The offensive content part wasn't bad as a lot of it was funny. I could have done without the pedophile/sex offender montage. It served no purpose and made me wonder if there was a message there. Nobody was sitting there thinking about them and to bring them up is odd.

Norm was on when I started watching regularly (tail end of season 20). He was by far my favorite part of the show, and when Colin Quinn showed up as the host, I turned off the TV and went to bed swearing I was done watching every week, a hissyfit it turns out I successfully committed to for 27 years. I guess I just really liked O.J. jokes. And I think even then I could sense that I was watching someone who was getting away with something. I guess that was my childhood's version of that Freaks & Geeks bit where the kid comes home from school and laughs hysterically watching Garry Shandling.


I've been rewatching as much of season 21 as Peacock has left intact. Either they cut every sketch Will Ferrell wasn't in or they were riding him like a Dusty Baker starting pitcher, because Weekend Update is the only time he isn't yelling and/or falling. It was still an okay year, though. I don't know why they fired Nancy Walls and Mark McKinney.

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norm was part of the ushering in of "anti-humor"; his stand-up had a lot of purposeful dead spots, especially post 90's.

weekend update was always a staple but i was never really into it a lot of the time. colin quinn's stand-up is great but man i hated him when he took that segment. i think dennis miller was probably the only guy that carried it for me.

Dennis Miller is one of the most influential comedians of our time, but no one wants to admit it because of his shit political thoughts. Every Deadspin commenter is essentially doing Dennis Miller. Half the time here, I'm doing Dennis Miller.

I liked Kevin Nealon's spin on it, but I can see where people thought he was too dry. Never caught too much of Seth Meyers. Colin Jost says he idolizes Norm but you'd never tell from the way he acts like he's scared to deliver a joke.

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For better effect they should've held it after the scared straight sketch, since the premise was lol prison rape

I've seen quinn in standup, in a standupesque stage show and on tv. I don't get him. He delivery is that of a slow adult and the humor itself isn't far behind. I see him as one of those guys the other comics liked and he got carried along by their success.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

First I saw him was on that MTV game show. Didn't get him then or now.

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Elections have consequences.

He came up when comedians were just a bunch of plumbers and firemen.

I feel like gassing up Colin Quinn is some sort of comedy-world inside baseball, where everyone feels bad about how his most famous role was one he didn't want and did poorly at and had to eat shit for even taking, so they all agree that he's actually amazing at everything except that one thing people know him for. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, I think I mentioned after the Super Bowl that the whole thing felt like a series finale for what's left of the broadly liberal monoculture. Thinking about it more, you can group the SNL 50th in with that. It doesn't have the same racial valence as the Super Bowl's sporting/musical triumph of Black America over White America, because Saturday Night Live even told you it's for white people, but seeing all these beloved late-20th-century entertainers in their dotage like Paul McCartney and Paul Simon and Martin Short felt like a goodbye to them and a goodbye to the idea that we could all at least have the same network-TV cultural touchpoints. Now we can't even have that. And not just because Tom Hanks has been apprehended by QAnon Task Force authorities and replaced with a clone.

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Remote Control! With Marisol Massey! Followed by The Monkees weekend marathon

Because the far left ruined it. End of story.

I was trying to watch this in bed last night, but JORR said it was "too political" and turned it off with a huff!

Not true, "It's Pat" endures and survived the In Memoriam