You know it, and I know it: “Saturday Night Live” is dead, for all intents & purposes. The reasons range from “Belushi died” to “Carvey left” to “Norm McDonald got fired,” but I think that it occurred roughly when Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey were hired.
I’ve gamely tried about a dozen times during the last three or four years to sit through an episode and find something - anything - that caused me to laugh. Chuckle, even, or giggle. Nope. Nothing. The show has now reached the stage of actually causing pain. It’s not just the writing - that stuff falls flat, as witnessed by last weekend’s “O’Reilly Factor” spoof. It was just not funny. Taking an element of truth and insight, and then exaggerating it, well…that might get some laughs. The words issuing out of “O’Reilly’s” mouth were nothing even close to what he might say; sure, some of the mannerisms the actor employed were semi-accurate, but nothing that he said sounded remotely like what O’Reilly would say.

No, besides the writing, it’s the quality of the actors, and I use the term loosely. Tina Fey, and the shaggy-haired guy that made some stupid video that got uploaded on the internet, and Amy Poehler…these people aren’t actors. Maybe they are writers, maybe even comedians, but SNL is supposed to contain acting, despite the original “Not Ready For Prime Time” moniker. I mean, even when he was coked up, John Belushi could keep a straight face and actually ACT. And Lovitz, and Dunn, and Hartman, absolutely they could act. Hell, even Spade is capable of acting. Not the current crop, though…they muff lines, giggle during skits, and generally make a mess of everything. And I know it’s a cliche to say that SNL sucks, but boy, it really, really does now, and I don’t think that SNL will ever re-capture what made it hip and funny. The show has aimed too low, culturally and demographically, and will never recover.

BUT…there is one shining exception to the above: the “TV Funhouse” bits. Yes, the “Ace & Gary” stuff was overdone after about the second installment, but Smigel is amazing and is able to create side-splitting humor like SNL used to do. If you ever caught one of the 8 full-length episodes of “TV Funhouse” on Comedy Central a few years ago, you probably know what I mean. So hearing that April 29th will be an SNL episode devoted solely to “The Best of ‘TV Funhouse’” was a breath of fresh air. If NBC has any common sense, they’d scrap SNL and just give Smigel a blank check for that time slot.