Last Updated on: 8th January 2016, 01:49 pm
All the recent talk around here about bad music and things not being what they used to be got me wondering about something. Does anybody in the world still watch Saturday Night Live? And if by chance any of you do, do you watch it more out of habit and hope that it will some day get good again or do you actually enjoy it for what it is today?
I know I hardly represent the entire world even though I should, but if my experience and those of the people I know or happen to wind up in conversations with mean anything, that show should be doing a 0.0 rating every single week. Ok, make that a 0.1 to account for everybody who tunes in, watches for a few minutes and then says “What the hell is this shit?” and tunes out for another 8 months.
I remember a time when, almost without fail no matter where you were or who you were with, you could count on that show to be the common thread that could tie people together. You might have nothing else to talk about, but if one person said “hey, did you see that thing on SNL last week?”, you were off and running, doing impressions and talking about your favourite moments. But for the better part of the last decade I haven’t had an SNL conversation that didn’t have the words fucking sucks or not funny or what the hell happened in it somewhere. But somehow the show keeps chugging along and I don’t know how. Maybe it’s got something to do with the whole tree falling in the woods thing or maybe NBC doesn’t want to kill it out of loyalty (which seems impossible in the TV business). But how it’s still around is kind of secondary. What I’m most curious about is who are the people watching it and how is the world hiding them so well?