SNL 12/02/23

Sarah Sherman and Emma Stone look like they could be related.

She's been the host before.

I know I gotta be misremembering, but...why does it seem so many hosts and musical guests are dwindling down to only certain frequent repeaters? Did they really rein in the show's per-episode budgets or something??

How many of this year's hosts have been women who were not the musical guest. Women host exclusives?

Emma Stone is becoming over saturated.

Oct. 14: Pete Davidson, Ice Spice

Oct. 21: Bad Bunny (host and musical guest)

Oct. 28: Nate Bargatze, Foo Fighters

Nov. 11: Timothée Chalamet, boygenius

Nov. 18: Jason Momoa, Tate McRae

Dec. 2: Emma Stone, Noah Kahan

Emma is the first female this year. She is an Actor with great comedic timing.

Dec. 9: Adam Driver, Olivia Rodrigo

Has Driver been cast as Young Snape in the Harry Potter PRE-quels?

Dec. 16: Kate McKinnon, Billie Eilish

Kate is doing the Christmas Show.

Wow, how did they get Kate to take a week off her red-hot career to return to SNL?

Hope they make room for lots of her uncanny impressions. And that woman who got kidnapped by aliens. I never got tired of seeing that!

Sarah Sherman is the new Kate McKinnon of SNL when it comes to creepy impersonations of men.

R8, very generous of you to call that an impersonation.

Bowen just used the phrase "blow me" in that song.

Scandal in the wind

The younger cast members probably don't know who Candice Bergen is.

She's still a stone cold fox that's who she is.

Candice Bergen was SNL's first female host.

She was so damn good on those episodes she did with the original cast.

She appeared in two of the best sketches they ever did, including "Consumer Probe:"

And this showcase for Gilda Radner's brilliant improv skills when Candice screwed up a line:

Lorne stands around like an undead.

Candice is clearly kind of limited after her stroke, but her comic timing is right on point.

She should take over from Betty White and Cloris Leachman as Hollywood's go-to dirty grandma.

ugh another sketch of Bowen singing

Not just singing again — naked.

We don't deserve this.

Showing off their Ozempic bodies. They all look thinner yet very out of shape. Fatties who inject.

Now I can add being unable to unsee him nude, to my already existing, cannot-unhear Bowen phobia.

Kenan needs to leave SNL.

The show has already shipwrecked in the first 30 minutes.

Fire all the writers and start over.

I can't believe this sketch is still going on.

[quote]And that woman who got kidnapped by aliens. I never got tired of seeing that!

ME TOO. I hope she does a reprise of Best of Kate.

I hope she does a Lesbian Cat Owner again.

Hopefully, this will be the injection to make Emma Stone go away for awhile.

Marcello is so sexy. I just can't.

SNL should have been taken off the air in 1980 when the original cast had all left the show.

[quote]Showing off their Ozempic bodies. They all look thinner yet very out of shape. Fatties who inject.

I thought Marcello looked hot.

When a parody is more painful to watch than an actual show on pottery.

Candice Bergen has the best plastic surgeon in the world. She still looks like herself.

Love SNL history but find the “Five Timers Club” so cringe. It was a onetime sketch in the 80s that was fine for what it was. But making it an actual achievement to mark makes it lame. It’s SNL leaning into to the sort of shit it used to mock.

I thought The Counting Crows broke up.

This is so unfunnily bizarre, and also making me envision Phyllis Diller a lot right about now.

The cigarette bit on Weekend Update was actually pretty good.

WTF was that pottery bit? Garner is a deadweight performer, and Fineman hasn’t much built in on her initial promise.

Marcello is that most popular high school jock who's secretly gay and fucks you on the DL under the bleachers or in his car.

This is awful.

Marcello is too short to be the star jock.

He was the creative type who'd experiment with you in the basement after school while publicly having a girlfriend.

Chloe probably co-wrote this sketch.

The pottery sketch is their sad attempt at recreating the NPR ladies with Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon or Kate's and Kristen's kitty sketch.

Do they have a hug and mingle session every week after the show? It seems excessive considering the workload of almost every other profession.

The writing staff is useless.

Emma Stone ran circles around the cast, and the best the writers could come up with was a retread of the NPR/cat ladies and a retread of the bizarre reception performers (seen in various permutations for years).

Schweddy Balls...

Candice Bergn was beautiful in her heyday

How's Emma Stone doing? I can't watch she scares me.

Trivia: Candice hosted SNL three times in 1975-76 because NBC had a development deal with her.

She was the runner-up to replace Barbara Walters on the Today show in 1976, the job Jane Pauley got.

Am I the only person really sick of Emma Stone in everything?

May George Santos exit from the scene inform Bowen Yang’s SNL future.

I love Emma Stone and she sure tried, but this was a bad episode.

However, the cigarette skit on Update actually made me laugh multiple times.

Emma was very good as Mitch the record producer.

I had to mute the lounge act skit out of embarrassment.

I still like Weekend Update and Please Don’t Destroy.

I actually like the cast member who played Mamma Cass. Who is she?

Punkie Johnson is just terrible and her delivery is awful... Pete Davidson levels of comedic ineptitude.

The pottery sketch only highlighted this weak cast’s deficiencies. Shannon and Gasteyer are in a different league than Gardner and Fineman.

All throughout the sketch, I thought Mitch was Sarah Sherman. At the end, I realized it was Emma.

I hadn't sat down and watched the show in a couple years, just relying on highlights posted the following day. So I was taken aback how poor it was. I got through about 40 min. then had to turn it off. Game show skit? Check. Bland musical guest? Check. Bowen Yang in every skit, breaking-up? Check.

But I'm not laughing.

I fast forwarded through the pottery sketch. I never FF. It was terrible.

If you're familiar with SNL history, you know that a couple of times during Lorne Michaels's reign, NBC stepped in and said, "This isn't working. Fix it, or the show's done."

Once after the disastrous 1985-86 season, and again after the disastrous 1993-95 seasons. Both times he entirely recast and restaffed the show and revived it.

I think everyone at NBC is holding their breath to get to the 50th anniversary, but this season so far indicates the show needs another total housecleaning.

The NYMag article linked here is worth reading:

[quote]The pottery sketch only highlighted this weak cast’s deficiencies. Shannon and Gasteyer are in a different league than Gardner and Fineman.

Right, R53. Heidi Gardner is not a match for the lunacy Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer, and Kristen Wiig could do so well. Chloe Fineman is a talented impressionist but fades whenever she's playing anyone who isn't a celebrity. Jane Curtin and Aidy Bryant could take those everyperson roles and run with them.

This is like the Wish.com version of an SNL cast.

Terrible.

This was not a great episode,but I sure do want to fuck Marcello.

Marcelo’s tight little body didn’t jiggle at all while working that jackhammer. I’d love to enter him.

I’m enjoying the new cast member who played Mama Cass. Her sketch a few weeks back about the old, singing orphan was pretty hilarious.

Trost is really a comic actress who belts. She is Broadway material.

She does not have a fucking writer who can write for her.

She will die.

Nobody hires the alto.

Can’t explain it, but it feels like the show has found a way to shield itself from the criticisms it received in ‘80, ‘85 and ‘94. Maybe it’s just that there’s so much media now, people aren’t playing as close attention. Not sure. it just seems like they’re able to skate by much easier now than we could in the past. Without a doubt, this season deserves as much criticism as any of those bad seasons.

Excellent point, R63. Some of that leniency may be due to the show being so close to its 50th anniversary.