15 Weeks of Gold - it’s amazing!

Normally we don’t touch Saturdays in the Late Night Pantheon, but that’s going to change right now. That’s right, we’ve been watching SNL and we have some thoughts about the show.

First of all, the cast is great. There’s a ton of funny people going. (Maybe too many?) But the show still stinks. Hmm, a group of people based in New York City, all super talented, but the end result is still awful? Sounds a lot like the New York Knicks*.

That’s right, SNL is just public bickering away from being a disastrous NBA team.

Much like the Knicks, while the problem is the team, the root of the problem is the guy that assembled them. Isiah Thomas created his team like a fantasy basketball draft. He got a bunch of guys who get stats, but he didn’t make a team. Look how well that’s going. Similarly, SNL is filled to the brim with funny, talented people. However, they’re not anything even remotely resembling a team.

The main problem is twofold: 1.) (almost) everyone is a potential star, but there’s no real breakout guy/gal to shine, and 2.) the role players are terrible. Darrell Hammond comes in to do impressions that sound identical to Darrell Hammond. Kenan plays a fat black lady/man who cusses, but every sketch is identical. Samberg is probably supposed to be that guy, but we saw Hot Rod. He’s not nearly charismatic or consistent enough to get it done. Yes, Hod Rod has funny things in it (the main plot is a great twist on the standard SNL movie plot), but that should never have gotten a wide release. It looks like 3 dudes who didn’t know how to make a movie made a movie by themselves.

Now, Sudeikis, Heder, Forte, Armisen, Poehler, and Wiig are all great, and should be off doing good movies, but none of them is a leader. There’s no Phil Hartman (or even a Will Ferrell) to shore up holes in any given sketch - it’s all just a few steps better than Mad TV, and that’s a sad qualifier indeed. Amy Poehler has the chops (go buy the first and second seasons of UCB if you don’t believe us) to be the star, but then she gets stuck doing Weekend Update (with Flashes of Quincy’s useless boyfriend/head writer [definitely an Isiah type]), and loses anything she had going. Phil Hartman never did WU, he was just the best part of every sketch. Pick a horse and ride it, SNL!

Seriously, you have 5 horses, you can’t ride them all cuz that clearly doesn’t work.

As for the role players, send Hammond to the pasture and pick up a new impressionist. Heder is a spot-on voice guy, but the sketches wherein he uses his talents are completely unfunny (We dare you to laugh at anything happening in that Travel Channel Daniel Plainview milkshake abortion past the first 45 seconds.) and generally painful to our souls even. Armisen, on the other hand, is a great physical impressionist, but he can’t do any voices AT ALL. We need a new guy. And we realize impressionists generally aren’t funny, but bring one in who is good, and then have funny people write for them (you have a ton of them). Problem solved.

We don’t know what to do about Kenan. He was great in Good Burger, but this show, this format doesn’t work for him at all. He’s not Tracy Morgan, but that seems to be the only type of sketch he gets on the air. Maybe pair him up with a different writer or something? At least, his Charles Barkley impression is 1000 times better than Frank Caliendo’s impression.

We couldn’t remember any of the other role players. That’s probably not a good sign.

Additionally, Casey Wilson has been really good for the past two weeks (Her chest acting is especially strong. Zing!), but there’s nobody that can do an Obama impression in the United States? Seriously? Also, it’s nice to know there hasn’t been a funny black woman since Ellen Cleghorne, right? And no, silly reader - Maya Rudolph does NOT count.

C’mon, Lorne! Stop hiring for the “funniest”, start hiring for needs and make the show great again. Also, bring back Will Forte’s Tim Calhoun, that was best thing on the since Norm Macdonald (the Michael Jordan of this analogy) was ripping on OJ.

We were also going to say a bunch about how Tim & Eric were the Spurs of the sketch world, but then we remembered this is about Late Night television and not someone’s stupid basketball blog.

Now on with the reruns!

