I read that the 'Republican parodies' (Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse cartoon) referred to in COMMENT #5 by 'dwacon' above may have gotten NBC into some hot water. Not politically but Legally.

NBC recently demanded that Youtube.com remove all instances of that PARTICULAR episode from their servers.

The Campbell Brothers cartoons had been 'pitched' to NBC Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Micheals several months before. Last week's TV Funhouse cartoon was basically a ripoff of the Campbell Bros work.

That can't be good.

A special appearance by Stephen on SNL would have made it the best episode ever. :-D

Just to toss in another two cents; Hugh Laurie was also in most of the Blackadder series with Rowan Atkinson. That show was where I was first introduced to Mr. Laurie and I've been a fan ever since.

This episode gives the false impression the show is back on track. The next new episode with Alec Baldwin will do the same. Both shows will reinforce the impression that this is a show that depends on a strong host to carry it, or to make it interesting to watch.

I live in the UK and decided to download this episode because I am a huge fan of both Hugh Laurie & Beck. I thought Beck was great and Hugh Laurie's monologue was OK whilst the song he did was not quite as good as when he did it over a decade ago. The rest of the sketches were quite frankly crap. I manage to catch 4 or 5 episodes of SNL a year and I've never seen one that I thought was genuinely good, how is this thing still on the air? The sketches are plain weak. I love US television but this is terrible.

Don't forget that Hugh Laurie was one of the main stars of the British version of Saturday Night Live, back in the 80s.

Don't forget that Fry & Laurie were also doing Wooster & Jeeves at the same time as "A Bit of Fry & Laurie."

Geniuses, the two of them.

This was easily the best SNL episode in the past two years. SNL always rides waves of quality and I think they may be on their way to something consistently good in the near future.

You didn't mention Laurie's incredible performances several of the Blackadder series (especially the fourth one, where he played an incredible boob in WWI).

Other than the Republican parodies, I thought the show was a snoozer... and I watched it the day-after on TIVO. An infrared fart joke that went on forever? Gag!

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dwacon
http://dwacon.blogspot.com