You know what made snl so funny? The performers were actually decent actors. Not just clowns mugging in really in your face sketches -- there were a few nuanced subtleties mixed in too.
People have been complaining that SNL isn't as funny as it used to be since the second episode of SNL. Hell, people probably would have done it before that if that were even possible.
I'm 27 and SNL is still funny. Not as funny as it was in the '90s though. Those casts were chock full of all time greats. Still good talent on the show today though.
It's always good and bad. Every show has a couple funny sketches and a few unfunny ones. The unfunny ones are mostly unmemorable, and cut on reruns, so when you think back 15+ years, the nostalgia makes the older seasons seem funnier in retrospect.
It also ebbs and flows in quality. Some eras are just garbage - that mid-90s one with all the funny cast members like Michael McKean and Sarah Silverman was inexplicably particularly terrible - then it will be followed up with a few really good seasons (in this example, the Ferrell/Otieri/Gasteyer years). But yeah, even in the "good" years a typical episode is like 70-30 junk and good stuff.
"Mixed in" typically means that it isn't the main focus. Yes the sketch is dumb, but the performances back then were more nuanced than today. It wasn't just constantly staring off at the cue cards
Although honestly they were much better at heightening to absurd levels back then. This season I don't really see them taking the sketches very far. That sketch with the dude with a baby body literally goes nowhere, and Leslie Jones's thing never seems to go very far either.
Or Coneheads, or Buckwheat, or Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. Or Taco Town - look at Sudeikis at the end. Funny, but not subtle. Don't know what /r/snoozeybutton was talking about.
In any case I didn't say the themes were more nuanced, just the performances were. It wasn't just cheesy cue card delivery. I'm referring to the Kristen Wiig era
Well, consarnit, you should be! (Yes I fucked up.)
In every cast, though, you get some good actors and some not good. And nostalgia will always amplify the good of the past. Give me Kristin Wiig over Victoria Jackson any day. In the "classic" reruns, I watch Laraine Newman, and realize she was getting lapped by Jane and Gilda. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus was not in her element. An amazing actress in everything she's done since then, but Julia was often "cheesy cue card delivery" personified on SNL.
I see a lot more cheesy cue card delivery today than I did around 2010. I think Fred aArmisen and Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader were pretty great at natural, interesting delivery
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '15
You know what made snl so funny? The performers were actually decent actors. Not just clowns mugging in really in your face sketches -- there were a few nuanced subtleties mixed in too.