Monday, March 16, 2009

TAPED FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT: I wouldn't have posted anything if Sepinwall had put anything up, but the absence of any discussion of this last weekend's SNL is disconcerting. Not because it featured the most polarizing television personality in the history of filmed entertainment, Tracy Jordan Morgan. My guess is it's impossible to have a meaningful discussion of whether he is funny or not, and to save everybody the time, I will summarize the arguments. Pro: People who don't find him funny are humorless prigs! Con: Just watching him makes me stupider, as this very sentence demonstrates! This is an argument that cannot be won by either team, so please feel free to pretend it has already happened elsewhere and your side lost definitively.

Anyway, the thing I did want to mention was the opening. Has there ever been an SNL cold open that was that pre-taped? I realize they often roll tape in the middle of the monologue, especially with the run-here-run-there types of hybrid skit-monologues, but I can't remember them ever starting the show with a long taped sketch. It didn't go live until the very end, with a couple of lines from Fey and then the "live from New York ..." tag. Strange.

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