Alec Baldwin Set a new record hosting the Season Premiere of Saturday Night Live. He's now the hosting record holder (16) by 1 over Steve Martin who stopped by to make sure everything was on the up & up and no performance enhancing drugs were being used.
The cold open was a parody of the Republican Debates. They tore Rick Perry to shreds and painted John Huntsman as The Manchurian Candidate.
Baldwin did not take his duties lightly. Besides playing Perry, he was a riot in several skits showcasing his wit and impeccable timing. He stole the show with his Tony Bennett impersonation on Weekend Update.
All in all I don't think you could have asked for much more from a season opener from SNL. Let's hope the rest of the season holds up as well as the debut.
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4 comments:
As a viewer from the show's inception with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, and who's watched it wax and wane throughout the years, I can still pretty much be counted on to watch the cold open, and try to hang on through Update.
Predictably, I'm not quite so much the Baldwin fan (count me in the Martin camp), but I don't deny his comedic talents, and I thoroughly agree that his Bennett spoof was very good.
I have been concerned, for several seasons now, that the show has become more of a visual Howard Stern show than I'm comfortable with. Some of that comes, I'm sure, from my changing tastes, as a parent, but my take on much of the sketch writing is that it's done by borderline illiterates with limited vocabularies, who'd not even be let in the same building as Conway, Korman, Reiner, Brooks, Neil Simon, and too many others to mention.
Not to suggest SNL should be, or ever was, highbrow, but the increasing reliance on the shock value of bleeped out words in sketches, and the utterly inane, has me on the edge of non-viewership (not that I'm still in their target demo).
Would love to see the modern equivalent of the uvula bit, some of the Buck Henry pieces, or Chase vs. Pryor.
You think Richard Pryor, John Belushi, Gilda Radner or Buck Henry wouldn't be throwing down some shock value Don?
C'mon now, get real. SNL has always been the edge of the envelope for network TV.
We've just become the older generation. All that wild & crazy stuff needs to be toned down.
Gimme a hit off that Geritol when you're done...
Spot on about being the 'older' generation now, but I still can't help but wonder it they haven't reached, or passed, the point of diminishing returns with the shock value type of content.
I guess of late I've become acutely aware of how dysfunctional our society has become (possibly has always been there and I was less cognizant), and how the lion's share of our entertainment culture seems to feed/enable that dysfunction. Can't help thinking we can aspire to better.
I know, I'm a buzzkill...
When I regularly wake up at 3:33AM, The Donald, I think the exact same kinds of things. And being the eternal optimist, I try to talk myself out of how deplorable we have all become. Yet, I doubt I vote or feel the same way you probably do about such things.
And to you, dear RPM, I actually thought I should at least buy some One-A-Day vitamins the next time I go to Wally World, a few nights ago when I woke up yet again at 3:33AM. But alas, I reminded myself they may not sell that crap anymore, (do they even make Geritol these days?) so I would just find myself standing there, confused, staring at all the choices I could make, and in the end, not choosing anything.
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