Saturday Night Live (SNL) 2020-2021 46th Season Thread

I don't follow Adele's career, but I wondered if this revolved around the release of her next album.

Answer seems to be: maybe?

Agree it seems weird to have a musician host and not perform, though I think it's happened in the past occasionally...

 

It's a shame the episode wasn't better as Issa Rae seems like she's a pretty talented performer.

 

Likely Adele wants to make it clear she's interested an acting career. If she were also musical guest, the acting would seem incidental.

Very much looking forward to seeing H.E.R. perform.

 

It has. Johnny Cash hosted in the early 80s, with Elton John as the musical guest. Of course, Cash had acted a fair bit in movies and television by this time.

 

I will point to Heidi’s segment on WU (and I like her, and most of the cast). Utter nonsense...not a single thing funny about it. She looked and sounded ridiculous. How could anyone in charge there think that was funny? Or at the very least interesting to look at? And for me, that describes almost the entire show. As someone else said, it was almost impossible to get through. I didn’t even bother skipping through it on my dvr after the update segment, which also had zero laughs for me. I thought the 2018 season was bad. This just blows! Terrible episode, even the opener. I did think that one segment near the beginning, with that compassion spray stuff the guy was hocking, was a huge missed opportunity as someone else said here. That was a great premise...and went absolutely no where. Put this show out of it’s misery.

What is surprising to me, and no disrespect to those that liked it, is that normally I can at least SEE why others like an episode. I know I’m not the demographic, but at least I realize it while watching and can make some attempt to get into a different mental mode. Honestly, how anyone thought this was entertaining in any way (though Justin’s song was okay) is just a huge mystery to me. I don’t think I would want to like this drudgery of this “show.”

 

Even though Cash was the host, he also sang (a hits medley in one segment, and Sunday Morning Coming Down in another). Paul Simon has hosted four times. Three of those four times there was another artist designated as the musical guest (Randy Newman, George Harrison, and Linda Ronstadt respectively) but Simon sang too (sometimes solo, sometimes with the musical guest). In one instance Simon was both host and musical guest.

Anyway, I don't think there's ever been an instance in which a singer has been the host but has not sang at least one solo song. So if Adele does not sing anything, that will be a first. Likely she will though, and it will be a music-heavy show like the Cash and Simon episodes.

 

I don’t think Ringo sang when he hosted, did he?

 

Maybe I'm the only one, but I liked Heidi's cocaine wife during WU. She seemed to be channeling the Lorraine Bracco character in Goodfellas a bit.

 

Sort of - not a full performance, but he and "Sammy Davis Jr." (Billy Crystal) sang several of their hits together in a sketch.

 

You're not

 

What about Timberlake? I think he's hosted multiple times - any totally non-musical episodes?

 

Leslie Jones On Her Saturday Night Live Exit: “I Don’t Miss It. At All.” – Deadline

 

We're not all New Yorkers who would've gotten the '80's character reference of a cocaine wife. What is funny about that kind of character? I didn't see how it fit into the motif of WU which parodies topical news stories.

Was there some kind of philosophical broad perspective we were to derive from a pandemic being as bad as cocaine addiction? It was confusing in what it was trying to communicate at a news desk. The best SNL with the current cast was when Will Ferrel hosted back in late 2019. NBC reran it at 9PM central several weeks back and I laughed a lot.

 

Update hasn't been about the news, truly, in 20-25 years. Plenty of characters that pop up there have nothing to do with the news. I complain about this constantly. Yet, that Carla bit was amazing, and I can't believe people are hating it like this. The one time in ages a cast member gives their all to a performance, doesn't utilize cards, actually embodies a character, and people just write it off as nonsense. But the usual stiff line reads and staring off to the camera are good, apparently. Ok, I just don't get it.

And that Will Ferrell episode absolutely sucked. Even my mom was mad at that, and she typically likes the lower quality episodes. Maybe the hour long edit made it better, but the live airing was one of the worst episodes from last season, and that's saying a lot.

Gee, here I was gaining new hope for the show, these past two weeks, and people are just tearing it apart. They finally seem to be settling into an old school, slice-of-life style again, and all the flack is probably gonna make them revert to stupid, "Aww man, I'm all out of cash!" crap.

 

Aha, you are correct. I'd forgotten about that one. As noted, he didn't do a serious solo performance, just the sketch where he sang with "Sammy." That really doesn't count.

It looks like he was the musical guest three of the five shows he's hosted. But in his 2009 appearance Ciara was designated as musical guest. She did one song solo and one song with Timberlake. He also did a video short where he sang with Samberg. But neither of those would really count as a solo performance, obviously. And in his 2011 appearance Lady Gaga was the musical guest. On that show Timberlake only sang in a couple of sketches but no serious solo performance.

So I was incorrect in saying there's never been an episode where a singer-host did not do at least one serious solo song. But it does appear that there's never been an episode where a singing host didn't at least sing some in a sketch, if nothing else.

 

That's Heidi. That's why she's my favorite. I love the train-wreck/emotionally unstable characters she does.

 

Well you're partially right in my opinion. Weekend Update isn't all about parodying and commenting on topical news events especially on the Will Ferrell episode where it had Ryan Reynolds partnering with Moffat's "Guy Who Bought A Boat" that had me gut busting laughing.

And Ryan's being in the audience during the monologue telling Will he's a fan with Will over acting as star struck that Ryan Reynolds is in the audience was signs of much funnier things to come. So I guess we see things different about SNL.

 

I'm realizing now that, over the past year, I've dwelled on particularly bad parts of the episode (the cold open, monologue, and puppet sketch), and forgot the ones I liked. The Wizard of Oz sketch was great. I gave the episode a B, at the time.

 

This show is in a real low spot, they maybe have a funny opening ,and one funny bit ,and the News (not counting cast members unfunny character's) the rest is just as bad as the musical acts ' The earlier Tom Hanks rerun was much better
and that was edited to death who's OK ing this unfunny writing?? if it Michaels maybe is time for him to retire

 

They need a full reboot, including Lorne leaving. I'd love a dangerous-feeling SNL again, but I guess reaction to parts of these last two episodes proves the culture can't handle that.

 

Fair enough!

Timberlake seemed like he planned to move into acting big-time like 10 years ago, but a look at his IMDB page shows that's stalled.

He's only done 1 live-action movie since 2013 - and only 2 voice-over roles for animation, in the 2 "Trolls" movies.

I know he got back more into music over that span - and now has wife/kids - but I'm still surprised he seems to have largely bailed on acting...

 

I am too. He wasn't bad. Not great in everytyhing (Runner Runner was lame), but in things like Friend With Benefits, I thought he did well. And The Social Network, of course.

 

I think he probably just saw he wasn't going to be as successful at acting as he is at singing.

It's actually been seven years since he last appeared on a regular episode of SNL (he did do something on the 40th anniversary special). Maybe with Andy Samberg gone he didn't enjoy it as much.

 

I think the extra, unnecessary characters on WU serve two purposes. One, to add an unexpected character into the gloomy news flow with some levity, they probably feel it improves the pacing. Two, these players do bring a few personas with them, and sometimes there's just no place to write it into a skit, so why not just inject the character into a segment they feel needs to improve the pacing. And three, to either give some underutilized cast members a place to shine and get the audience more familiar with them, so why waste it. And four...because obviously somebody up above Lorne's pay grade thought hearing Kenan obsess over food in a Dominican accent was hilarious.

I said "serve two purposes", it's up to you to guess which of those I was referring to.

 

there 95% unfunny