Is SNL Even Funny?

Today's video was sponsored by Squarespace, click the link in the description to get 10% off your first purchase. Saturday Night Live has been on television since 1975, they have won Emmy Awards, they have been a starting point for dozens of now world famous comedians. and whether you like the show or not, this year's production, writing a 90-minute show on a Tuesday and then performing it live on television that Saturday is impressive, but the show is really fun. The short answer is yes, of course, sometimes it's nice. Almost every episode of SNL has had good sketches and bad sketches because of that, it's a show that's almost impossible to define, you know, the quality of an episode can range from something hysterical that you quote for the rest of your life to a hole that emerges. or just downright embarrassing, is it

funny

or not

funny

in this case?

I think the only logical answer is both, but that's never how you hear people describe it. Something I've always noticed about SNL that makes it different than most other shows. Not only does almost everyone have an opinion on it, but the opinions people have are much more practical than on other shows, as you often hear people say something like Oh Breaking Bad, yeah, I tried to watch it, but I just It wasn't really for me, you're like, yeah, I've seen two Broke Girls, but I don't really think that's funny, right, I don't think it's funny, but with that now it's almost always like, yeah, that's not funny. show that has been on for 44 years and has had literally thousands of sketches, none of them are funny, it has never been funny or

even

more commonly than that, you will always hear people say that SNL hasn't been funny since the '90s or 80 or for God's sake.

Well, the '70s, really yes, those first six episodes of Saturday Night Live are a thing of beauty, but I'm telling you, the 1,000 or so episodes since then have been shit, it would be one thing if you said my favorite era of SNL was the '70s. 70, that's fine. If you want to say that, but just because your favorite part of the show was in 1978 doesn't mean the show hasn't been funny in 40 years, I'll say that in the last four or five years the show has probably been the worst. state it's ever been in and I don't know if that's just a lack of talent, which is something that could be overcome by bringing in the right talent, but I will take to the grave that the mid-to-late 1990s era of SNL 2000 is just as good. like every other period of the show and it's not just because I grew up watching that and I'm very biased but it's probably mostly bad but don't look at the names you're throwing out, people often associate the death of SNL with a departure from big-name celebrities like Eddie Murphy Adam Sandler Will Ferrell is great Will Ferrell left the show in 2001 want to know who's been on the show since Amy Poehler Tina Fey Kristen Wiig Fred Armisen Maya Rudolph Bill Hader Will Forte Andy Samberg Crispin Elle Rachel Dratch Jason Sudeikis and that was until 2009, most of those people were on the show at the same time, that's a lot of talent and it wasn't just the cast, they had very respected writers, Tina Fey was an incredible head writer, John Mulaney wrote. on the show for several years I know I'm a little nostalgic and biased towards this period, but it's very frustrating to me when people completely dismiss this entire era of the show just because Will Ferrell wasn't on it anymore.

I also be the first to admit,

even

as a fan of the show, that there have been entire seasons that have been borderline unwatchable. These are usually transitional seasons after the big stars leave and the cast that replaces them isn't as good or is simply underdeveloped and the writers haven't figured out how to write to their strengths, but you know when you've passed six years writing sketches for Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig and now you have to figure out how to write sketches for Noel Wells and John. Milhiser, by the way, those are two real human beings that were on the show, but things are going to be a little weird for a while, it's going to be a learning experience, but that's just part of the show and always has been and for me is something.

What I think makes SNL more respectable as an institution is how many times Lorne Michaels has had to reshuffle the SNL roster to find success again after some of the stronger cast members left something that always made me gravitate toward SNL as a fan I think the same thing that has made me gravitate towards sports over the years and I know I'll probably lose some of you here, but that's how it makes perfect sense on my strange break. I know I rarely mention this, but I am. I'm a big football fan and for me managing the cast of SNL is not much different than an NFL general manager having to build and maintain a successful football team, you have to scout the players, you select them, you decide if they are good enough to stay on the team, if so then you have to decide how much money you are going to pay them to stay on the team, otherwise you could lose them to another team and the most important thing is, no matter what, don't It matters how good someone is.

On the show, they will eventually retire and you have to find someone else to replace them, unless it's Kenan Thompson because he'll be on the show forever, just like in sports, there are weeds and flows, there are times when the team is doing well and kicking ass and then there are bad years where they are among good players and are trying to figure out an identity in 2011 when Peyton Manning missed an entire season, the Colts were historically ridiculously bad and then they drafted Andrew Luck and them. I've been pretty good since then, as a fan those bad years are never that fun to watch, but it's a natural and necessary part of the process and the fact that SNL always seems to figure it out in the long run is an awesome rotation that happens all the time. .

