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Taran Killam, Jay Pharoah, Jon Rudnitsky leaving SNL

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Cheebo

Banned
Won't happen, but the show could do with a ground up reboot.

Blasphemy I know.

Hell take a year off.

Cut the show down to an hour.

Retool the opening monologue.

Get rid of all of the current segments.

Redo the set to give it a fresh look.

Up the pay to make it a destination vs a spring board to better things.

Get rid of Lorne Michaels and Don King and bring in fresh younger blood.

You can't get rid of Lorn Michaels, he has a major ownership stake in the show now since he came back in the mid-80's.
 

Camwi

Member
SNL sucks compared to [the season/year it aired when you were 13].

That's a nice way of trying to shut down other's opinions. I thought the show was good to great for decades, and only stopped watching with the current cast, which is mostly awful. Plus the writing has been garbage, too.

Taran and Jay were two of the few talents left on the show.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
This show really needs to try to do what they did back in the early 80s with Martin Short and Billy Crystal. Take one year and pay a ton of money to top people for that season. See where it goes from there.
 

BlazinAm

Junior Member
Considering Cecily Strong out-Sudeikis-ed Killam last year, and they all but dropped Jebidiah Atkinson from Weekend Update early on, the writing was on the wall.

But having no impersonator of the President seems like an odd move. They must be signing someone to replace Pharoah.

Why? Obama is going to be out in a few months and the hot topic is Trump and Hilary right now.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
You can't get rid of Lorn Michaels, he has a major ownership stake in the show now since he came back in the mid-80's.

Ownership stake doesn't necessarily mean he's involved.

Plus he's 71. At some point he's either gonna retire and take a back seat role or else age will force him too like it will us all someday.

The bigger thing there is if Michaels passes who gets his ownership stake? His family?
 
Taran is awesome, this is a bummer! I love Jay's impressions, but I dont think he did much else, and Jon never did anything, so thats ok.

Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson, Beck Bennet, Kyle Mooney and Sasheer Zamata are all excellent. SNL is back to being great again. Oh and Colin and Micheal are awesome on the update.
 

cLOUDo

Member
is kinda funny that the first thing i remember from Killam is his episode in Community
he was so good in that
 

jstripes

Banned
It's an over simplification of a real looming SNL problem.

Every season or crew has had ups and downs. Good EPs and bad EPs. Ditto with the cast.

Even the ratings if you look at it over time have been fairly constant with a mattered range.

The problem isn't so much ratings as it is cultural relevancy and the idea that eventually at some point the shows original creator in Michaels has to step aside. Even if he doesn't want to time and age will dictate for him as it will us all (he's 71 currently).

The question begs what happens in the next 5-10 years? Will NBC create a gradual process for Michaels to step down? Will they try and groom a successor or bring in someone from the outside? Will NBC just ride it out and see what happens when it happens?

How will the show look when undoubtedly the person at the helm ends up being 10, 20, even 30 years younger than Michaels is now. How will that influence the show? Won't the new person at the top want to pick their own director and put their own personal stamp on the show?

How much leash will that person be given vs dictated by corporate suits at NBC that see SNL as a penned in sure thing for that time block on Saturday night for basically all eternity?
SNL is owned by NBC, but it's produced by Lorne Michaels' company, Broadway Video. I imagine that when Lorne finally steps aside he's going to hand-pick someone with extensive experience behind the scenes in the writer's room, fully steeped in the show's DNA. There's probably several people right now, current and former staff, who could pick it up and go.
 
SNL is owned by NBC, but it's produced by Lorne Michaels' company, Broadway Video. I imagine that when Lorne finally steps aside he's going to hand-pick someone with extensive experience behind the scenes in the writer's room, fully steeped in the show's DNA. There's probably several people right now, current and former staff, who could pick it up and go.

In my mind, Seth Meyers would be THE guy to take over Lorne's position. He has the right comic sensibilities, has served as a head writer and performer and is good friends with NBC and Lorne.
 

Goodstyle

Member
Taran is awesome, this is a bummer! I love Jay's impressions, but I dont think he did much else, and Jon never did anything, so thats ok.

Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson, Beck Bennet, Kyle Mooney and Sasheer Zamata are all excellent. SNL is back to being great again. Oh and Colin and Micheal are awesome on the update.

Your entire post comes off as insincere because of this alone. Sasheer has zero presence on the cast, I'm pretty sure most episodes last season didn't even use her. If she is excellent, we would have no way of knowing.
 
Well Chris Rock and Farley were on when I was 13 so yeah it does.

Not to mention Al Franken, Phil Hartman, and Mike Meyers...

Fuck yeah, that was my SNL too(late 80s-early 90s)!

Everytime they mention new(er, recent) SNL cast members, I have no idea who they are. I only know of Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones because Ghostbusters. I know Kenan(probably the only cast member I knew from the more recent times, and of course knew he from his child acting days like in Heavyweights and All That!). Other than that, I knew a few cast members here and there(Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen), but stopped watching around the time of Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan and Jimmy Fallon were brought on board.
 
SNL has always been hit or miss, but it hasn't been churning out comedy stars for a long time now. It desperately needs new blood.
 

