordings of the live broadcasts.

The next review won't be finished until sometime later this month, but in the meantime I'm going to leave you with some stills from promos of that season's shows; these usually aired during the midnight station break when NBC was showing SCTV Network on Friday nights.

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Giving up on SNL

I've been watching SNL regularly for about 20 years.  I still have my original tapes from when I first started recording the show back in March 1994; in fact, I can tell you that the first episode I taped was a rerun of the show with John Malkovich and Billy Joel.  I've stuck with the show through that horrible season with Janeane Garofalo.  I've seen the historically bad years that almost got the show cancelled.  I've sat through that godawful 10 minute sketch with the sub at the bottom of the ocean.  None of these low points has made me want to give up on the show as much as this current season has.  

Last month, I wrote that I mainly watch the show out of a routine I can no longer justify to myself.  I was originally going to pack it in at that point, but held out hope that the next four shows would show some flicker of life that's been noticeably absent this year.  That would not be the case.

Josh Hutcherson was dull.  Paul Rudd had cameos and a Bill Brasky sketch, but weak writing pretty much everywhere else.  John Goodman's long-overdue return to SNL had more tepid writing, plus a sketch starring Sylvester Stallone and Robert DeNiro that felt like a rejected script from a bad Bob Hope special; the kind of sketch that SNL would make fun of when it spoofed bad variety shows.

The Jimmy Fallon show that aired last night was a bit more fun than the show's been in a while: Fallon has come a long way since he was the messy-haired new kid 15 years ago, and his collaborations with Justin Timberlake guaranteed several fan favorites would be trotted out.  That said, so much of the show felt like pandering: Paula Pell's Dancing Mascot sketches doesn't do much for me (it just feels too by-the-numbers and obligatory), and the cameos by Paul McCartney, Madonna, Barry Gibb and Michael Bloomberg felt like they were intended to distract from how lifeless the writing is on the show.  The episode came off as self-congratulatory towards Lorne Michaels' takeover of NBC late night.; an extended commercial for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, if you will.

It's not that the show is actually terrible: a truly bad year would at least be interesting.  Yet, more than ever this season, it feels like the show's on auto-pilot.  There's no need for the show to try anymore; it's one of the few relative successes NBC has left, so there's no impending cancellation to force the show to correct course.

Sketch comedy shows by their very nature are uneven, and even SNL's best seasons have had their dud shows.  This season feels different; I don't think "mediocre" is the right word, though, because even something mediocre can have an appreciable effort behind it.  The six new faces added to the show in the wake of the recent departures of Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis just feel purely cosmetic; only a mask to cover stagnant and lazy writing.

The cast has too much potential that's not being used properly.  Taran Killam and Kate McKinnon are in a class by themselves on the show, and could potentially carry a new era of the show, but they're weighed down by so many people who have overstayed their welcome.  The move to make Kenan Thompson the cast anchor (a la Hader or Sudeikis) is baffling; Thompson doesn't have the range to pull off that role in the cast, and he's already demonstrated everything he's capable of as a performer years ago.

The real dead weight is in the writers' room.  There are 23 writers on staff this year, including Lorne Michaels, who always gets a credit.  Steve Higgins and Paula Pell have been with the show since the last big changeover in 1995 (Pell is part-time); their tenure with the show is longer than those of the original writers who were still with the show before Michaels cleaned house.  James Anderson has been around since 2000; he and frequent collaborator Kent Sublette seem to be the writing staff's equivalent of Kenan Thompson, in that they recycle their bag of tricks and that their output tends to annoy more than amuse.  There are a handful of prolific and talented newer writers (Zach Kanin, Sarah Schneider and Chris Kelly) and a fair bit of turnover in the staff over the last five years: the only trouble with this is that it's the newer writers that leave, while the veterans stick around and churn out the same old material.

I need a break from the show.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting too frustrated by SNL this season to justify watching live anymore; until some non-superficial changes are made to the creative side of the show, I'm not going to be tuning in.  Whatever's worth checking out will be on the internet the next day (unless it has a music clearance issue).  

My original plan was to finish the 1982-83 season reviews, but I think I'm going to take a break from those as well.  I'll try to resume those in a few months.

SNL Post-mortem: 10/26/13: Edward Norton / Janelle Monae

After an underwhelming episode with Bruce Willis, pretty much anything would seem like an improvement for SNL's next show.  Fortunately, Edward Norton's episode was markedly better than the last few, thanks to a game host and strong musical guest, even if the writing continues to be sub-par.

