Noting trends about Saturday Night Live

I am a pretty devoted follower of Saturday Night Live, so of course, I have been very disappointed about the quality this season. I'm normally the last to be a SNL naysayer - I don't think the show fell of as much in the various eras as is always claimed, with the exception of a small period segueing from Will Ferrell to this newer cast.

Therefore, the complete fall of the cliff in terms of quality this year has been puzzling to me. To compensate, I'm going to note some other things form my years of watching:

- Phil Hartman was the best cast member ever. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He does have a Best Of DVD, but it feels incomplete as compared to Ferrell, who somehow got two DVDs. I think Hartman's death, and the fact that he wasn't really ever in much besides SNL and Newsradio, limits people's recollection of how great he was.

For example, Darrell Hammond is a pretty good cast member, and does a ton of impressions... and he does like half as many as Hartman did, and Hartman's were generally better. While Hammond does a better Clinton, it's basically just a refinement of Hartman's, and Hartman did some other classic celebrity impressions like Frank Sinatra, Admiral Stockdale, Telly Savalas, Johnny Cash and Ronald Reagan.

However, Hartman also deserves credit for being more than an impression guy. Some of his original characters and voices, whether they be Simpsons characters Lionel Hutz and the monorail salesman or SNL creations like the Anal-Retentive Chef and the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (not Johnny Damon). A lot of cast members have one skill but not the other, whereas Hartman could handle both.

Speaking of impressionists...

- Saturday Night Live is the one solid outlet for funny people who do comedy but aren't stand-ups. There are sitcoms, but because they rely on set characters and somewhat-set situations, there isn't as much room for off-the-wall creations. I think It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia is the best comedy on television right now, but I'd argue it has more in common with classic SNL and Monty Python than a traditional sitcom.

Meanwhile, SNL and to a lesser extent Mad TV require a steady flow of weird characters and political commentary to flourish, which means there is always a need to have a diverse cast of people with actual acting chops, people with an improv background and people who are traditional stand-ups. In a good year of SNL, all three groups have standout sketches.

Getting into this a bit...

- Hosting Saturday Night Live is a good test for whether a personality has staying power or not. The guys who have hosted the show the most - Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin and Christopher Walken - are all unquestionably talented and great. And all four have been successful in a variety of roles in their career.

I think either Bill Simmons or Adam Carolla made the point that SNL really does show you whether or not someone has some chops. For example, Paris Hilton was god awful, and Lindsay Lohan was great pre-cocaine and awful post-cocaine. I finally came around a bit on Justin Timberlake's talents after his hosting stints - The dude is seriously funny, and because of that, I think he sticks around for the next 20 years somehow.

This also applies to musical guests. Kanye West is unquestionably a jerk, but all of his performances on SNL have been incredible. The same thing goes with The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Beastie Boys and Elvis Costello. And a final, maybe-controversial point...

- Black performers aren't used to their full talents. I'm excluding Garrett Morris from this discussion, because he was deep, deep into drugs according to most SNL accounts of those years.

Get past him though, and you have Eddie Murphy, who while great on SNL, is now known more for his movies and stand-up. Chris Rock didn't do much on the show, and neither did Damon Wayans.

Tracy Morgan's Best Of DVD has a lot of standout skits, half of which I don't remember because they clearly were on in the last half of the show, after Weekend Update, when the audience falls off dramatically. He is better on 30 Rock, what little I've seen of it, and he's much better as a guest on various late night talk shows and radio spots.

In this year's cast, I feel like Kenan Thompson isn't used to the best of his abilities. He was more amusing on a recent episode of Psych, co-guest starring with Urkel, than in most of his SNL skits. He is also their only black cast member, which means you have weird things like Fred Armisen playing Obama.

I'm not sure why this quirk exists. Back in the day, SNL was accused of having a sort of Harvard's boys club of white writers, so maybe it still persists to this day. They have shown themselves to be able to rise to the occasion at times though, such as in Chris Rock's Nat X show, but the effort isn't consistent at all. I feel like a lot of comedy is being missed out on because black performers aren't being used to the extent of their talents.

The Blue Oyster Cult picture comes from here. Astronaut Jones comes from here. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer is from here. Wayne's World photo is from here.