Sinking further into irrelevance…

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 4th, 2004

In a Reuters article about Saturday Night Live,

The always fierce competition among comics to land a gig on NBC’s Saturday Night Live is set to become the basis of a reality series for the network.

As Pat Cooper would say, “It’s over!”

Has SNL appealed to anyone but children since ’77 or so? This is the final nail in the coffin of a comedy show that was ever so briefly fresh. The recent flap over Ashlee Simpson’s lip-synching controversy was the second-to-last nail in that coffin. Sure, Simpson handled the whole thing poorly, of that there is no doubt– blaming it on her band, on acid reflux, on the lunar eclipse– but in her defense, she just turned 20 years old 30 days ago. Not one of the stories on the whole fiasco even bothered to mention that somebody– a highly paid professional– in the control booth screwed the pooch big time! Not only has SNL escaped any blame for the goofup, they came back the following week and mocked her on national television! Talk about chutzpah!

What is going on over there? If somebody was unhappy with Simpson’s appearance they could have easily quit the show. But exposing someone as a lip-syncher, on national television, is cowardly. Even if someone had a problem with Simpson guesting, that’s bogus– SNL’s musical guests have largely been embarassing for the past decade or two– Color Me Badd need we say more?

Then Lorne Michaels said that they had no idea that she was going to lip-synch and that the show would have never agreed to it. Huh? Michaels is lying to the press in order to discredit a 20-year-old girl that he invited to appear on his show!

When it comes out that 60 Minutes was trailing Simpson for a feature, it begins to appear that one thing happened: Simpson was set up. Pathetic.

Remember when SNL usta have standup comics on as guests? Kinison! Billy Crystal! Joel Hodgson! Steve Martin! Anyone care to guess who hosted the very first SNL? None other than George Carlin (October 11, 1975). And, on that very same show, none other than Andy Kaufman appeared and… lip-synched to the theme from Mighty Mouse.

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