If you watched this past weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live (or read Annie Wu's recap of it right here on TV Squad), you'll know that it was, to put it kindly, a sub-par episode.Actually, it wasn't sub-par. It just downright sucked.
How do I know? Well, it seems like the writers, Tina Fey, and Lorne Michaels decided that a sketch revolving around "caulk" deserved a spot in the first half-hour of the show. You know what I'm talking about right? How the home improvement guy can squeeze his "caulk" into the "crack" and rub it around with his finger? The whole sketch was built around the fact that "caulk" sounds like... well, let's just say it sounds like a slang word and leave it at that.
If the joke were just juvenile, that would be one thing; you can do a play-on-words bit and have it work (remember "Schwetty Balls?"). But this sketch was essentially a less funny version of something that Crank Yankers did two years ago.
It boggles my mind that the writers, Fey, and Michaels felt that a) this sketch was hilarious, b) that it was original, and c) that it was so much better than anything else they had that it deserved a spot before the first musical perofrmance and "Weekend Update."
This leads me to my question: is it time for Lorne to clean house? It seems that every revivial of SNL has been proceeded by a mass firing of the writers and performers. Check out 1986 and 1995 as two examples. Bloated casts that constantly were tweaked every year were cleaned out and new casts were brought in, giving the show some new voices. I'm starting to get the feeling that it should happen this time around, too. I'd love to know what you think.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-13-2005 @ 7:44PM
Lex Friedman said...
I believe the addition of Kristen Wiig this past Saturday could be the start of something good. The new cast members this season are trying hard; they have something to prove, where Fey and Poehler, and even Sanz or Hammond -- seem less "into it" than they had once been.
Let the hungry ones take center stage.
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11-13-2005 @ 8:15PM
Annie Wu said...
I agree with Lex in that the newbies are definitely working hard. Even after just a few episodes, Bill Hader is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Members like Horatio Sanz and Darrell Hammond (even though I think he's great) are just dead weight now. They seem to be jaded by the show and it comes through in their performances. When the performers are bored by their work, the audience is too. The writers need to be switched up, as well. They're stuck in a rut and they're doing the same formulaic crap all the time. Fresh voices are needed because the material's getting old...
It's time to make some changes, Lorne!
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11-13-2005 @ 8:16PM
shawn said...
poehler looked like a 90 year old monotonous lady
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11-13-2005 @ 8:52PM
Jaymez said...
Nope. Don't clean house. Cancle the show instead.
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11-13-2005 @ 9:21PM
Ridley's Dad said...
Amen, Jaymez. SNL passed its freshness date about a decade ago. Short of cancellation, dump Lorne Michaels in favor of new blood, cut the show back to one hour, ditch recurring characters (The Falconer, anyone?), and dictate shorter sketches.
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11-13-2005 @ 9:21PM
Matt said...
Woah woah woah. Now I'll agree the caulk sketch wasn't all that original, but how is it any different the the shweaty balls sketch?
"Rub your finger down the caulk."
"Your shweaty balls taste good."
What's the difference? It was just as succesful, but not original.
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11-13-2005 @ 9:36PM
Margaret said...
you really are being unfair and making it sound like tina and lorne are the only people responsible for the slump of SNL these days! i agree that there are problems there but what you're implying is very unfair!! there are TWO head writers, NOT one! there are 10 or 15 writers there at least as well! don't try to pit this on one or two people out of the entire work staff at snl!
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11-13-2005 @ 9:58PM
Joel Keller said...
Tina Fey is head writer. And yes, I didn't realize that she is co-head writer with Andrew Steele. But as head writers, they are responsible for helping Lorne pick the sketches that are going to make that week's show and the ones that don't make it. Their quality control, never good, has been slipping of late.
Take the caulk sketch as an example. Yes, it's no more juvenile than "schewetty balls". But at some point did one of the writers pipe up and say, "Hey, didn't I see this on Crank Yankers or something?" I can't imagine that the writers are so sheltered that they weren't aware that the bit already existed. The fact that they let the sketch into the show *and* aired it in the first half-hour shows me that a) they're out of ideas, or b) they think they can get away with anything. Neither is the key to success.
Oh, and "schwetty balls" was funny, for some reason. Maybe it's because it was done by Alec Baldwin and the NPR girls.
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11-13-2005 @ 10:07PM
jeff said...
Who can recall the "cork soakers" sketch a couple seasons back which had jane jackson's tongue repeatedly twisted as she tried to maintain a straight face as part of a group touring an Italian winery? I can.
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11-13-2005 @ 11:33PM
Matt said...
The whole caulk and (you know) thing has been done many times way before Crank Yankers. You think they were the first to think of the idea? I think the idea is so universal that it warrants the joke to be done more than once. There must be something besides that one sketch to say the show sucked, right?
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11-13-2005 @ 11:33PM
Clint said...
The show is terrible. It's been declining since Will Ferrel left, and even in his last year or two he was the only one I was tuning in to see.
