So, my brother sent me this, challenging me to endure the whole video without wincing or turning it off. I failed. You try.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF2Mf6HxIi0
I'll be honest with you guys, if I was a TV exec and this was the pitch, I would immediately cancel and then demand that the writers commit seppuku. Possibly the audience as well, though out of mercy rather than atonement.
I feel kinda weird slamming a show like this because everyone I've ever met has liked this show very much, so I feel like I'm attacking some national treasure. I too have fond memories of Celebrity Jeopardy and Jinglehiemer Junction and living in a van down by the river and even Kylo Ren strangling people, so there's some recent stuff that has landed as well. And they show this stuff to a live audience and the audience laughs (do they give them drugs?), so am I just a humorless curmudgeon? I won't be offended if your answer is yes, I will simply emigrate to Germany to finally live among my own kind. :P
My question to you: is SNL funny? If so, what do you currently like about it? If not, when did it stop being funny and why? No wrong answers, just let me know what you think.
Because right now, I feel like I've been taking crazy pills.
Apparently you don't understand dry or dark humor.
Quote from: Draconic Aiur on May 17, 2021, 06:59:42 PMApparently you don't understand dry or dark humor.
I get dark humor. I breathe dark humor.
(https://media.tenor.com/images/67e72fd28678e2df22b9887cf7ac22c6/tenor.gif)
Dry humor isn't my cup of tea at all, and that seems to be a fairly common trait.
My thing with humor is what are you trying to say with the joke? Point out injustice? Make fun of the seemingly normal but actually strange unwritten rules of society? Laugh at the horribleness and absurdity of life? Or just a mean-spirited smear of a younger (and kinda beleaguered) generation? Not just punching down, but the same joke over and over.
Two things struck me. 1--Not a single laugh for me. 2--WTF were they saying???
Quote from: Draconic Aiur on May 17, 2021, 06:59:42 PM
Apparently you don't understand dry or dark humor.
My humor in real life is about as deadpan and dry as it comes; this is just garbage.
SNL has been consistently garbage for my life anyways; that's not to say they don't have some amazing skits, but for every good skit they air 10 just garbage ones.
It goes under the category of Big Bang Theory, The Office or Jersey Shore of, "Shit I don't understand how it's possibly thought to be funny other than a few laughs." but here we are.
I got to exactly 1 minute, btw.
I am not sure if this was written by a 60 year old, or someone making fun of how a 60 year old would think 20 year olds talk. if it's the latter I guess I can find a little humor in it, but it's so convincingly bad I don't know.
I didn't make it to the end.
That was a big fail but in my opinion SNL has always been very hit and miss, with WAY more misses than hits. I don't watch it regularly and use YouTube to curate the good skits. If a skit has over 10 million views and an interesting premise I might check it out.
My brother says the perceived decline is from two things:
1) competition from internet comedy videos (Youtube, College Humor, etc) - they cut out SNL's legs from under them by doing the wacky skits SNL did but better
2) the loss of irreplaceable talent - Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Chris Ka...err... Seth Meyers
Still, that doesn't explain a crowded writers' room greenlighting utter garbage. These people have more degrees than a Mississippi summer and their go-to was "Zoomers talk funny" like it was some gut-buster. What were they thinking??
I remember it being funny. Haven't seen it in years, though.
Downward slide lately...however beside the favorite best classic skits, it was a chance to see film actors/guests like Christopher Walken work a live audience. And I enjoy the really funny breaks out-of-character such as this Debbie Downer skit.
https://youtu.be/TfE93xON8jk
I don’t watch the show but I do watch the clips from “Weekend Update†which I think is 95% a hoot.
I watched that show on Hulu the day after it aired, and that particular show was one of their worst. Elon Musk is a genius, no question, but acting and comedy is not something he has any talent for at all. I'll give him credit for trying, but he should never attempt it again.
Having said that, SNL is not as good as it used to be, and early on, it was spectacularly funny. Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Akeroid, Bulushi, Dana Carvey, Gilda Radner, Father Guido Sarducci, Steve Martin, Mike Meyers, Julia Sweeny, and Al Franken to name a few were gifted.
SNL has not been able or willing to score the best talent out there, or maybe the talent isn't out there. Many of their comedians are simply not funny. The show has been in a downward slide for years, and is living only on it's former reputation.
The original 'Not Ready for Prime Time Players' have yet to be matched: Aykroyd, Belushi, Chase, Curtin, Morris, Murray, Newman and Radner. They had a few flickers of brilliance after them, but I have to say it's probably been 30 years since I last sat down to watch SNL, when in the 70s and early 80s I'd watch it every Saturday night.
I've been thinking, I love 90s SNL, but when I watch 90s SNL it's clear that there was a lot wrong with it even then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4kBndQJlE
Some poor fool made a movie out of this. smh
Also, are we sure that drugs weren't given to the audience? I won't narc, I just want to know the truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksubjQh7v6s
IIRC, suicide rates really shot up that year.
Maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe there was no decline. Maybe they just threw stuff at the wall and the hits were remembered and the duds forgotten.
Quote from: Hydra009 on May 17, 2021, 06:52:37 PM
I won't be offended if your answer is yes, I will simply emigrate to Germany to finally live among my own kind. :P
Warum hat das Huhn die Straße überquert? Um zur Nugget-Fabrik zu gelangen, um ihre Quote zu erfüllen.
