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

I rather enjoy the irony of you looking through my past for a "gotcha" post.

Yes, I said goodbye to SNL, my choice. But I don't call for that choice to be taken from others. La grande différence.

Thank you mods for allowing civil discussion about this. I've said my piece.

 

I'm a latecomer to watching Veep. I had no idea that it would be that hilarious.

 

Networks get nervous about controversial actors. People start boycotting things, advertisers get scared... Finance wins in the end and the show is there to make money.

 

Bigotry is bad for business, even when clever.

Also, you got the quotation marks in the wrong places, at least in terms of Shane Gillis' act -- they should be around "clever".

 

Then why did podcast guy apply for the SNL job in the first place, if being a podcast star is so great?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts...an-thompson-snls-longest-tenured-cast-member/

 

Always appreciate the unknowns (at the time) to have success later in their careers after getting their first break on SNL, regardless how successful it was.

The opposite can be considered a big failure. Established stars hired to come in and then flop during their SNL stay. The 1985-86 eleventh season is the big example, which was the year Lorne Michaels returned.

Half the main cast were already either established Hollywood stars (Randy Quaid) or up-and-coming Hollywood stars (Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall,) who all had recent Hollywood success. But that success didn't translate to SNL success for them or SNL.

(Damon Wayans was a featured player that season but was an unknown at the time and was fired by Lorne Michaels for going off script during one of the sketches.)

Out of that entire cast, only 3 regulars were asked back for following season(s): Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller and one featured player: A Whitney Brown. All 4 of those were unknowns when they were hired and one of those would go on to even a bigger audience years later on Monday Night Football as a commentator. (Al Franken came back for the final episode that season as a featured player but wouldn't become a regular until 3 years later. Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci) returned as a featured player that season but wasn't asked to come back after the season was over.)

 

That sketch with Pryor was a classic example of how comedy can be subversive, anti-PC, and insightful at the same time -- without diluting the humor. The sketch is just as funny now as it was 44 years ago. Although, I must say, there are a few parts of the sketch which I think could have been done better:

1. one of Pryor's slurs is "ofay", which is a very obscure word that was virtually obsolete except in certain pockets of the country. They should have picked a more familiar insult, IMO.

2. instead of "honky honky", I think it would have been funnier if they had come up with another adjective (like they did with "dead honky"). Lazy writing, IMO.

3. at the end of the sketch, Chase reveals that Pryor has been hired as.........a janitor!! Oh God, can you get any more stereotypical?! It's really kind of a sad commentary that Pryor and his collaborator (Paul Mooney) chose that particular occupation. Was it because they couldn't imagine a guy like Pryor ever getting a non-stereotypical job, or was it because they feared that audiences wouldn't enjoy the sketch unless Pryor was applying for a job at the bottom of the food chain? Either way, it's a jarring end to the sketch and it tends to lessen the impact (IMO).

Still, it's one of the top-20 sketches in the history of the show.

 

I think the 85-86 cast would have been just fine if they'd been given another season to gel, but Lorne panicked when NBC started putting pressure on him, so he fired a bunch of people.

Joan Cusack's spot was essentially taken by Victoria Jackson, who was better at playing the "ditzy" parts, but she wasn't very good at anything else.

But it was mostly for the best. The '86 replacements were among the best cast members that the show has ever seen (Hartman, Carvey, Hooks, Nealon).

 

Because the big money is on TV and in movies, obviously. But true, edgy comedy is on podcasts. As just an example, Norm Macdonald had an incredible podcast that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. So Netflix offered him a show. The crazy, no-holds-barred, creative podcast was turn into a staid, boring, restrictive 30-minute Netflix show. It killed what made the podcast great, but netted Norm a lot of money.

 

Do people apply for "SNL" or does the show seek out talent?

I always thought they recruited rather than accepted applications, but I could be 100% wrong!

 

I agree with you except - 2. He was losing his cool and 3. Even janitors deserve dignity

 

Au contraire, it's funnier that Pryor put up with such an offensive, infuriating hiring process in order to get such an unglamorous low-paid job than if it'd been a position higher up the totem pole.

 

I see what you're saying, but I think the sketch would have been better if they had picked an unglamorous job that wasn't also a stereotypical job held by African-Americans.

 

You might be reading too much into that. I've never done any statistical count, of course, but I feel like I've seen just as many white janitors as black. My grandfather worked as a high school janitor.

 

I'm pretty sure the point is that the hiring process is racist in general, so of course they were only considering him as a janitor.

 

Loved his podcast. The “real jerk” bit cracked me up every time.

 

‘SNL’ Promotes Heidi Gardner & Chris Redd To Full Cast Members – Deadline

This "promotion" is standard for featured players entering their third season.

 

I think part of the point was that were relatively few racial slurs against Whites, compared to the numerous ones for Blacks

 

Heidi in particular got a lot of screen time this year, so her promotion was inevitable . She had developed a few recurring characters

(And is it just me, or is she attractive in a very unusual and different sort of way ? )

 

No it isn't just you

 

She certainly is.

 

She's not technically "pretty" in a convential sense, but she is quite appealing in an odd way

 

Am I the only one going into Eddie's hosting stint with zero hopes?

I feel like he'll either a) bail before it's time, or b) refuse to do ANY of his characters.

 

I have moderate hopes - with the expectation this is something of a test run for his planned stand-up comeback - and would be surprised if he does any of his characters except maybe as a passing reference.