Monday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Garth Brooks, Christina Ricci
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Kate Hudson, Jack Hanna
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Howie Mandel, Leigh Killian, Kate Nash
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Brooke Shields, Ming Tsai, Michelle Biloon
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Bobby Brown, Adam Levine, Maroon 5

STEPHAN: This is the Dave where Jack Hanna and his snake wrangler can’t get the poisonous cobra back into its house. Dave hides behind the set dressing! Jungle Jack swears on the air! It’s everything television is supposed to be. You do have to sit through Kate Hudson, but she talks about football, and more importantly, watching football with Kurt Russell (the American Dream), so it’s not really that bad.

Everyone set your recording devices. Michelle Biloon is great, and you get to see it. For once, f-Craiggers terrible booker gets it done.

ERECH: In case you missed it from 2 weeks back, Leno oogles Ricci as she tells an ODDBALL story about a monkey playing with her boob. There was a time when a story like that woulda made me all kinds of hot and bothered - that time, much like the time when Ricci made good movies (wait, when?), are long past.

I think Ferguson is the only guy this week not pushing reruns, although don’t quote me on that. Unfortunately, I either hate/don’t care about/don’t know his guests tonight. However, since the strike ended, and Conan has gone back to his schticky, hack Monica Lewinsky style monologues, I’ve found myself tuning into the Late Late Show for the first 10-15 minutes almost every night. Craiggers gets the bottom of the barrel for guests, but his sharp, unscripted, free-form monologue is kind of an amazing thing to watch, especially considering he’s doing it raw every single night. Take note Conze.

Tuesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Heidi Klum, James McAvoy, John Fogerty
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Colin Farrell, Blake Lively, Lenny Kravitz
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Pink, Lou Dobbs, Bettye Lavette
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Christina Ricci, Dee Dee Myers, Collective Soul
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Janet Jackson, Jackie Mason, Todd English

ERECH: More reruns tonight, so if you want to know what we think about these line-ups, hit the archives! Since Craiggers is again, the only one with anything new - I’ll say watch the first 15 minutes, skip Ricci, watch the Myers segment, and then double skip Collective Soul - ugh!

Just so all you kids feel like you’re getting your money’s worth from LNT (we’re a bargain!!) - I’ll instead fluff up my section by commenting on this previous weekends SNL, as hosted by Juno herself, Ellen Page. All I have to say after watching that episode is this; maybe Hollywood shoulda gave that Best Actress Oscar nom a little more thought than they did, yeah? Cute kid, seems nice enough - NOT A LOT OF RANGE. Every scene felt like OH LOOK, ELLEN PAGE IS READING CUE-CARDS AND IS TRYING TO BE FUNNY -awful. Don’t take my word for it though, assuming you’re not actually on the internet right now, NBC’ll rerun it again in 3 weeks for sure. And then 8 more times after that before the next season starts, so you’ll have your chance to catch it FOR SURE. Or, in the case of what I’d recommend, TO MISS IT!

STEPHAN: I also have nothing to say about Late Night television tonight, but I want to agree 100% about that SNL. I don’t know if she was just nervous (Maybe she never did plays and stuff growing up, and doesn’t know how to handle a live audience?), or if she is not really an actress, but she was terrible all around. Which doesn’t make any sense. She’s been good in everything I’ve seen her in previously. She was especially great on Trailer Park Boys and she was a little kid then. Also, everyone else on TPB is a terrible actor, so it’s not like she got saved by a great director or anything. They must not have plays in Canada.

Wednesday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Russell Crowe, Larry the Cable Guy, Willie Nelson
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Howard Stern, Ayo
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Chazz Palminteri, Erin Burnett, Louis XIV
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Dennis Hopper, Yunjin Kim, Nicole Atkins
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Anne Heche, Donny Osmond, Coheed & Cambria

STEPHAN: Yikes. I don’t want to talk about any of this, so I’m going to apologize for the intro. Isn’t it terrible when guys make tortured sports analogies about everything? Sorry about the introduction. I still think it’s a good point, even though the parts that I contributed were really both poorly composed and logically constructed. Additionally, I’d like to apologize to what’s-his-name, Mr. Fancy Head Writer. I think I might be a little jealous (me and the whole fan club).

