yeah i think i saw that on rotten.com (those were the days). pretty disturbing. glad they didn't have pics of phil hartman, don't think i could've handled seeing that.

I never knew my guy Ike Reilly was good friends with Farley. From Marquette I guess. I didn't realize that was the same Christopher Farley Ike is talking about in the part of "When Irish Eyes Are Burning" where he's getting his ass kicked in front of the Liberty Theater.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Loved that everyone had nothing but great things to say about Farley except Lorne, who started with criticizing Farleys skits of laying to the guy in the back row instead of to the TV, which he then learned.

Which is what I think is a huge problem with SNL that Lorne thinks he is making art, its skits, with funny people, that if they dont suck up to Lorne...its over.

Over the years, so many attempts have been made to try and beat them and all of them lose. Would think now is a good time to go after them.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

The problem is that it's not a matter of "beating" them. People can and have done funnier sketch comedy -- Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show, Chappelle's Show, The State on their best days, probably Amy Schumer now -- but have had to go to basic or premium cable to do it, and the shows all ran their courses like TV shows are supposed to do. SNL at this point is more about being a Treasured Broadcasting Institution that spends as much time jerking off over its own legend as it does adding to its legend. There's no sense in going head-to-head with them, now more than ever when people just watch stuff whenever they want to and in bite-sized chunks on their phones. So ironically, SNL is protected by its own obsolescence.

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As I read this, I pictured Lorne Michaels saying "Ohh yeah...I slaughtered the Special Olympics."

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

well you definitely hit on all the greats, with probably monty python being in there as one of the forefathers. what separates SNL after the 70's is that it is more a showcase of talented young comedic actors than it is a concentrated sketch comedy show. it's a means to an end. kids in the hall were sitting together writing shit they wanted because that was what they did. they weren't trying to make big movie careers out of it. same with mr. show.

Yeah, I never would have considered Monty Python an alternative or threat to Saturday Night Live, unless you count reruns on PBS member stations.

You'll notice that I didn't include Mad TV as "funnier sketch comedy." This was by design.

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TV is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends and television is...NO FRIEND OF MINE...hhhnnnhh...

Thread officially takes a turn for the meta.

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i could spend the next 5 pages of this thread cluttering it with mr. show references.

If The State were properly funded....I think they could have hung with and destroyed SNL. They were so damn good and just at the right time too. They were supposed to be on CBS for a halloween special or something and then they just vanished...for a few months until they all moved on to something even more successful like reno 911. Today's SNL is just a bunch of high brow shit(and lifer kennan) that should be reserved for saturday mornings on NPR....audio only.

I highly doubt an alive Chris would watch the show today.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

i personally remember late 80s / early 90s SNL being good quality stuff that ~8-12 year old me would make appointment television. i wish i could see that yard-o-pult commercial again (the one for the backyard catapult.... great for trash day! lost the family pet? [shot of family mourning over the dead dog in the yard-o-pult then PUH-PLING!!!!]) but alas that one never makes the SNL GOES COMMERCIAL!!!! special and etc. but yeah it was "good" back then, or at least 8-12 year old me thought it was the shit.

then i remember circa ~93-94, aka when carvey myers hartman and etc left it was pretty much shit except for norm's weekend update, which was the best that i remember. somebody was nice enough to nab a bunch of norm's weekend update from some SNL replay 2015-1975 thing, so you gotta start with #6 here and go backwards.... but yeah it's pretty fun. IIRC, wasnt there a year or two where it was left with sandler and spade and farley and maybe even chris rock b4 it petered out and went in that will ferrell / molly shannon / cheri oteri era? i was out by the time it was will ferrell and fallon and fay and the F brigade, that much i know for sure.

now i put it on roughly once a season and marvel at how inexorably shit it is and wonder (like john oliver b4 me) how is this still a thing?

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1994-1995 was the weird transition season where not all the glory-days people had left just yet but the late '90s wave (whom I'd separate from Fallon and Fey, who were 2000s) hadn't fully come in yet. They brought in Michael McKean, of all people, to kind of be a glue guy like Phil Hartman was, and you can't go wrong with Michael McKean. Chris Elliott was there, too, but I'm guessing he never fit in there because he was just established enough already not to be putty in Lorne's hands. Same with Janeane Garofalo, I bet.

Quick check of the wiki says they still had Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, and Kevin Nealon (!), but had also brought in Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, and Norm MacDonald. So yeah, that's about as much a fish-nor-fowl roster I can think of.

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I recall Farley coming on Mancow's show and thinking at the time "Holy Cocaine!"

Farley was very funny, but he was a 1 trick pony. No one knew this more than Farley and he admitted it often. He seemed very aware that his "fat boy fall down" act was all he had and would eventually run out.

I'll have to watch this at some point.

SNL does have peeks and valleys. You don't realize the peeks until after they've ended. The Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reign is very underrated. They were very funny.

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he may have had one act but it was a great one.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

that is true.

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I think you forgot Upright Citizens Brigade.


I think Marc Maron has a very high opinion of Lorne.

Maybe. Seemed great. I loved almost all of his skits/work.

Don't ever watch Beverly Hills Ninja.

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You know me like that.

You're right, I did! Good to see you around again, by the way.

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I've been around just too much work to log in every 5 minutes so I just browse. That and I really don't listen to WSCR I have such a back log of podcasts with actual content and humor it is hard to listen to buffoonery.