SNL Season 40: A post-mortem

SNL Season 40: A post-mortem

After Brooks Wheelan, Noel Wells and John Milhiser were fired from Saturday Night Live last July, I wrote a particularly visceral piece blasting Lorne Michaels and company for only making cosmetic changes to the show's makeup instead of trying to fix SNL's deep-seated problems in the writing department. The 2013-2014 season was not very good; and was the first year where I was deliberately skipping episodes. Of course, my curiosity got the better of me after checking out the fan reaction on the SNL message boards (which, admittedly, are not the kindest to the cast and writers either), but there were very few shows that felt worth the time investment of watching live. Despite talk from producers that this year would reflect some lessons learned, the big issues with last year weren't resolved at all: the show's problems only seemed to entrench themselves further. 

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Fired Rookies, Designated Stars and the Troubling SNL Status Quo

Fired Rookies, Designated Stars and the Troubling SNL Status Quo

Brooks Wheelan, Noel Wells and John Milheiser have all been fired from Saturday Night Live last week.  That’s one half of the cohort of featured players brought in at the beginning of the 2013-14 season.  Despite trumpeting their collective SNL debut in the season premiere with two sketches devoted to the new hires, it felt like the show lost faith in them by the end of November...

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