A weekly late-night 90-minute American sketch comedy/variety show broadcast live from Studio 8H at the GE Building in New York's Rockefeller Center. The show is one of the longest-running network programs in American television history and has launched careers for many major American comedy stars of the last thirty years.
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Your Next Unwatched
aired Oct 12, 1975
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No S45x16. "SNL is currently on an unplanned hiatus that will last at least through April 11." https://www.thewrap.com/saturday-night-live-snl-new-episode-or-is-it-a-reru n-this-week-march-28-coronavirus/
@kenneththepage please :)
Someone change the upcoming episode so that it isn't the "classic episode" from ten years ago that NBC is airing before. I'm not sure how this happened lol
@oranges
I ran out of room. The cast stayed mostly the same for the first half of the 2000s, then most left. After that the people that joined up are still mostly there.
Now it is alright, but not that great. They managed to climb back up for the US presidential election and primaries, but dropped back off after that. Of note, Tina Fey came back for that, so it wasn't even all the cast. Now they have probably their best and well, best looking female cast, but overall they are all just functioning like a decent ensemble tv show. Each person plays a decent part, but the overall cast is average at best. I would say Kristen Wiig, who just did Bridesmaids, is probably the strongest person on the show right now.
It has never been bad and I have seen probably 75-80% of the all time episodes, but I think it has always been a bit too dumbed down. I really like some of the episodes and some of the skits, but it isn't worth the effort of putting too much time in it. Best for clips and so on.
@oranges
Bill Murray, John Belushi, and Dan Akyroyd tend to be three of the more popular people from early on, which may be the best years the show had.
The early 80s had a number of people who went on to really big things, some for limited appearances. Eddie Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Billy Crystal, and Christopher Guest are some notable names.
The late 80s had a few notables, many carrying on into the 90s. Those early 90s had the biggest cast of well knowns today (In terms of numbers, maybe not overall talent). From the late 80s to the mid 90s, you had Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, Dennis Miller, Kevin Nealon, David Spade, and Chris Farley.
That and the early years were considered the best eras.
After that, Will Ferrell joined, but... the overall talent dropped off. At least for later careers. Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and Norm Macdonald were some of the notables for the late 90s. Tina Fey joined after that.
@ColeFrost Thanks. I might start by googling around for top episodes and doing some research into select cast members. Pretty overwhelming stuff.
I could never watch all of it :D
@oranges
Every era is different and it ends up coming down to more strength of individual episodes, more than anything. I would look at the cast list from each season and plan it from there, unless you plan to watch it all. If you only want specific episodes, then you might be better off hitting Google for highest rated episodes.
In my opinion, it was extremely dumbed downed in every era. I never hated it, but I never loved it either. It did produce a lot of stars, though. Most of those people had some breakout moments on the show. If you plan to jump around, I would look the cast list over.
Any advice on where to start this?
I've never seen it before.