Saturday
Night Live's Mediocre Season
By Disco Stu - Editor in
Chief : Issue 3, Vol. I
A
Classic Show
The title may fool some of you. No, I don't hate
Saturday Night Live. In fact, I think it's one of
the best shows ever. But, yes, I do think SNL
under-achieved this past season. In terms of
hosts and musical guests, SNL was solid in
general, though had a few rough spots. But in
terms of sketches and originality, in some areas
SNL came up Saturday Night Lame (I'm
sorry, I had to say it).
A
Promising Start
Producer Lorne Michaels decided to tease SNL fans
before the start of last season by having the
Saturday Night Live 25th Anniversary Special,
which featured pretty much all the living guest
hosts and musical artists since the show started.
Then the show made a big explosion with Jerry
Seinfeld and David Bowie as the first guests,
following the trend of having two entertainment
heavyweights start the season. With guests like
these, I expected the episode to be one of the
best ever. Like the Seinfeld season
finale, however, this Seinfeld show had some
bright spots and some dark spots. The Oz
parody was hilarious, as were a few other skits
featuring Will Ferrel, though the show was
generally uneven.
Despite the solid
skits, I was left wanting more laughs. Because I
certainly didn't get my dose in this episode.
The Season
Goes On
So the season went on, with Heather Graham and
Norm McDonald hosting the next two live shows.
Unfortunately, they were both big letdowns. I
didn't expect much from the Graham episode, but,
for Norm's, I thought it would be a must see. I
thought it had maybe one or two skits that were
decent.
After watching the
next several live shows, I thought there was no
saving this horrible season. A ray of hope came
on January 8th, 2000, with Jamie Foxx. Compared
to most other shows in other seasons it would be
rated as "average." In this season,
though, it's probably superior to the ones shown
before it. Foxx's show started funny from the
beginning--from his monologue, his Apollo parody,
his Puff Daddy parody, and the MLK "I Have a
Dream Speech," skit, among others. The
season seemed to have promise after all.
The Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly
As I said, the hosts were good (not great) and
had some rough spots along the season. But Lorne
Michaels had some odd choices for hosts: I
understand people like John Goodman, Christopher Walken, Ben
Affleck, and even The Rock hosting,
but Alan Cumming? Tobey Maguire? Tobey-Friggin'
Maguire?!? What the hell?
For the whole
season, these are my picks for the best shows of
the season, in no particular order (categorized
under hosts). Jaime Foxx, Ben Affleck,
Christopher Walken, Joshua Jackson, Jerry Seinfeld, The Rock, and Britney Spears (for
obvious reasons) had good shows.
But the worst
shows were hosted by Tobey Maguire, Alan Cumming,
Heather Graham, Danny DeVito, and Freddie Prinze
Jr. Yeesh. The rest of the shows were not as bad
as these episodes, but were not much better.
No
Alternatives
MAD TV doesn't offer anything different or good
either. All of their skits are basically the same
and involve the same type of characters: one
annoying really person irritating normal people.
Ms. Swan. Tha Vancome Lady. The UBS Guy. Every
other character in the show. They're all exactly
alike.
Maybe I should
start going out Saturday nights.
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