Just wanted to say the SNL app is a huge time sink.

Premiere October 3, with host and musical guest Miley Cyrus, followed by Amy Schumer/The Weeknd and Tracy Morgan/Demi Lovato. I'm guessing cameos by Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are likely there.

Seems like everyone in the cast is returning.

How to say this without being a dick... hmmm

Tracy Morgan is probably gonna be awful. I mean, I personally never found that guy that funny on SNL (Brian Fellow was funny, sure) and really the only time I liked him was when Tina Fey and co were writing for him on 30 Rock... he had brain trauma. you could tell he wasn't 100% at the Emmy's. What the hell is the rush to have him host SNL?

You can bet they bust out the best that they have for him though. And it probably draws in the best guest appearances of the season too.

well in that case

Watched all the Riblet videos over the weekend. Why can't we have Moynihan replace Che on update again?

Not too promising a start to the season, looks like they're sticking with the idea that Jones screaming=funny.

Couple good Update jokes, even though it's tough to have fresh jokes about month-old news, and maybe Che/Jost are feeling a bit more comfortable interacting now.

Good to see Bennett/Mooney still doing their thing. New guy fit in but didn't have much funny to do.

Good Neighbor sketch at the end was the best part... which is usually the case.

Leslie Jones is awful. What's the point of having Miley Cyrus host if Vanessa Bayer isn't gonna do the only good impression she does?

Pete Davidson is fine, but his first "resident young person" WU bit is still the best one he's done.

I'm probably in the small minority, but i absolutely hate political comedy in any form, so i expect to be more down on SNL over the next year than I usually am. I think I'm pretty fair when it comes to rating episodes.

I'm not crazy about political comedy, but that's because I (and I assume most here) enjoy comedy that is fresh, and says something different. And it's just really rare that SNL pulls that off. They're usually just regurgitating the ideas already put out by the rest of the media.

I thought the WU jokes were actually pretty strong, and deserved a better reaction than the tepid one they received from the audience. Some were definitely risque, and I think the audience got scared to laugh at them.

I thought the sketches overall were pretty crappy, but even worse, they didn't feel complete. They felt very unfinished and half baked. I don't just mean the endings. Even if the sketch had an ending that gave it a bit of closure, I felt myself asking afterward "what the hell did I just watch?"

This especially pisses me off when it's the opening episode, because they've have such a ridic amount of time to come up with ideas for sketches and write them.

I mean, in Miley's opening monologue where she sang the song, they trotted out Rachael Dolezal, Kim David, Jared, and the lion killer (and more). But they didn't do anything with them, just kind of paraded them in front of the crowd. This has got to be the laziest possible form of comedy there is. It's like what they do in all those awful Scary Movie/Epic Movie turds. It's just a pageant of cultural references.

The new guy, Jon Rudnitski, is a very talented dude, and I think he'll be a great addition to the show. I know him personally and he's one of the genuinely nicest people I've met. I know about his journey to get on the show, and if there's interest, I'll get permission to tell y'all about it if there's interest.

But man, what a bunch of unfinished sketches.

If this was an episode in the middle of the season I wouldn't think anything of it, just your standard slightly below average episode.

But given that it's the premier and they've had months to write golden material? Cmon

-Leslie Jones is terrible.
-New guy seems decent.
-Mooney/Bennett still the best
-WU still funny imo despite what people say. I don't mind Jost or Che

I'm going to be comparing every episode with the Rock episode from the last season. Easily the best episode of that season and of the past few years.

On a scale of Rock-5 to Rock+5 I rank it a Rock-4

If you don't have a boner right now you should probably kill yourself

Haven't watched yet, but does anybody follow the D + K podcast on instagram? Gave me a better appreciation for Mooney.

Yeah, I was surprised. Usually when they have so much time to write a show they come up with better stuff.

@Double Down - Pageant of cultural references is a great way to describe it. Hey look at this audience you recognize this, right? Its hacky/lazy comedy writing plain and simple. What's astounding is that someone who understands comedy as well as Lorne Michaels allows such a fundamental flaw to exist year after year.

