Weekend Update

Against my better judgment I watched the new t.v. season's second episode of Saturday Night Live this weekend, and I don't know that I've seen a worse SNL show. They took the tried and true SNL method of stretching scenes and replaying old jokes to a new horrific level.

Guest Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) flubbed his lines a number of times, grasping for words to fill his stumbling mouth, and "musical" guest Ashlee Simpson, while actually singing this time, had trouble staying on key and sounded like she was at a summer camp talent show. The Weekend Update segment was so bad, I'm not sure Horatio Sanz can read, and with what may be the most annoying recurring character since Chris Kattan's Mango (or, for that matter, any character he ever did more than once), Fred Armisan made me want to thrust sharpened sticks into my ears every time his Latin talkshow host said, "I'm just keeeeeeeding!"

Recognizing that the only funny member of the so-called-comedy troupe is Amy Poehler, Lorne Michaels decided to use her in almost every skit, thus expanding the SNL style of overkill to include cast member appearances.

SNL has heard the death knell sounded many times over the years and somehow survived with a sudden unexpected burst of hilarity, but it is hard to see anything funny coming from this current crop of comedic actors. Perhaps the problem is not with the actors, but with the writers failing to write anything funny. Or maybe the problem lies with Lorne Michaels. It could be that he needs another hiatus from running the show so that some fresh minds can instill modern comedic thought into its animated corpse, which staggers on only because it forgot to die.

And I'm not keeeeeeeeeding.