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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 5329280, member: 833"] There are a greater than normal number of firings of SNL cast members this offseason. Michael Longfellow, Emil Wakim and Devon Walker were fired, and Heidi Gardner departed. I like Longfellow a lot, and Wakim and Walker are solid. Gardner was ready to move on. The show is inexplicably keeping Jane Wickline, who is lame, laughs at her own jokes, and hams it up for the camera, which I find annoying. I didn't like it when Fallon did it, and I don't like it when anyone does it. The who goes and who stays from the cast is not the important story though. It has been reported that Lorne Michaels feels that the show had stopped being funny. I strongly disagree with that characterization. I thought the past two seasons were the freshest this show has had in a long time. It is a different kind of humor, which made it interesting. Tina Fey dominated the SNL writing and style for two decades, and even though she was not the Head Writer for most of that time, her imprint was on everything the show did. I think Tina Fey is hilarious, but the show started to feel recycled by the late 2010's. These last two seasons were the first time where the show didn't feel like a bunch of GenX writers trying to get the voice of GenZ. I was re-watching Saturday Night on Netflix yesterday, and it really brings home the problem with this show. In 1975, Saturday Night was a cosmic break from what TV comedy had been before, reflecting changes in our culture that were not yet reflected on TV, and setting the stage for hundreds of talented comedians and comic actors that would come after. Saturday Night (later Saturday Night Live) was a big middle finger to the prior generation's misogynist and racist humor, which was filled will silly puns, sight gags, and objectification of women. The leap from Johnny Carson, Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle to Chevy Chase and John Belushi was like the leap from no electricity to electricity. Lorne Michaels was able to lead this change, after stealing heavily from Doug Kenney at National Lampoon and Second City, because he was young and fresh and could articulate just how lame the prior generation's comedy was. He had a fresh take on comedy, and brought in people (mostly from National Lampoon and Second City) that could put that fresh take onto the small screen. Lorne Michaels is 80 now. He doesn't have any fresh takes left. I don't think an 80 year old, even one that has had as huge an impact on our culture as Lorne Michaels, should be deciding the future of a major comedy institution like SNL. It is time for a fresh take. [/QUOTE]

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