Saturday Night Live (SNL) 2019-2020 45th Season Thread

Won't miss Leslie. I'm surprised Kate is back. I was ready for her to be gone, but she is good. Do we have a complete cast list? Is Leslie being gone the only change?

 

new cast members announced
Chloe Fineman - Chloe Fineman (@chloefineman) | Twitter
Shane Gillis - Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) | Twitter
Bowen Yang - Bowen Yang 杨伯文 (@bowenyang) | Twitter

 

‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds Three New Cast Members for Season 45

 

why do a majority of the cast they add look like people you'll maybe 4 sketches the entire year

 

Bowen Yang played Kim Jong-un in a sketch last season.

 

Julia is the most successful TV star from the cast and Eddie is the most successful movie star. Robert Downey is right behind him with the Marvel movies but most of those Avenger movies are an ensemble cast.

 

Besides that, it was very weak comedy; tired tropes from 30 years ago. It was the first I ever heard of him and I thought, "This guy got the SNL gig?"

 

Wouldn't surprise me either.

 

Yeah, I don't get the impression he brought any cleverness to his jokes or had any insights - sounds more like simply pushing boundaries for cheap "laughs".

White women aren't funny? Comedians who address emotions are gay? That's what gets you "SNL" these days?

 

On the flipside though, maybe it suggests that there's more to the guy than what was cherrypicked by the outrage brigade.

In any event, I've never heard of Shane Gillis before today, so have no idea if he's any good overall.

 

Come on, dude. If he were doing some nuanced satire that got misconstrued, that'd be one thing, but just throwing out random old stereotypes in a casual conversation isn't satire. Even Melissa Villaseñor's "I don't date black guys" tweets were more obviously jokes than anything this guy's said.

 

Shane Gillis is from our own neck of the woods, across the river from Harrisburg in Mechanicsburg.
I'm..so proud...

 

Kenan Thompson on again for another season. Yawn. I would like to know why he gets to stay on forever and former cast members like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock and Norm McDonald get the boot ?

 

Why was The Last Man on Earth canceled while Gunsmoke ran forever?

 

norm is a different case but the rest of the guys you mentioned were part of a total cast overhaul

 

Thompson is a more talented sketch comedy actor than any of those guys were.

 

I'm not saying he isn't talented. Far from it. 17 seasons though ? Can't he move on like the others have done ? To me, he isn't the best talent they ever had, where he warrants 17 seasons.

 

Guys like Kenan Thompson tend to elevate the rest of the cast, either by acting as the "glue" that holds sketches together, or by being a "straight man" to allow someone else to shine in the spotlight. He may not seem like their most talented cast member, but that's because you're not noticing all of the little things that he does for the show. Take him away, and SNL's fatal flaws would be exposed and the ratings would tank yet again.

In other words, Kenan's longevity speaks as much to his own talent as it does to the lack of talent from the rest of the cast over the past 16 years.

 

I've shifted from being annoyed to very impressed Kenan over the years, and I think you're spot on about his contributions to the show. I've read that writers will often use Kenan to "save" average bits or elevate others. He's a pretty essential ingredient in the show now, sort of like the broth that brings the whole stew together.

dan c

 

I seem to remember Will Ferrell and Dana Carvey in that same role of holding it together to save the show. I still stand by my statement. Kenan needs to move on.

 

Rock was not part of that overhaul. He had left, or gotten fired I guess, earlier.

94-95 was different than the other overhauls. The other casts where that happened, there was mainly a lack of overall talent, or overall sketch talent, in the casts.

Phil Hartman left. Sandler and Farley were fairly popular cast members. It was sort of surprising that they would wind up being fired. But apparently without Hartman, some sort of frat boy toxic atmosphere took over.

The women in the cast for a couple of years there were the weakest the show has ever been in that department.

 

Man, the 94-95 season was such a fustercluck. It was the only(?) time in SNL's history where they tried to completely overhaul the cast while simultaneously keeping a significant portion of the previous cast. Up to that point, there had been times when they overhauled the cast while keeping a few members of the previous cast (1981, 1984, and 1986, for example). But in 1994, they brought in 7 new cast members while keeping 10 old cast members. There was no chance of developing any sort of chemistry between the various factions who were all fighting for airtime.

 

Shane Gillis has been let go from SNL

Can't say I'm surprised and can't say I feel sorry. When you make it a point of your act to unapologetically insult groups of people, then you lose the right to be offended or victimized when you suffer insults of your own.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

 

I knew that would be coming.

 

It must suck to be fired from your job,before you even worked your first day.
I am glad Kenan is back,one of my favorites on the show,would seem odd with him gone after all these years.he doesn't seem the have the movie thing going like Kate does.
Was surprised she is back this season.