'SNL' hires two to replace Amy Poehler (One being Abby Elliot - daughter of Chris)...

[Dennis Donovan]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/14/snl.hires.ap/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- "Saturday Night Live" was left with some big shoes to fill when Amy Poehler departed for her new role of motherhood.

As a step in that direction, two fresh recruits, Abby Elliott and Michaela Watkins, will be joining the show this week as featured players, NBC announced Thursday.

Elliott comes to "SNL" via the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre -- the improv/sketch company co-founded by Poehler -- where she trained and performed in both New York and Los Angeles. She is a second-generation "SNL" cast member whose father, Chris Elliott, was a regular on the show during the 1994-95 season. (Her grandfather, Bob Elliott, was teamed for four decades with Ray Goulding in the comedy duo Bob & Ray.)

A native of Wilton, Conn., Elliott also trained with the Los Angeles-based Groundlings theater.

More at link...


Michela Watkins and Abbt Elliot

[aquart]

Abby Elliott has some pedigree.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

18. good thing she looks like her

mother!.:evilgrin:

Back in the day, i thought Get a Life was the funniest thing going.

[bullwinkle428]

20. DAMN! You beat me to the joke!

"Get A Life" totally rocked - I've got the very limited DVD snippets as part of my meager collection...too bad they never put together a full season edition.

[Coexist]

1. thats a shame, I was hoping the cast would get more diverse instead of less.

[petronius]

11. What are you talking about? One of those cute white women has really dark hair,

and the other cute white woman has more of an auburn shade of air. And the cute white woman who's being replaced has blonde hair. That seems like quite a lot of diversity, to me... ;)

[GreenPartyVoter]

17. Yeah, I wonder which one will play Michelle Obama.

[Romulox]

2. SNL is heading for another purge. The current cast is awful. nt

[Lumpsum]

3. Agreed.

SNL hasn't been good in almost a decade.

[taterguy]

4. Um, isn't it three decades?

Time flies

[amdezurik]

25. BINGO

It was about the time Billy Crystal was allowed to suck it dry of humor and/or edge

[Pab Sungenis]

5. Jane Curtin said in an interview "SNL was never as good as it was."

When they sent her the first season box set after it came out, she sat down with her daughter and actually watched the show for the first time. (Home recorders weren't everywhere when she was on the show, and she never watched it after she left.)

She said that she realized that the show just wasn't funny.

I also loved Harry Shearer's quote years ago. "There are two ways of doing something: the right way, and 'Saturday Night Live.'"

[Dennis Donovan]

6. I disagree. The current cast is pretty funny!

[Romulox]

14. Tina Fey is NOT a member of the current cast, FYI.

I'd love to hear what player/sketch you think is particularly praiseworthy among the current offerings. :shrug:

[SidDithers]

7. The Digital Shorts are some of the most creative comedy on TV...

and Poehler and Myers have been really good at Weekend Update. Still, many of the skits are not funny, and often just run on too long.

Sid

[Dennis Donovan]

8. Samberg's brilliant, isn'the?

[SidDithers]

10. Yeah, all The Lonely Island guys are...

Samberg's just the guy who gets the face time on camera :)

Cheers.

Sid

[Dennis Donovan]

12. Okay - I hadn't heard of The Lonely Island until now...

I just checked out a couple of their videos...:rofl:

Thanks for the tip, Sid!:hi:

[theboss]

13. Which is true of every skit since 1975

I started watching SNL with Eddie Murphy. And every year someone says "It's not as funny as it was five years ago."

I actually think the show has a good cast at the moment, though I am going to miss Poehler something fierce.

[Romulox]

15. I couldn't disagree more.

Set aside the issue of why a so-called "digital short" is even appearing on a TV broadcast, Samberg is a complete hack.

He will be a b-list "movie star" in 5 years time, nothing more.

Oh, and Amy Poehler is not on the show any more.

[ColbertWatcher]

19. Your observations are spot on.

SNL is supposed to be live TV--dare I say--almost theatrical.