Haha
Yeah. SNL always sucked.
IDK if it counts if I actually made it to the end, because I became braindeadzoned out for a while.
It has had its moments. The Pat character did NOT age well, whoo boy.
Quote from: PickelledEggs on May 22, 2021, 06:44:04 PM
Yeah. SNL always sucked.
I have to disagree here. The original crew was genuinely more often funny than not. They've never been able to reach that level since, although there were a couple moments here and there.
Well, some of it also relates to its relative “newness†of concept. I remember laughing my ass off at Rowan and Martin but 20 years later I can’t even watch it.
But of you haven’t seen when Che and Jost trade jokes, god damn that’s some funny shit.
Quote from: aitm on May 24, 2021, 09:40:02 AM
Well, some of it also relates to its relative “newness†of concept. I remember laughing my ass off at Rowan and Martin but 20 years later I can’t even watch it.
Jim Carrey is like that for me. His wild and crazy antics were great in the 90s. Nowadays, he's more likely to annoy me than entertain me.
Still, his golden moment was the famous Jimmy Tango's Fatbusters commercial (the joke is that unscrupulous/predatory companies are essentially selling crystal meth to people desperate to lose weight and the take-away is to use more caution and wisdom when it comes to your health, a lesson definitely not learned decades later)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xczm9g
(on Dailymotion because SNL purged this one from Youtube, I guess getting high and telepathically combating the devil isn't very brand-friendly)
Quote from: Hydra009 on May 17, 2021, 07:10:10 PMMy thing with humor is what are you trying to say with the joke? Point out injustice? Make fun of the seemingly normal but actually strange unwritten rules of society? Laugh at the horribleness and absurdity of life? Or just a mean-spirited smear of a younger (and kinda beleaguered) generation? Not just punching down, but the same joke over and over.
You're trying to bring logic into comedy. Sometimes comedy isn't trying to say anything. Sometimes, it's just about being silly, not with any underlying message.
I don't watch SNL on the regular or anything, but I've seen several skits of theirs I've found funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDSeb2zHQ0
A young Jim Carrey before he realized he could make more money being a goof. Although in this film, Nicolas Cage gets the prize for being the bigger ham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnOnrMDr1FE
Quote from: Blackleaf on May 24, 2021, 02:16:03 PMYou're trying to bring logic into comedy. Sometimes comedy isn't trying to say anything. Sometimes, it's just about being silly, not with any underlying message.
But there really is a logic to comedy, and often purpose as well, it's not just being silly just to be silly.
My personal favorite jokes either present harsh truths as a joke (the onion, the daily show) or exhibit almost-harmful comedy, something that initially seems like it would be incredibly harmful but isn't (most physical comedy, like getting hit in the face with a pie, falling on one's butt, or a being in a house as it collapses only to escape unscathed). "I've been falling for 30 minutes!" is a perfect example of modern almost-harmful comedy.
A lot of humor operates on incongruity, something the violates expectations or social norms, like the Ministry of Silly Walks or a Roman general talking about his pal Biggus Dickus or Rick & Morty almost doing a 9/11.
There's actually a lot of logic operating in the background of even the simplest joke. It's just that usually people aren't consciously aware of why the laughed, much less attempt to understand a joke's underlying message. Believe it or not, a lot of comedians devote a great deal of attention to just that.
I just had a thought... if you count The Lonely Island as SNL (since everyone involved was SNL cast), then honestly... SNL has some absolutely top-tier, iconic-of-my-school-day's humor and songs that have frankly no reason to be nearly as catchy and good as they are.
And honestly, it hasn't age particularly amazingly but... this is still one of the OG's of viral memes, and I still find it funny.
I liked the portrayal of Rudy giuliani in the skits that I've seen.
That woman, don't know her name, puts forth a caricature that pushes my funny buttons.
Though I haven't seen much of snl as a whole.
Quote from: Shiranu on May 28, 2021, 05:06:11 AM
I just had a thought... if you count The Lonely Island as SNL (since everyone involved was SNL cast), then honestly... SNL has some absolutely top-tier, iconic-of-my-school-day's humor and songs that have frankly no reason to be nearly as catchy and good as they are.
Naturally, I count SNL digital shorts as SNL. While I haven't seen all of them, the ones I've seen have been incredible hits. Though the ones I've seen all have Andy Samberg, so I don't know if I like SNL Shorts or just Andy Samberg.
Quote from: Hydra009 on May 28, 2021, 09:25:42 AM
Naturally, I count SNL digital shorts as SNL. While I haven't seen all of them, the ones I've seen have been incredible hits. Though the ones I've seen all have Andy Samberg, so I don't know if I like SNL Shorts or just Andy Samberg.
I didn't realize that The Lonely Island was actually funded by SNL, I thought they were their own thing. So given that... yeah, SNL actually had a period of really good content.
I think a lot of it was Andy Samberg is just funny, as was Jorma and Akiva who also wrote and performed in the skits.
I enjoyed Norm Macdonald, when he was on it, but they fired him because "he wasn't funny".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofXxinOtPiQ
Probably the best monologue ever given on the show
I can't say he's my favorite, but I was never irritated or bored by him. A solid 5 out 7 comedian. He's a perfect example of dry humor done right. Even though that's not really my cup of tea, I gotta respect that.
I don’t know how many writers snl employs but it has to be near panic to try to come up with funny shit day after day and not being able to.