The Wes Anderson parody was easily the strongest and most fully realized segment, drawing primarily from Royal Tenenbaums, with some smaller nods to Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom.   I have to admit that "failure to grasp a simple concept" is pretty reliable as far as a sketch premise goes, so "School Visit" and "Steve Harvey" both made me laugh.  "School Visit" was the stronger sketch, with Nasim Pedrad getting a rare featured segment on the show as an elementary school student who doesn't quite understand "Stranger Danger".  The sketch works because Pedrad plays her character with such undue confidence, while Norton is able to hold his own against Pedrad in his role as the police officer; the remaining cast also does some good support work.  "Steve Harvey" was weaker and didn't have an ending, but Harvey's (Kenan Thompson) completely wrong guesses about punny Halloween costumes were some good quick laughs.

The show's weaknesses were still apparent last night.  Norton's final sketch, where he explained individual pieces of Halloween candy he gave out, had some good lines, but seemed like a quick rewrite of the Christmas ornaments sketch from the 2011 Steve Buscemi show.  Miley Cyrus' cameo in the monologue didn't bother me as much as it did other people, but the gratuitous twerking reference that ended "12 Years Not A Slave" only served to instantly date the sketch.   A sketch revolving around a "Rain Man"-type character 25 years after the movie got some grousing from the message boards for its untimeliness, but the bigger problem was a lack of an ending.   Weekend Update was mercifully shorter than usual, but Cecily Strong still seems a little tentative, and Bobby Moynihan's Anthony Crispino character seems to be more to provide Seth Meyers something to react to than anything else.

I'm still baffled by the decision to hire six new featured players to replace three (four if you count Tim Robinson's move to the writer's room).  I understand that Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis were the cast's foundation in the last few seasons, but the huge number hired seems to indicate a lack of faith in the established cast; this is even more aggravating when you take into consideration their limited opportunities to develop their own dynamic, especially during the reign of Kristen Wiig as alpha-castmember.  Kenan Thompson is being pushed as this year's bedrock, but he doesn't have the versatility of the departed players; why the show didn't look for a stronger black performer to replace him is a mystery.  To their credit, Bobby Moynihan and Taran Killam are still very dependable in whatever they do, but there are so many players competing for airtime that the cast can't establish a true group dynamic.

SNL Post-Mortem: 10/12/03: Bruce Willis / Katy Perry

One of SNL's current booking strategies seems to be to grab random celebrities who've only hosted the show once many years before.  Tonight's host, Bruce Willis, last appeared on the show's season premiere in 1989.  Willis' musical guest this time around was Katy Perry, whose performance of "Roar" with an animal-suited band was one of the oddest things on this week's show.

Willis' performances were off all night and sloppy compared to his first show; while Perry markedly improved over her 2010 songs, despite a iffy audio mix.  Even iffier was the writing, which was weaker than the previous two shows, with too many of the sketches going nowhere beyond the reveal of the main joke.  

The Lady Gaga Show was the latest dressing on one of SNL's favorite crutches: the talk show sketch.  Besides not being particularly funny, the sketch was a performance misfire for Vanessa Bayer, whose delivery as Gaga seemed too similar to her bar mitzvah boy character Jacob.    

More frustrating was the attempt to recur two one-off sketches from last year; the resurrection of Bobby Moynihan's kittycat-fixated astronaut Kirby was a beat-for-beat remake of a sketch that aired almost exactly a year ago, while Taran Killam's Eddie character predictably hectored a character played by the host over a mispronounced word.  Perhaps the laziest piece of writing was Penelope Cruz (Kate McKinnon) mispronouncing hair product chemicals in Gaga Show, a routine cribbed from a sketch in McKinnon's debut show in April 2012.

There were handful of bright spots: Boy Dance Party got a great reaction from the audience and is likely to be SNL's latest meme-generator, while the Good Neighbor guys' "Sigma" short was well constructed, with several good jokes.  Centauri Vodka had the most interesting and classically funny premise of the night, as well as giving two of the season's least-used castmembers (John Milheiser and Nasim Pedrad) some much-needed airtime.  Brooks Wheelan also managed to show some promise in a Weekend Update desk segment, though Cecily Strong's awkward WU performance felt like a backward step from last week's signs of improvement.

I don't know how the hierarchy at SNL currently works regarding who gets their material on air, or how big a part in the sketch writing process the cast have, but over the last few seasons, I've noticed it's the veteran writers that stick around while the newer hires come and go.  I get the feeling that the writers with the most influence are the ones who are also holding the show back.  It's a shame, really, because the cast has been quite good in the last couple of seasons; Bobby Moynihan is particularly reliable for saving sketches.  However, the show is only as good as its writing, and I have a feeling that even the celebrated original cast or '86-90 ensemble would have trouble salvaging some of tonight's material.