The timing is up to us and rarely do they enter a season with exactly the same cast as the previous season. It hasn't happened since 2006, but every eight to ten years there is a big transition, as you can see in this table. I didn't do it because nobody asked me to. I did it because I wanted to. I did it for fun, but as you can see from this table, the last big rotation on the show was mostly in 2013, but it started the year before and continued into the fourth season. In 2013, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis left the show at the same time and this was just a year after Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg left the show at the same time, so as you can imagine, 2013 was a pretty difficult year for SNL. had five shoes, would that be ten shoes to fill right because each one had up to 10 big shoes to fill and to do it, Lorne Michaels hired six new cast members at once, but of those six only two lasted more than one season which , in retrospect it makes a lot of sense, it was just a case of Lorne Michaels throwing everything against the wall and seeing what would stick, a lot of things didn't work out, but what did stick was Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett, they were hired. in 2013 and are still in the program now.

I'd love to see more of them, but I'll get to that later if you're wondering what happened there. My camera turned off in the middle of my sentence and then the next part it's out of focus for about 40 seconds. I'm a professional YouTuber, so it's cool, no, but as I mentioned before, it's pretty obvious that SNL is in a strange state right now and there are several reasons for that. I'll start with the smallest ones before getting to the most obvious number one, the writing has been pretty weak for a few years. I think going from John Mulaney and Seth Meyers to Colin Jost is a big step down.

I mean, Colin is okay, but he's not that funny. I also think the tone of the show as a whole has changed to a worse place and it's not a coincidence that every time John Mulaney returns as host the whole show feels different, it's something that comes up a lot and I think it's his influence on the concepts and ideas of the show that reinforce everything else within it and that's what the show is generally missing, they are silly, weird ideas that work because they are rooted in really solid jokes. Number two, the cast is very underused, not bad, just not used. right, there are some amazing people on the show right now Kate McKinnon is a legend Cecily strong as an angel I'm actually pretty sure I'm in love with every woman on the show Keenan is a legend Beck and Kyle are probably my two favorite humans beings on the planet, so what happens to the cast?

Well, most nights I don't feel like I'm watching SNL, I feel like I'm watching the Alex and Mikey show with Leslie Jones and Pete David and everyone's fine, but like, where's Kyle? Oh, the sketch of him was cut for the 40th time in a row. You know he's the funniest person on the show. He's the closest thing the show has right now to Fred Armisen and he's never in it, but you know what? Having said all that, there's a reason I still watch the show every week and it's because there have been some amazing sketches over the last few years, the office party was hysterical, the house sketches, those are great, the Jason Momoa's first scheduled impression from this road was Christmas. as an instant classic, so there have been some good sketches on the show.

It seems like now more than ever they are few and far between, but of course the biggest reason the show seems to be suffering right now and I feel like we would. everyone agrees on this is that it is: damn Poland, or yes, it is, but is it more political than it used to be? It seems right, it seems like from a very specific date here in 2016, the tone of the show. has changed drastically, well I wanted to check that so I made another Excel spreadsheet. They must understand that he is a youtuber. I don't have the opportunity to work with Excel as much as I would like, but I made another Excel spreadsheet. and this time I went through all the episodes from the last five seasons and first counted the number of sketches in each episode, not including Weekend Update or the hosts' monologues, and then I counted how many of these sketches focused on politics, if you're wondering that. this green area means what's so special about episode six of season 42, well that was the show that aired on November 10, 2016, the first Saturday after Trump was elected president, now what you would probably think is that since that day there have been more political sketches per episode, as well as a greater percentage of the show dedicated to politics and that is true in the 47 episodes before Trump was elected, there was an average of one and a half political sketches per episode, but that number has since increased to two.

So yes, there is a difference, but not a crazy difference, it's not like that number has doubled or tripled, it just means there's an extra political sketch every two weeks and that's not enough to make the entire show feel drastically different, so what happened? Because? I feel so different now and I think the most important thing is the tone. SNL has always been political, that's not new. I remember Will Forte and Will Ferrell playing George W. Bush. Darrell Hammond playing Gore. Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin. They have never shied away from politics. It's very much been their brand, the difference now, when Alec Baldwin comes on the show to play Trump for the 300th time, it no longer seems to be for the sake of comedy, it seems like they're just trying to make him angry, it seems like it. a personal vendetta against the guy and they allow themselves to make him so angry that he tweets angrily and make no mistake, I'm not defending him at all.

