SNL Does Something Funny

I know, it's absolutely shocking. Saturday Night Live has been a comedy wasteland for about the last 10 years. It is now almost completely irrelevant as skits only cover celebrity gossip or beat a recurring character to death. I felt the show hit an all time low when stand-up Dane Cook hosted last week. I knew it was going to most likely be the loudest 90 minutes in television history but I wanted to watch seeing as a comedian, especially one who is relatively unknown by the mainstream (although wildly popular with almost everyone in college), actually got the chance to host. It was dismal from the start. Dane did a stand-up routine that was his normal shtick, say things loud and use a lot of wacky body movements, which he wrapped up with a story on how he shot a cashew off his erection and into his mouth. Groundbreaking stuff. I used to find Dane pretty funny until I realized he's devoid of punchlines and never leaves safe, easy material. The show had a lot of one joke, dead end sketches which I lost interest in immediately. A pretty big waste.

However I have now seen signs of life in SNL once again. Yesterday Jack Black hosted where he was promoting King Kong. I've always been a fan and decided to watch his openning in which he had an original song about his movie that was funny but expected from half of Tenacious D. Nothing amazing, so with that I had remote in hand. When suddenly I saw something I hadn't witnessed at that hour on that channel for quite some time. Hilarious comedy.

Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, who is a new cast member and most notably as one of the trio from The Lonely Island, had a digital short film titled 'Lazy Sunday'. It features Andy and Chris setting up plans to see the Chronicles of Narnia set to a hardcore rap song. I've now read that the decision to run the short wasn't made until about a half hour prior to the shows' airing but even Lorne Michaels, who has apparently grown numb to funny, allowed it to play. And it was the best desicision he could have made. Hopefully now he'll trust Jorma and Akiva, who write for the show, and Andy who acts, to create more brilliant work like you can see at TheLonelyIsland.com, which features there pilot for Awesometown and other shorts.











And if you want to see the video you can check it out here.

With the wide spread attention the video has gotten on the internet it will earn the Dudes a little more trust when management is deciding what sketches to use. And maybe, just maybe, quality comedy can return to SNL consistently once again.