Saturday Night Live

I can't believe how many of my friends have never watched Saturday Night Live. It's a classic American TV show! While I rarely (okay, never) actually watch the show live the night it airs, I have been watching re-runs and clips for a long time. My parents have "25 Years of SNL" on tape (VHS, oh yeah) that I watched growing up, and I remember the 1990's cast the best (Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Farley). I think it's a lot of fun to watch the older episodes and see how the show has evolved and how actors come and go in and out of stardom. For example, the most recent Justin Timberlake episode also featured Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase, men who were on the show in the 1970's; that opening bit isn't funny if you haven't watched the older shows!

Today, the show is pretty horrible (again, something you wouldn't know if you haven't seen how GREAT it used to be). In the older seasons, only the funny skits were recurring. Now, some of the worst ones make an appearance on almost every show (Stefon on Weekend Update and Kristen Wiig's terrible Dooneese, just to name a few). In general, I only think a skit or two of each episode is funny (thank goodness for Hulu: they have clips as well as full episodes so you can skip all the nonsense). However, I will say that the new Bruno Mars episode was very good, and JT never fails to please.

I don't watch the show often, but every once in a while I'll see a bit that literally makes me laugh out loud. It gets me every time!