12.22.2008

"Saturday Night" resurgence?

We're not ready to claim that "Saturday Night Live" has returned to its glory days. Too often the show fails to hit on any cylinders whatsoever, such as the painfully lame Tim McGraw show back on November 22, an episode packed full of unfunny sketches and underdeveloped ideas. You see episodes like that and you wonder how much better "SNL" might be it weren't working under such an ambitious schedule. For example, what if it limited itself to 60 minutes every other week? Any regular viewer knows that the final half-hour of the show is a wasteland where bad sketches go to die.

But the recent presidential election showed us all how inspired and genius "SNL" can be when it really digs in, thanks mostly to the serendipitous emergence of an easy-to-mock vice presidential candidate who looked like Tina Fey. But the last couple of seasons have also seen the rise of memorably oddball performers like Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg. And Amy Poehler will be a hard cast member to replace.

But most of all, this newest "SNL" incarnation has given us the "SNL Digital Short" feature. They aren't all funny, but they're often unusual and odd in ways the rest of the show isn't. "Lazy Sunday" started it all back in 2005 and "Dick in a Box" in 2006 continued the trend.

But now we have a new champ:

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