Saturday Night Live: Jonah Hill/Mariah Carey - VIDEOS

SNL suffers from complacency more than anything. No matter how talented you might think Lorne Micheals is, he is the one letting lame skits get on the show - ALOT of them. When you have top notch talent that will stop by for a cameo (Steve Martin obviously, but others too), you gotta bring something more to the plate than what has been dished up. Stop taking the easy way out when writing, maybe seclude your writing staff for the week so they don't get "inspired" by current topics. Sure, making fun of stuff in the news can be really funny, but since Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, Ferguson, Stewart, and Colbert do that on a daily basis, and do it much better, move on.... Also, stop recycling old skits unless you have a new approach that is INCREDIBLY funny, not just a same-lame but different-guest-host-this-week approach. This week's Target skit was a good example, nothing new - except for Kristin Wiig's total lack of inspiration, reading every word off the telepromter. Take a lesson from the better skit show on Saturday night, MadTV, which has recurring characters written into different situations, the worst of which are still funnier that most that SNL comes up with.
As for the idea of shortening it, I doubt that would fix the problem of lame sketches. When there are shows that have better skits written on a daily basis, it's hard to blame anything else but effort. If the current SNL staff can't put out a good product, then clean house. If Lorne is keeping good talent away for whatever reason, give him his papers and put someone in charge like Wayne Brady (I'm sure he does a great Obama). Besides, NBC wouldn't want to lose the revenue of an extra half-hour of commercial. Despite the quality of the show, they make good money from selling ads, and the corporations still shell out big money.

Whatever happened to The A**holes skits? Those were great.

Sucked!

No one could find bigger ears for Spitzer?

McGruber is the same joke over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. I though for a second after Jonah Hill tried to stop the bomb he'd actually stop the bomb from exploding but that would have been to clever!

Why do they bother doing a Brian Williams when Will Forte neither sounds nor looks like him. Daryl Hammond should have just done all the characters.

Daryl Hammond needs his own show.

Do you know how bad SNL has been for years? To the point where it turns out cast memeber are actually funny once they leave. I sat next to Tracy Morgan at the movies. Turns out he's kind of funny.

Very odd to see the wide chasm of opinion here. That said, i thought it was the most unfunny episode this season. Only difference between this and the Ellen Page episode was that I laughed mildly for Page, even though most jokes missed the mark. This episode didn't event remotely seem funny. I sat stoned faced for the first hour. I wonder if its like the WWF episode from years ago -- if you arent into "Superbad" et al, change the channel, nothing funny to see here.

I thought this was the best post-strike "SNL" ep by FAR. Even the "bad" sketches, like the Target Lady, weren't half bad. And the digital short was apparently inspired by a REAL dream Jonah had and told the Lonely Island dudes about. If that's true, it makes it even more hilarious!

By the way, the 6-year-old kid sketch was the highlight of the night, and honestly the best work I've seen of Jonah's (and I've seen most of his movie appearances).

I'm wondering why we haven't seen the Two A-Holes lately. Have they appeared at all this season?

Wow...I actually thought this was pretty much the worst SNL episode I've ever seen. I've been a little disappointed with the new episodes so far, but I'm expecting April 5's show to be very good...

I laughed so hard I cried because of Jonah Hill. Man how he cracked up in the last bit. Of course the show had its lows but there was at least one laugh in every sketch - still some stuff was too drawn out, the show is not fast paced enough but that is all you can criticize I think. But it has always been like this and I don't really see the problem there.

Man Mariah Carey has gotten thin again. She's so smoking hot I didn't manage to forward through her songs because of the performance (which I always find tacky in her videos except the one with Jerry O'Connell) and the songs themselves... I'm a guy and I always hate myself for not skipping them because they are so girlish.

Anyway - best episode since the strike - totally agree on that.

Annie you really seem to have your panties in a twist. I don't want to call you names but the show really isn't bad at the moment. It could be worse. Watch just one episode of Mad TV Season One and you'll know what I mean. Rented that last week - horrible stuff.

I thought the episode over all was pretty good. Weekend update was funny, the sketches were good, and Mariah Carey was solid.

Annie, you mentioned the "old guy" in the digital short. That's James Downey, one of the writers for SNL. He was the banker at "First Citywide Change Bank", an old sketch on SNL. He's not just an old guy...
He does a lot of the political writing for the show and used to write WU.

Grading the four episodes since the strike ended, I'd give: Tina Fey, A; Jonah Hill, B; Amy Adams, C; Ellen Page, F.

I'm not a fan of Darrell Hammond, but his John McCain was dead perfect. And I laughed harder at Tracy's "bitch" line than anything since the cowbell sketch.

Solid episode all around.