First of all, the show is too long. It needs to go back to one hour because right now the comedy is too watered down. Sixty minutes of good sketches is better than 90 minutes of mediocre humor.
Second, the cast is way too large. The opening cast credits are like, what, 10 minutes long now? A smaller cast means better chemistry among the members. That means funnier sketches.
Finally, the writing is stale. And SNL no longer has the comfort of being the only source of hip, edgy comedy. There's a whole cable network for that now, and its shows far surpass SNL in funny writing. If SNL wants to regain favor with teens and young adults, its coveted audience, then it needs to get on par with the programming on Comedy Central.
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11-14-2005 @ 12:08AM
Mal said...
SNL has never been 60 minutes long, jackass. Only the reruns are. It has always been 90 minutes.
Also, there are FOUR new performers this year. (I'm counting Sudeikis as new) That's quite a few. With that many new players, they probably have new writers too. Doesn't that sound like they ARE trying to change things up?
I predict that by the end of the season, SNL will be starting a new upswing. Just give the new kids a while to start working together well and with the older cast. Then it will get better. Sudeikis and Hader have already shown some real talent and confidence on camera.
They do need to cut some dead weight, though. *cough*Horatio*cough*
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11-14-2005 @ 2:38AM
Vito said...
I'm going to say something unpopular, but it's true. Tina Fey as head writer has ruined this show. She's a great writer, I know, and can be a very funny performer. But that's nowhere near enough to guide something as fragile as Saturday Night Live, and ever since she's come in, the show has been declining at a pretty rapid rate.
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11-14-2005 @ 2:46AM
Joel Keller said...
By the way, please no name-calling on this comment board. Everyone has their opinion, and can sometimes state things wrong. It's just as easy to correct someone without calling them a jackass or any other name.
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11-14-2005 @ 2:48AM
Wes said...
With a pool of talent as rich as the Upright Citizen's Brigade right in New York, why haven't they been mining it? It's not like there aren't edgy sketch writers around anymore, it's just that Lorne Michaels has ignored just about ALL of them. Where's UCB talent? Where are the Mr. Show refugees? Where are the people doing seriously original stuff on Adult Swim? These are ALL edgy and funny people, and they're being ignored for people who have very little in the way of actual talent. When you bring in somebody who's biggest sketch comedy credit is All That, you're running out of ideas fast.
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11-14-2005 @ 2:55AM
Joel Keller said...
They have been mining UCB, Wes. Amy Poehler is a founding member. Last year's addition (and this year's subtraction) Rob Riggle is a UCBer. I'm sure they grab wrtiters from all over New York's best improv and sketch shops. Problem is the format of the show. You're encouraged to create characters that are repeatable and sketches where the joke is as obvious as possible so they make the cut. And keep in mind that dozens of sketches are written every week then cut as the week goes along. Heck, half the sketches get cut between dress rehersal and the live show.
So, given all that, I can see how The Daily Show can more or less crank out funny stuff every night and SNL can't do it in a week. The writing process at TDS is so much more focused than at SNL it's almost sickening.
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11-14-2005 @ 12:30PM
Rachel said...
I say it's time to clean house. Maybe the season will get better as it goes along, but don't expect me to watch them iron it out.
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11-14-2005 @ 3:44PM
Sam said...
1) Horatio and Darrell need to go. Now. So should Chris Parnell and Rachel Dratch.
2) Don't fire Tina, just put her behind the camera where she should be. As a writer, she helped fuel the most recent upswing at SNL; now that she's in front of the camera, she can't devote the same time to both, and the show suffers as a result.
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11-14-2005 @ 7:26PM
Justin said...
I'm a huge SNL fan. I basically hated the 02-03 season, half of 03-04, and the 04-05 season was very painful and I no longer felt sad when I missed an episode.
However! I LOVE this season! The new guys are doing a great job and are really breathing new life into the show. Bill Hader is a tremendous talent. Jason Sudeikis is being casted as if he has been on the show for years.
Liking the Schwetty Balls sketch but not liking the Caulk sketch just proves that your opinion is completely biased towards hating anything the show currently does.
I don't know why everyone is pretending the show was so glorious when Will Ferrell was on. I fucking remember when all I heard was how Ferrell sucks Ferrell sucks I love Adam Sandler Ferrell sucks wah wah wah, and as soon as he left, Ferrell was suddenly SNL's genius! You people are wack.
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11-14-2005 @ 8:54PM
bdure said...
Never, ever, ever cancel Saturday Night Live. If you'd canceled it after the original cast, you would have missed Eddie Murphy. If you'd canceled it after the Quaid-Downey year, you would have missed Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. If you'd canceled it after the year in which they squandered Janeane Garofalo and Chris Elliott, you would have missed Will Ferrell. And so on.
Yes, clean house. The Lance Armstrong episode was better than the reviewers said, but it's just time to freshen things up a bit. The cast members brought on in the last few years, from Kenan Thompson to Bill Hader, deserve more playing time. Just nudge a few older folks out the door and move on.
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