snl

2025-05-24

There's a style of alternate reality story where everything is normal, bar one deviation that could be summed up in a sentence (the Beatles never existed, the Axis powers won, Coke is green, the president is a ceremonial position held by a dog). This is how I feel about SNL. Our world is entirely normal, except somehow one of the longest-running and consistently most popular shows on TV is incredibly drawn out, terrible, terrible sketch comedy. Even the supposed "good" bits are one mildly clever joke, stretched painfully to fill 7 minutes. Most don't even clear that bar.

It's not just popular, either. Somehow this high-school-theatre-esque exercise is a cultural fixture everyone's expected to understand reference to. And, like, a third of the celebrities currently in the public eye started out as cast members. It's grotesque.