Saturday Night Live is LIVE!

[Tui]

That's right, it's the first episode of the year since the writer's strike!

Tina Fey is hosting musical guest Carrie Underwood.

It's on right now for Eastern and Central time zones.

[MonkeyDishwasher]

Did the strike give them enough time to actually write something funny? Or is this week going to be great simply because Tina's on it, with a slide back to "not funny" next week?

[Tui]

It's actually not that bad tonight, there have been better episodes.

I, personally, don't agree with the people who say the show sucks now. There are always people saying it sucks. It's on an upswing right now.

But I'm not getting into this debate again.

[Jazzman]

I think it's freaking awesome that Tina Fey is hosting. I always love to see players come back after moving on from the show to host, and Tina was amazing. Good for her!

[RonNYC]

Originally Posted by Tui

It's actually not that bad tonight, there have been better episodes.

I, personally, don't agree with the people who say the show sucks now. There are always people saying it sucks. It's on an upswing right now.

But I'm not getting into this debate again.

Right on Tui.

Actually, the way I've always seen it is everyone agrees that the first few seasons of the show were the best, because they were.

The people that love it now are generally college age. Makes sense. I think some of SNL's best years were in the early 90s when I was in college. Others disagree.

Everyone I know who has ever debated the funniest years of the show recalls it as being very funny in their late high school through college years.


Cool thing about this is that the show has been on the air for well over 30 years. Mind boggling, no?

[knittingknerd]

Last night wasn't bad. The monologue was... eh. I was surprised that Fred Armensien played Obama. I had heard Seth Meyers or Maya was going to but I kept thinking "Fred should do it." Huckabee was funny. I am trying to think what else stuck out... The digital short with "Hi Grandpa!" And Andy trying to explain the dialogue in Juno funny. I thought of my grandpa and his response to 3:10 to Yuma. I thought they were going to talk more about the writer's strike or like in the monologue more things "break."

[sir clinksalot]

We recorded it, will have to watch it later or tomorrow.

[thrax]

aw man i missed it!

[FrumiousBoojum]

Originally Posted by Tui

It's actually not that bad tonight, there have been better episodes.

I, personally, don't agree with the people who say the show sucks now. There are always people saying it sucks. It's on an upswing right now.

But I'm not getting into this debate again.

Agree with you here.

I really don't get it why people think that Mad TV is so much better. While all sketch comedy shows are hit and miss, Mad TV is mostly miss for me. There's also pretty much no characters on Mad TV that I think I'd actually be able to stand in a movie -- SNL has had some characters that translated very well to the big screen. Most of my favorite Mad TV sketches were one shots, not the reoccurring characters.

Think I'll always prefer SNL. My only complaint about the SNL format is the musical guest. I dunno... guess it's because most of the time they're artists that I don't really care for and it somewhat interrupts the flow of the show. I know it's a tradition now... but, oh well.

What's odd is -- I had SNL DVRed since I wouldn't be home to see it. I nearly deleted it, thinking it was one I already saw. The description said "Repeat, 'Tina Fey, Carrie Underwood.'" Thought something wasn't right there...

[PrincessY]

I had been faithfully watching/taping SNL forever. But last year was so bad that I took it off my TiVo list. So it didn't tape last Saturday. Oh well, one less thing I have to watch.

[Experiment626]

I found out is was new so I had it Tivo'ed. Haven't watched it yet!

[sediment]

Haven't watched for a few years. It has generally sucked for a long time now.

The first few seasons are a bit painful to watch these days, even though I watched them live when I was a kid and thought it was the only show worth watching regularly at the time.

Naturally, I did not watch this week's. I'll check it out on the internet if it's there. Mainly, it has become too formulaic.

[kirbilicious]

Originally Posted by MonkeyDishwasher

Did the strike give them enough time to actually write something funny? Or is this week going to be great simply because Tina's on it, with a slide back to "not funny" next week?

Well, each episode is written in a week so I think it's safe to say they had plenty of time.

I don't really watch SNL too much any more simply because I don't watch much TV anymore, but I do really like Tina Fey. I think it's really cool that she came back to host.

[MonkeyDishwasher]

Originally Posted by kirbilicious

Well, each episode is written in a week so I think it's safe to say they had plenty of time.

Right. But when you only have a week, you're not always going to put out your best product, since it's a really short amount of time to put something "new" and "funny" out every single week. Hopefully the 4 months they were out gave them the time to hash out some really good stuff and modify and improve it (at least for this season).

[tinkermonkey]

Fingers crossed for another great episode tonight!