ERECH: I have absolutely nothing to say about tonight’s schedules. I’m sure I’ll tune in to some of them, but it’ll be due to habit - not choice. Even if these weren’t reruns too, this’d be a rough night of watching. Stern on Letterman is always just pathetic, and while I’ve always got the impression Dave and Howard might actually be friendly off-camera, ON it just seems like Stern is selling and Dave ain’t buying - lots of OOH BOY and WHOA noises from Dave, as he pretends that Howard is even slightly interesting anymore.

Conze has a horrible strike show, but even for being a strike show it’s not that far off from a regular awful episode of Conan. BLAH.

Donny Osmond AND Anne Heche? Coupled with the guaranteed tired (and needs to be retired) Guillermo bits. Ugh Jimmy, the show needs some retooling - AND FAST!

Leno has a trifecta of some of my least-liked people on his show tonight, and I don’t understand why someone like Crowe, who is supposed to be such a “guy’s guy”, seems to actually like Jay - who is by all accounts a slimy little doof. DOOF I SAYS!

Finally, f-Craiggers comes with a new episode, and it’s just a bunch of people I care nothing for. Hopper? SNORE. Yunjin Kim, who seems to have no problems playing that pretty racist portrayed character on Lost, BOO! And whoever that last broad is, YAWN!

See, absolutely nothing to say - also in summation - PASS PASS PASS!

Thursday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Colin Farrell, Bill O’Reilly, Herbie Hancock
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Denzel Washington, Don Rickles
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Jeff Corwin, Colin Hanks, Matt Nathanson
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Wanda Sykes, Saffron Burrows, Grizzly Bear
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Roseanne Barr, Ax Men, Simple Plan

ERECH: If Jimmy tonight is a rerun, I missed it the first time around. I’ll rectify that tonight, because I’m a not-so-secret fan of Roseanne Barr - past present and future!

Wanda on Craiggers? That’ll be fun - watch it!

STEPHAN: Additionally, that Denzel likes Don Rickles so he stays for the whole show. Don Rickles is not only the man, in general, but tonight, he’s full of beans! I’d watch that one.

Friday:

• The Tonight Show With Jay Leno - Will Ferrell, Hayden Christensen, the Hives
• The Late Show with David Letterman - Tom Hanks, Gov. Mike Huckabee
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien - Dr. Phil McGraw, David Borgenicht, Les Savy Fav
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Amy Sedaris, Shanna Moakler, Blake Shelton
• Jimmy Kimmel Live - Will Arnett, Camilla Belle, All Time Low

STEPHAN: Lots of good parts tonight. Strong Letteman, but then a great A guest on f-Craiggers, and a great musical group on the Zone. Although, wasn’t that a strike show? Is Les Savy Fav supposed to be dead to me? My FOT membership card says “… That I will believe and support everything that Tom says or tells me to do, no matter how implausible or potentially dangerous to my physical or mental well-being.” Um, I might have some records to sell.

Will Arnett! He’s the poor man’s Norm McDonald, but that’s still really good.

ERECH: Amy Sedaris needs her own talkshow - the only reason I even think she should have one is because we suggested she should have one in a past LNT. And boy, were we ever right about that. Can you imagine how great and fun that’d be? It wouldn’t even have to be a full hour, just a 30 minute show, ala Carson Daly - only awesome and stuff. Some of you Hollywood types who read this column should make that happen - we’ll probably not even sue you for taking our idea either.

So that’s 15 weeks of LNT in the trunk. For legal reasons, we cannot officially say this is the best column about tv shows on the internet right now, but I think we all can admit that it really is. What, you think there’s something better? Well you’re mad, mad I say.

Seek help, weirdo’s - LNT wins!

BROWSE OUR LATE NIGHT THING ARCHIVES!

* Yes, in this analogy, Kristen Wiig is David Lee. Thanks for asking!