Next week is a dark week for the show, which will return live on October 26 with Edward Norton and Janelle Monae.  I will continue my Classic SNL reviews that week with the next show from 1982-83 (Robert Blake / Kenny Loggins).

SNL Post-Mortem: 10/05/13: Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus first hosted SNL back in 2011; at the time I was a little irritated by the show's kowtow to the youth demographic, but in retrospect she ended up being a decent host.   Following the media attention to her infamous twerking performance with Robin Thicke at the 2013 Video Music Awards, her second hosting gig seemed to be an inevitability.  This honestly didn't bother me much, largely because all the finger-pointing and tongue-wagging towards that particular incident seemed to disproportionately blame and criticize Cyrus, as well as call her mental health into question.   Her attempts to sexualize her image have a whiff of trying too hard, but for all the questionable decisions she made in the past few years, Cyrus comes off more as a 20-year-old who makes many the same mistakes as a lot of non-famous people do than a cautionary tale in the waiting.

Some were expecting the show to be a trainwreck; Cyrus did seem to fan those flames by getting into a feud with Sinead O'Connor over the latter's open letter to her, but by air, she seemed collected and in control.  I'm not going to kid myself: Miley Cyrus is no Justin Timberlake, but she did fine on double-duty.  She has a self-awareness that I never really detected in Britney Spears, so while she sometimes does stupid things, she also seems fully aware of her actions.  

I was more impressed by her ability to share the spotlight and join in SNL sketches as part of the ensemble.  In that respect, she was light years ahead of Justin Bieber.  Cyrus also performed her songs decently, even if it only served to illustrate that "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop
 aren't especially great songs to begin with.

Where the show faltered was the writing.  A lot of the sketch ideas came across as fairly low-hanging fruit for the show, particularly the VMAs, the cable networks' Hilary Clinton movies).  My main issue with the "Mornin' Miami" sketch is that SNL has overused the promo shoot premise in the past few years; while the one-liners ended up justifying the sketch's place in the live show, it still felt like the writers plugging things into formulas instead of building towards a strong payoff.   The poetry teacher sketch had a few moments, but while it was nice to see Vanessa Bayer get a feature role, her character wasn't developed enough for the sketch to work.  The worst segment was the "cheerleader alien abduction", which felt too similar to "Nascarettes" and "Delinquent Teen Girl Gang" in that the crux of the sketch was the same unfunny joke repeated over and over.  I actually found the technical miscues funnier than the actual content of the sketch.

There were bright spots here and there: the "We Can't Stop" parody with John Boehner (Taran Killam) and Michelle Bachmann (Cyrus) twerking was memorable, and new players Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett got some of their own sensibility on the air with a pre-taped 10-to-1 sketch.  Bobby Moynihan can be still depended on to provide a quick laugh if a sketch begins to falter.  "Girlfriends Talk Show" came across as a predictable choice for a lead-off, but Aidy Bryant demonstrated that she carries those sketches.  Cecily Strong is growing into her role as Weekend Update co-anchor, but has yet to fully ditch the "Seth Meyers' trainee" vibe that permeated last week's show, and the segment as a whole has become way too long and bloated in recent years.

Next week's show should prove to be a wild card: Bruce Willis returns as part of SNL's "Hey, let's get someone who hasn't hosted in a long time" series with musical guest Katy Perry.

A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT CANADIAN TV: I missed a good chunk of the "Fifty Shades Of Gray Auditions" because Global, the Canadian broadcaster of SNL, mistook the commercial parody for a real commercial.  This has been happening infrequently for the last 10-11 years or so, possibly longer: I remember back in 2005-06, the network would run commercials during the Robert Smigel "TV Funhouse" segments.  It's annoying because in most markets, the American signal from NBC is unavailable due to simultaneous substitution.  SNL has been clearly marking their ad breaks for years, and to keep doing this suggests incompetence with live TV on Global's part.  NBC needs to consider renegotiating the Canadian rights to the show with another network.

SNL Post-mortem: 09/28/13: Tina Fey / Arcade Fire

Saturday Night Live began its 39th season with a bit more media attention than usual: six new featured players were added to pad out a cast that lost three of its key players over the summer, and last year's rookie breakout Cecily Strong was added to Weekend Update to prepare for anchor Seth Meyers' departure for his own Late Night show mid-season.  In short, another "transition year" for a show that seems to be in the throes of a particularly long and gradual "transition year".