And on top of that Leslie Jones is a complete hack as well. The show has become some sort of hacky comedy inception. Hey look kids (points at Leslie Jones) its a hack inside of a hack!

Leslie Jones is great.
Didn't notice the new guy.
Kyle Mooney's Pope Francis was the worst part of the show.
Jost/Che are at their best when they do racial humor.

Didn't watch this episode but based on the entire last season this is definitely not the case.

She is constantly flubbing lines and taking me right out of every sketch she's in.

Also, she has precisely one note. That note being big scary black lady who yells a lot.

She was much better at not flubbing lines in the first episode. She did her relationship expert bit on Weekend Update, which I like for the over-the-top way she hits on Jost.

I like when she does humor that pushes the buttons of white people who are uncomfortable watching a big scary black lady.

Hah, I loved Mooney's Pope Francis.

The funny thing is, a lot of SNL cast members over the course of the show have been one note, even beloved people such as Sandler, Farley, and Norm MacDonald. It's not even necessarily their fault. They may have been hired specifically because they do that one thing. The more important thing to judge on is whether that one note is something funny/new/different enough to keep our attention and entertain us.

Idunno how I feel about Leslie Jones. She did make me laugh at first, and if anything, it was refreshing to watch a cast member who really put themselves out there with no inhibitions, like Chris Farley, instead of having such a prepared, buttoned up performance like most cast members have on the show. But her flubs in the live sketches and the one noted-ness of her shtick has made it get kinda old pretty quickly. We haven't really seen her play characters yet.


I think at this point, he doesn't really care. The format, style, and process of the show has been so consistent for such a long time now, that mediocrity is looked at as a good enough success, since just to pull the show off every week is an impressive feat. Using stock characters and similarly formatted sketches is one reason why Lorne is able to pull the show off, period. That low standard probably trickles down through every department of the show.

If you're a 1st or 2nd year performer or writer, you're probably spending all of your time and energy just trying to find a way to fit in to the current system. You don't want to ruffle any feathers. Because of this, the status quo will always win out and things will never change. Unless there is a major cast/writing shake up (that maybe would also involve a new producer) things will continue to be how they currently are.

The most problematic thing for Jones is that there are no obvious impersonations for her to do. It's hard for a cast member to make a consistent contribution without some signature impressions to rely on.

But as a cast member, she is a lot more interesting than Sasheer Zamata, who doesn't really add anything to her roles.

No kidding. I can't believe she was upgraded to a regular. So useless.

Usually, you are a featured player for your first two seasons (including partial seasons) and you get upgraded to a repertory player in your third. It has nothing to do with how good you are.

It definitely does. If you noticeably excel during your first year (or even first 6 months) you can become a regular. It just seems weird that she's a reg, when it feels like during her first 1.5 years, she wasn't really used that much and has barely stood out. It's very obvious that if she were another white guy, she probably would have been let go by now but Lorne was feeling the pressure, and it would have been a bad look to make her featuring again (even though she should be, and that's being kind.)

She's terrible but I wouldn't be surprised if a ton of people thought she was funny. The Big Bang Theory is the number one tv show and that Charlie Sheen show was insanely popular.

No matter how little-used you are, if you make it to a third season, you get to be a regular cast member. That's just how the standard SNL contract is structured now. I believe the exceptions tend to be cast members who were promoted in times of large cast turnover. Amy Poehler is the last person to be promoted to regular cast in a first season and there are only a couple of others who have been promoted that quickly.

Marc Maron had apparent former SNL castmember Michaela Watkins on his pod this week. i don't remember her being on the show at all, but maybe that was during a period where i stopped watching altogether or something. anyway, she came across as pretty cool. some of her bits on this were pretty good, like i could see that Andie MacDowell thing being better than 75% of the stuff they're doing now. solid stories too, the after-party one about the weird highschool politics of the show was sad. anyway, just thought i'd share.

(also did a quick scan through this thread and people were generally favourable towards her, seems like she got something of a raw deal from them)

she had a good WU character who reviewed movies or something. She was otherwise forgettable though. She had a Casey Wilson run i think, but i always found her awful in her short time there. Jenny Slate was and still is awful, but she said "f---" so that was that for her.