I don't like Trump. I want to make that clear. I don't like. I generally agree with SNL's point of view. I agree with what they're trying to say in a sketch, but that doesn't mean it's fun to watch Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, it was fun to watch, you know, I know it was fun to watch. because Sarah Palin appeared on the show John McCain Hillary Clinton Barack Obama all came to the show after the show had done impressions of them because the impressions weren't meant to make them angry Now, of course, part of that is that Trump doesn't seem to make sense of humor about himself, he seems like the most defensive person in the history of humanity, but it's also definitely a testament to the overall tone of the print and how petty he's become to the point that even if you agree with what what are they saying, it's just not that fun to watch, sorry, I hate talking politics on this channel, I literally never have because I feel like I'm walking through a field of landmines and it doesn't matter where I am.

Step, I'm going to piss someone off, so I'll just say one last thing on the subject. Comedy with an agenda isn't comedy because it's not meant to make people laugh, it's meant to make people agree and I just want to laugh, well. I've talked for about 14 and a half minutes, so I should have enough information to definitively answer the question: SNL is funny, let's check the numbers. I don't know, man, if you've seen all my videoscomedy analysis like this, so know that I have the same lukewarm conclusion every time that comedy is subjective and I am not in charge of what is good and what is bad, all I can do is give my opinion and that is what What I'm trying to do in this video.

You could take the information provided in this video and argue for Snell being good or why he's bad, but at the end of the day it's up to you, the only thing I think I can say is objectively good and consistently impressive about Saturday Night Live. It's their set production whenever they have a sketch that is very relevant, like it covers something that just happened a couple of days before, I think. People tend to be impressed by the writers and performers who were able to change things in such a short time. little time, but think about all the sets, all the props, costumes and makeup that they use in the production of the show.

It's top notch and they constantly impress me with what they're able to do with the time limit they have, but as far as the quality of the show goes, I think because of the format, because of the time crunch, they're always available. As long as it exists, it will always be unpredictable and even the things that I think are successful and I think are wrong. I don't know that other people have different opinions. A lot of people seem to like Alec Baldwin's Trump. Don't know. I don't like it, but clearly there are other people those videos seem to have the most views on their YouTube channel, those political episodes tend to get the highest ratings on TV and then there are times when I watch a sketch like the by Jason Momoa becbennett hide and look for one that's so funny from the beginning and then has this weird twist like halfway through it's just a perfect piece of art in my opinion I'll go to the video on YouTube and see it has almost 2,000 I don't like it and everything. these hateful comments and I'm like, oh yeah, no one will ever agree on anything.

I would like to trust you with the credibility that I think SNL has earned over the years, that they have the ability to overcome the obstacle that they have. right now and returning to their glory days of yesteryear, but I guess if that never happens and they eventually disband, maybe it'll be a good thing, at least it means Kyle Mooney can go back to making videos as sick as the ones on YouTube and us. We can all agree that's a good thing, maybe it's not all. I want to say a huge thank you to these sponsors, Squarespace, they are one of my favorite companies to work for and their product is absolutely phenomenal every time I've had to make a website over the last two years, whether it's my own personal website merged or just a prank website I made to add an extra layer of production to a video, I always turned to Squarespace and it's always so easy you can get started by choosing one. of these amazing designer templates that will help you achieve any look you're going for, whether you're making a blog, an online store, or even a photo collection of your life-size cardboard cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video and helping support my channel for over two years and thank you all. who uses the products that I tend to include on this channel, it is thanks to you that the brand keeps coming back and supporting me, so you also support me by supporting them and everyone, and it is a great hope that everyone enjoyed this video. You know, I like to make videos like this every few months and I'm always pleasantly surprised by the positive response. If you didn't like this video, that's okay. I won't take it personally or anything like that.

Katelyn, most of you. look at that and say what my name isn't Caitlin, but for that Caitlyn who was thinking about how much she didn't like this video, you'll think twice before not liking a video next time, but anyway , That is all for now. Boy, home to see you, tune in to next week's video, which will just be a montage of my silver medal in gymnastics at the 2004 Olympics. She was 11, bye.