I've started watching Saturday Night Live again recently. I didn't really want to – most of what I 'd seen in the past few years had been pretty lackluster, a collection of fart jokes that paled in comparison to the old Steve Martin/Dan Akroyd days of glory. Still, two things brought me back to SNL: 1) that Amy Poehler, one of my favorite comedians, joined the cast and 2) it's a shitty thing to talk about how you like comedy and then not know what's going on currently in the comedy world.
I will say, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the stuff I've seen, and I have a decent amount of respect for a number of the actors on there, especially Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. It's always refreshing to see funny female comedians in places of prominence, and they're both doing some pretty amazing stuff. I've become especially obsessed with Kristen’s Target Lady and Two A-Holes sketches.
Unfortunately, I have also found my share of bathroom humor and cheap shots. It's not that I dislike those things as a whole, but there's so many of them, which points to a larger problem – these guys pull together an hour of sketch comedy in a week. A week. I don't care if you have 20 brilliant comedic minds writing and acting, a week is not a lot of time. And so what could be a gorgeous, tight half-hour sketch comedy show gets filled with fluff and pumped up to an hour.
And of course, I need to recognize that SNL is one of the largest comedy shows out there, and their target audience is huge. A lot of the jokes, I'm sure, are crafted for broad, base appeal – I'm not going to like them all. Still, it's sad to see a bunch of great comedians working together to create what boils down to 10-20 minutes of really solid material a week. But I'm still watching.