How Saturday Night Live Can Recover from a Bad Season

In its long history, SNL has had a boom/bust cycle. The first cast blew the world away with their new breed of comedy. When they quit, the show seemed on the verge of death itself, suffering through the painful sixth season, in which most of the cast would end up only lasting one season. Producer Dick Ebersol rescued the show and in the process created stars out of Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo and returned the show to its past glories, starting a long series of creative surges and lulls in the show.

Although SNL has received much publicity recently for its Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama sketches, the episodes since the writers strike have been terrible. A combination of poorly conceived and written sketches, tepid performances, and lackluster hosts has led to a huge creative downturn since even last year. So how can SNL recover?

OVERHAUL WEEKEND UPDATE

Seth Meyers and Amy Pohler may be the worst hosts of Weekend Update since its inception. Unlike Chevy Chase, Dennis Miller, Norm MacDonald, and even Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, neither one of them has the attitude or personality to sell what they're reading. When you couple that with lame jokes, the segment falls flat week after week. While it may be hard to top "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report", Weekend Update doesn't even seem to be trying. It's time to shift the segment back to a single cast member who focuses only on WU, hire some writers who can do some stinging material, and make the segment something worth watching.

DO A PARODY OR TWO

For some reason, SNL seems to not want to do parodies of successful movies and shows. A show like "Mad TV" has created dozens of funny sketches out of current hit shows and movies. The best SNL seems to do is a parody of MacGyver, a show that ended its run years ago. Parody would offer the show ideas that would be instantly identifiable to the audience and provide ample opportunities for humor. It would also, in most cases, give them at least one guaranteed sketch for each guest host. Surely the writers could have made something funny out of an Enchanted parody for Amy Adams or a Juno parody for Ellen Page.

LESS LIVE, MORE FUNNY

Saturday Night Live has gained next to nothing in its long run from being live. With the exception of a few cast breakups and a few moments that escaped the censors, the only thing the live aspect has done to the show is make the show seem flat. It doesn't seem coincidental that some of the more consistently funny elements of the show, the Digital Short and TV Funhouse, are shot in advance, and have the benefit of being fleshed out fully and edited. During the Dick Ebersol reign, Saturday Night Live didn't have issues with using taped and filmed segments. If they get a laugh, why not return to that?

FUNNY GUEST HOST = FUNNY SHOW

It's not clear whether an Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, or Steve Martin makes the cast and writers bring their A game, or if hosts like these three simply make the show funnier by their presence. While the show occasionally succeeds with fresh faces off of new movies, typically it fares better with established talent who has a flair for comedy.

DIVERSITY

Need proof that the cast isn't very diverse? Witness the fact that Barack Obama is being played by Fred Armisen in blackface. Lorne Michaels seems to have a blind spot when it comes to finding versatile talent that isn't white, with the notable exception of Mya Rudolph.

CLEAN HOUSE IN THE CAST AGAIN

SNL hasn't produced much in the way of breakout stars in several years. The cast these days seems a bit TOO comfortable with each other and working as a team. Darrell Hammond, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, Fred Armisen, Will Forte and Kenan Thompson have all got 4 or more years under their belt. Although each plays an important role now, perhaps it is time to get rid of the old blood and bring in some new talent.,

CUT THE SHOW DOWN TO AN HOUR (OR FIND OTHER WAYS OF FILLING AN HOUR AND A HALF)

SNL is the only weekly show on the networks that is an hour and a half long. Writing new material each week has to be difficult. If the writers could focus on making a smaller amount of material better, and fill the remaining time with another song from the music act, or perhaps a short film, Saturday Night Live would benefit tremendously.

HIRE NEW WRITERS

Over 20 writers were responsible for last week's snoozefest. With the exception of the Digital Shorts and beating the Obama/Clinton sketches to death, not much memorable has been produced since the Writer's Strike. If the old blood can't produce, perhaps it is time to shake it up.