I find it kind of funny that most of the people who say "SNL hasn't been funny in years" are people that never even stop to watch it and give it a chance.
The reality is, that over the last 3 - 4 years there has been a lot of really talented young performers on the show, including Amy Poehler, Andy Sambergh, Will Forte and Kristen Wiig.
I never stay up to watch it because as I've covered ad-nauseum on the site, I'm not exactly a night owl. I do love the show though, so the lady and I usually DVR it and watch it on Sunday morning. I know, isn't that cute.
Anyhoo, the season opener last night was interesting for a few different reasons. First off, they had their highest season opener ratings in over 6 years. That's partly due to the fact that there's an election going on, which usually gives them a boost, but it's also due to the fact that swimming mongoloid Michael Phelps was the host.
Phelps, as predicted, was atrociously bad. They didn't even write funny lines for him. In fact, it was pretty obvious that they just wrote skits and stuck him in while other people tried to be funny around him. The results were not great.
Tina Fay was mesmerizing as Sarah Palin. Mostly because up until that moment I hadn't devoted any brain power as to how similar they actually look. Seriously people, (to use a Schnaars word of the day) they're dopplegangers. It's uncanny. Fay even nailed that ridiculous Northwestern accent, which I must say was a nice touch.
It wasn't my favorite part of the show though. Almost towards the end, a skit showed up starring some new fat guy named Bobby Moynihan, who oddly enough looks exactly like Artie Lange from the Howard Stern show (you know, except actually funny). Anyways, he did this skit where he played this bizarre effeminate white guy who acts black and works at Pizzeria Uno.
I don't know what it was, but I was laughing hysterically the entire time. In doing a search for the video this morning there were already people online asking for someone to post it, since NBC didn't even post it as a clip from last night's show. I found that weird considering it was the main thing people were talking about when it was over. Either way, here it is. I still can't find an embeddable copy so go to that video and fastfoward to approximately 5:30. Then, enjoy the awesomeness.
How do you not smell dat peppa?!? I don't know, it makes me laugh, and I needed one of those today so Bobby Moynihan is my new favorite person.
Andy Sambergh also knocked one out of the park with his digital short Space Olympics. It doesn't seem funny until about halfway through, stick with it though and you'll see what I mean. It's another clip I can't embed because the people at NBC and SNL are frigging Nazis when it comes to embedding video. Apparently they don't realize the only way people are ever going to tune in again is if they let their actual funny videos out into the wild. Way to be web saavy, guys.
I'm definitely going to be DVR'ing next week to see what else they have up their sleeves this season. I could watch a whole show of just that guy asking why people can't smell the pepper, but maybe that's just me.