I've written about this before, but the season premiere is not really the best place to judge how the season as a whole will go.  The first few shows in September and October have the cast and writers slowly settling back into their routines, and they largely play it safe until the group dynamic is re-established.  Selecting TIna Fey as a host was a smart choice, though I suspect, like with Amy Poehler three years ago, the producers were having a little trouble finalizing that slot as the announcement came less than three weeks before air.  Fey also didn't really have anything to promote aside from being a successful alumna.  

Her fourth gig as host (and first since appearing while 6 months pregnant in May 2011) was welcome, though: with Fey, it feels like there's an extra member in the cast rather than someone being shoehorned into sketches.  

It did feel like the show was struggling to come up with content.  The influx of new players served as the basis for two whole segments: the monologue, and a game show where Tina Fey had to guess whether someone was a new featured player or a member of Arcade Fire.  Both of these segments were actually pretty funny, but SNL usually handles their new cast influxes a bit more succinctly than this (Side note: my all-time favorite way of introducing new players was 1986's premiere, which didn't show a member of its mostly-new cast on-camera before the first commercial break).  

On the downside, there were a few thin premises (the airport sketch, the PBS movie show), and the recurring characters (Drunk Uncle and the Ex-Porn Stars) didn't have their best outings.  I suspect that this was less of a problem than it would have been without Fey, who knows how to play the weaker bits.  While the Aaron Paul cameos were welcome and appropriate considering the event-level finale of Breaking Bad the next night, by the time of his third appearance they began to feel like a crutch.

Cecily Strong made her debut as a Weekend Update co-anchor.  Last season, she made a quick impression with characters like "The Girl You Wish You Haven't Started A Conversation With At A Party", and felt like a veteran after only a few shows.  Her first time at the desk showed promise, but was underwhelming: she seems to be trying to force herself into the Seth Meyers sarcastic delivery mold, and seemed to have an absence of the gravitas that Jane Curtin or Fey herself had at the desk.  I hope she eventually grows into her new role and finds a way to make the desk her own, rather than continue to dish out more of the same style of humor that Seth Meyers has been serving on WU since 2006.

The large number of people in the cast (and tendency toward longer openings, monologues and Weekend Update) means that there are a lot of people competing for airtime, and because the show only has so much space, some will inevitably get shut out some weeks.  Of the new hires, Kyle Mooney and Noel Wells seemed to make the strongest impressions tonight.  Mooney got an Update feature for his inaugural show with his hack stand-up character Bruce Chandling, and Wells led a fake promo for HBO's Girls with her Lena Dunham impression.  Writer-turned-player Mike O'Brien also had a feature playing an old-timey used car salesman character, but Fey was the one who carried the sketch.  Beck Bennett ended up relagated to support roles, while John Milheiser and Brooks Wheelan only had bit parts.  It remains to be seen how the male players will distinguish themselves from each other.

The size of the cast will only serve to make it tougher for some veterans to get airtime: Nasim Pedrad, now in her fifth season, seems to appear on the show significantly less each passing year, and while Jay Pharoah's Obama ensures his spot in the cast, he was nowhere to be seen after the opening montage.  Other than these two, the remaining cast seems to be gelling as a group, with Bobby Moynihan, Taran Killam, Vanessa Bayer, Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon settling into clear roles in the cast.  Curiously, it feels like they're grooming Kenan Thompson to take some of the Bill Hader and Jason Sudiekis roles, as his game show emcee and PBS host characters would have been portrayed by either of the two departed players.

I was disappointed that Tim Robinson was swapped out of the cast and into the writer's room for this year, essentially switching places with Mike O'Brien.  Robinson may not have had as stellar a year as Cecily Strong, but he was responsible for some of last year's more memorable sketches ("Z-Shirts" and "Roundball Rock").  O'Brien seems to fill a similar niche in the roles he plays, but he's not as strong a performer as Robinson, nor does he quite have his strong comedic sensibility.

I'm still on the fence about the Arcade Fire performances: I do give them credit for always trying to present themselves with an interesting visual, but I wasn't feeling either of their songs tonight.  I suspect they'll grow on me in the context of the album, though.   For me, their best appearance was backing up Mick Jagger on "The Last Time" if only for the sheer joy exuding from their faces (Sarah Neufeld had a huge grin on hers all throughout).

Next week: Miley Cyrus is the host and musical guest.  Hope she keeps her tongue in.