EulaCapra

Member
What they should really do is fire those Weekend Update turds, Colin and Michael. Colin has been nothing but a preachy MSNBC correspondent wannabe and a transparent Bernie-or-Buster and Michael is so flat on his joke delivery with his lifeless eyes and tone.

Taran was the best go-to male performer for anything. And Jay was miles above half the castmates.
 

jstripes

Banned
In my mind, Seth Meyers would be THE guy to take over Lorne's position. He has the right comic sensibilities, has served as a head writer and performer and is good friends with NBC and Lorne.

He'd be a good pick.

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers are both also produced by Broadway Video. (They took over producing The Tonight Show when it moved back to NYC under Fallon.) They did 30 Rock and do Portlandia as well.
 

Sanjuro

Member
What they should really do is fire those Weekend Update turds, Colin and Michael. Colin has been nothing but a preachy MSNBC correspondent wannabe and a transparent Bernie-or-Buster and Michael is so flat on his joke delivery with his lifeless eyes and tone.

Taran was the best go-to male performer for anything. And Jay was miles above half the castmates.

As I mentioned in the other thread, Jay really didn't click with anyone in a improv sense. He was the impressions guy and not much substance beyond that.

I still love his Denzel though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqZGGqO6Eu0
 
It's beyond that. They still had 1 year on their contracts and they were cut short.

Well that's weird. Like I said, Killam seemed like their dude the past couple of years, and Pharoah's only real problem was he was underutilized. Rudnitsky makes more sense now though.
 

gabbo

Member
Taran Killam seemed fine, no idea why he got fired.

He was the go-to [white] male cast member from the moment he was a featured player. I'm rather shocked they're dropping him. Pharaoh less shocked by, because he was rarely used (sadly) for anything but impressions, but still Obama isn't out of office yet, and he's spot on. Guess they'll bring him back in 2020 when Kanye runs
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
He was the go-to [white] male cast member from the moment he was a featured player. I'm rather shocked they're dropping him. Pharaoh less shocked by, because he was rarely used (sadly) for anything but impressions, but still Obama isn't out of office yet, and he's spot on. Guess they'll bring him back in 2020 when Kanye runs

Killam is a real head scratcher for me. Like I said in the SNL OT, he is used for a lot of their sketches. Pharaoh has been on the backburner for awhile. I love his impersonations, but they weren't using him at all.

Not hating, but I'm surprised Pete Davidson survived this culling. Nothing against the guy but they only use him as the young guy. They could find someone in their mid to late 20s that would serve the same purpose and maybe bring more to the table.

Maybe the MadTV reboot will scoop someone (lol). I tried watching that last night and had to turn off the second episode because it was annoying me to the point of having a headache. MadTV was never really that clever with most of its sketches but now they just yell and go on forever.
 

NimbusD

Member
Not giving Taran a proper send off sucks. He was like the leading dude of the past few years, love him or hate him (though really, he was mostly great).

Pharo was awesome too. He really grew at the show so its hard not to like him, having watched him go from "why the hell is he here?" to an essential, but oft overlooked performer.

Other dude, well, that sucks. He seemed fine but also was a head scratcher as to why they even added him to an already bloated cast.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Crumbling? These people aren't a huge irreplaceable change. That last crumble was when we lost Wiig, Sandberg, Rudolph, Sudeikis, etc.

Some of these posts had me go back and check years and the casts.

I agree with this. And I was way past 13 lol.

When I was 13 Chris Rock wasn't on yet. And the stars were Dennis Miller, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman.
 

Xion385

Member
Taran Killam already won though:

cobie-smulders-300.jpg
 

Grinchy

Banned
Damn, not Taran. That sucks. Jay Pharoah was pretty bad and that other guy was just comedy poison. So I don't care about them leaving. But not Taran.

And yet Keenan stays around for another year.
I see a lot of people hating on Keenan but he's probably my favorite member. No one has as good of a stage presence as him.
 

Quick

Banned
Only a matter of time until Kate McKinnon bails out too. She and Leslie Jones seems to be the most prominent of the current group after Ghostbusters.
 

Downhome

Member
There has GOT to be something to this story. Why in the world would they let these guys go? Two of them are the two highlights on the entire show IMO. Hell, the ONLY stuff I've enjoyed on SNL over the last year or two is the work of those guys.

I absolutely do not get this at all.
 

hokahey

Member
They will both be missed. But such is the way the SNL cast churns. Nothing new. I look forward to every season no matter what, and have for the past 25 years. I hope it's for another 25.
 

mhayes86

Member
SNL sucks compared to [the season/year it aired when you were 13].

That could probably be said for a lot of things. I had to look up the cast for 1999. That was actually my final "era" of SNL considering I stopped watching after Ferrell left. The early-mid nineties SNL were my favorite.
 
Keenan knows this is it. He's not going to get a bunch of starring roles in movies if he leaves.

If he goes two more seasons, he will have the most seasons of SNL for a single person. Darrell Hammond (not counting his new role as announcer) went 14 seasons. This upcoming season is Keenan's 14th.
 
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