"The Digital Shorts are some of the most creative comedy on TV" and "many of the skits are not funny" actually kinda explains it all.

The Digital Shorts are edited, the skits are performed live to the audience (if not to the West Coast). The writing can't seem to span the two genres. They need more playwrights and fewer wannabe screenwriters if they want to continue to call themselves "live". Of course this is only my humble opinion.

[SidDithers]

22. And I think you're bang on with your "theatrical" description...

I went to Second City on Monday night in Chicago, we couldn't help compare what we were seeing on stage with what we see on SNL. I laughed so hard for 2 hours that my sides hurt. The skits and improv were all served up in quick hits - some scenes were no more than 15 seconds long. If something didn't work, it was immediately pushed out by the next scene.

I think it's the setting that is more conducive to that kind of comedy. It's a minimalist stage, hardly any props, and no costume changes to speak of. With SNL, maybe some of the energy of the live performance gets lost, when the audience is pushed back, and there's crew and cameras everywhere, and elaborate sets and costumes.

Television sketch comedy can be good - I loved the Kids in the Hall - but SNL feels strange. Overproduced, maybe?

Cheers.

Sid

[ColbertWatcher]

27. I don't know if the skits can be improved with less production.

I think SNL started to fall apart during that one season when they couldn't even be bothered to name their characters. Instead they stupidly "referenced" them with nicknames like “Opera Man” and "Canteen Boy."

If you can't be bothered to name the characters, who's going to bother to watch.

What SNL needs is more people who can write dialogue, not people who seem to want to make art school films.

Also, the corporate interference with the sketches is blatantly obvious. Kristen Wiig plays a cashier at a giant Wal-Mart-like store, but instead of having the guts to hint at the object of their parody, they use the name of Wal-Mart's biggest competitor, Target. It's almost as if SNL accepted Wal-Mart money to poke fun at Target instead of being creative enough to come up with an original name like the way The Simpsons did with "Sprawl-Mart."

I guess in addition to getting dialogue-writers, they need writers will balls.

As far as the sets and set decorations go, there are union crews who can deal with that and a budget to pay for it all. They'd have an even bigger budget if their ratings didn't depend on fly-by-night "media sensations" like Palin.

SNL needs to stop trying to be cute and subservient to the wishes of their corporate masters and work on being funny and speak truth to power. They had the opportunity when the fascist GOP was in power, but failed, which is why Jon Stewart and Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A. are more popular.

[TexasObserver]

9. Sounds good. They have several good players and some not so good.

There's a dark haired girl in her second season who is terrible. I'm sure she's on the way out.

Fred Armisen, the guy who did Obama, is hideous. He's never been any good.

Sedakis, Wiig, Samburg, and Hader all do a nice job. They'll stick around a few years.

Seth Meyers is good, but he's head writer now.


SNL usually has about one third decent material, one third so-so, and one third bad.

[4lbs]

16. While the recent SNL political skits have been refreshing, I actually find myself watching MadTV on

FOX much more often than SNL. It's on at Saturday nights at 11:00pm here on the west coast. MadTV tends to be edgier and more outlandish with their comedy, which I like.

I'll record and/or download SNL to a blank DVD and watch it when I feel like it.

[rvablue]

21. I hate to be the one to tell you, but I read yesterday that FOX is canceling MadTV :(

[SidDithers]

24. That sucks...

MadTV has had some really funny bits over the years. Will Sasso as Kenny Roger doing Jackass made me giggle like a little girl :)

Sid

[4lbs]

26. Yeah, this might end up being it's last season on FOX. However, the creators are trying to revive

it on another channel, probably Comedy Central, since that cable channel already airs the reruns of it.

[flvegan]

23. Good, but they need to sack the writers or something.

The current cast is ok at best, but would be better if the writing wasn't so horrible. You could assemble the Hall of Fame of SNL and even they would suck delivering those lines.

Of course, by the looks of these two newcomers, watching SNL might be worthwhile even on mute...if you get my meaning.