DowntonStabby

Word. I'm also from St. Louis, and while I haven't been a part of the protests, a few of my friends have (off and on), and while I don't know the leaders personally myself, at least one of them is a friend of a friend of mine (who, among other relevant accounts, I've been following on Twitter), so I can verify this. (In short? Suck it, Oprah.) As for the hashtag thing...I didn't tune into the episode until the James Brown sketch, so I can't really offer up an opinion on the hashtag stuff. As for the mayonnaise store...I think there actually is one in Brooklyn. Wyatt Cenac mentioned one in his latest standup special, entitled Brooklyn (which talks about the Brooklyn he grew up with, as well as modern-day Brooklyn--hence the title, lol), which I highly recommend watching. I liked the Sia performances. First of all, unlike some past guests, she seemed to be doing her own thing, and could actually, you know, sing (which is a sad bar, I know, but yeah...). Second, I feel like SNL could use more weirdness from its musical guests--not the Lady Gaga humped (or was it being humped?) by R. Kelly brand of weirdness, but the sort of weird, you truly don't know what will happen next (and not in a clickbait manner) sort of weirdness. Obviously, I don't expect (nor even want!) this every week, otherwise you and I would watch stuff like this and be like, "Seen it!", then move on. But to give you an example of some of the weirdness SNL used to air from its musical guests, I give you--who else?--Mr. David Bowie. (Video in link NSFW.) Update continues to be two different WUs within one, though at least Che seemed not to have as much a problem with the cue cards this week. Meanwhile, Jost is nearly a year into his run in the Update desk, and he still doesn't seem to have a personal take on it, other than "Let Me Imitate The Other White Guy At The Desk I Replaced." That's not to say I didn't laugh at a couple things he said, but the problem is, I can't tell you what they were! Whereas Che--while I truly have a problem with his misogynistic comments--I thought his bit about how Al Sharpton's Diversity Task Force would make a great Saturday morning cartoon (combined with the accompanied animated caption) was hilarious (though, again, doesn't mean I still don't find other things he says misogynistic). People bash Colin Quinn, but at least he had a fleshed-out point of view. Other than the one comment Colin Jost made about Staten Island in the wake of the Eric Garner verdict, I really don't have a handle on him.

What if Mike Huckabee--who ended his Fox News show, heavily hinting at another run--runs again? My mind is drawing a blank, which I suppose is just as well.

About people liking the cast they watched in junior high...I was 13 when the ill-fated 1994-95 season aired, and even then, I could see it was a piece of crap, and stopped watching it after a few episodes or so. (The season before that was probably helped by Phil Hartman's final season, in retrospect, though I may be missing one or two. That man, as has been noted by myself and others, sure had a way of saving many an otherwise crap sketch.) I much preferred the few seasons before (I started watching way too young) and the seasons that aired during my college years (early '00s)--though there were a number of sketches during the late '90s that were wonderful, too--Celebrity Jeopardy, Ana Gasteyer's Martha Stewart, The View sketches, The Culps (only because I was in choir back then, and it just nailed the music teacher type)...so, while I get what they're saying, it did not apply to me. Also, if you're going to go into show business, while you don't have to adjust your act to every commenter's whim, per se, you have to have a thick enough skin to not be shocked that people are at least going to say, you know, something.

Or perhaps both of them have other projects going on at the same time (at least Kate does--I think someone else mentioned that elsewhere?), and that may contribute to less screen time. In Taran's case, he's most likely bi-coastal (because of Cobie Smulders, I would imagine), so maybe that's also a factor. Just a hunch.

Caught the beginning of an episode of The Partridge Family on one of the digital over-the-air channels (either Antenna TV or Me-TV) yesterday. I remember when it was on Nick at Nite in the '90s (wasn't around during The Partridge Family's early '70s run, so I didn't watch it until it reran on Nick at Nite), and it had the original theme ("C'mom Get Happy"). This episode had a soundalike theme, but it wasn't quite the same. I haven't found that to be the case for other themes on either network that I've heard (even the freakin' WKRP theme--and that show's music within the episodes, as noted above, was too expensive to put into a lot of the reruns). Is that theme that expensive?

That was also back during the times when "It's a Wonderful Life" aired around the clock from the day after Thanksgiving onward--on TBS, WGN, and your local, then-still-independent stations--up until NBC bought exclusive broadcast rights to the movie roughly 20 years ago. TBS was so notorious for the colorization practice, it was known as "Turnerization" (though it's certainly not the only place I saw the colorized print).

I like seeing the old cable boxes and HBO guide (just clicked on this thread & read from the beginning). I'm a youngin' in comparison to you all (33 here), and my parents got cable around '83 or '84, I want to say. Our first cable box that I can remember had this round dial that you had to turn (like on an older model color TV) to get from channel to channel. When we got a new setup at the second house we moved to (after a year and a half without cable, for some reason), the remote was attached to the cable box. I am probably one of the youngest people to remember seeing a TV signoff in real time, when Channel 2 in St. Louis (back then an ABC affiliate; it and Channel 30, which started out life as an independent station, but became a FOX affiliate, flip-flopped network affiliations in the summer of '95), & that had to be the mid-to-late '80s. I want to say it was the early '90s before station signoffs completely went away (aside from the ones stations did to mark their analog signals signing off for good), but I could be wrong. Despite having cable for virtually all my growing up, going to college, moving back home, then leaving home again (mainly because it was including in my rent), when my husband (who was then-my boyfriend of s year or so) decided to move in together, we decided to forgo cable and just stream Netflix. Then I got an HD antenna (because apparently HD antennas work differently from analog TVs in terms of picking up channels--I am educated enough to figure shit out, yet not enough to realize that off the bat. Awesome!), and later, I got a Roku box from my brother and his boyfriend (was streaming from my Wii console before), got a Hulu Plus subscription (plus enjoying other free stuff on the Roku), and...yeah. The husband & I are not missing cable one bit (he previously lived in a place w/free DirecTV himself). Word to those singing the praises of Green Acres. Came across an episode recently of that show concerning computer dating. Looked it up on IMDB--it was from 1967!

These parts of the last paragraph stuck out: Is it just me, or does that sound like something Jack Donaghy might use as a selling point for something on that universe's NBC lineup on "30 Rock"? It sounded unreal, at least to me. This, however, piqued my interest:

So they're "reaching out to women" only after announcing a plethora of dudes? This, after Aisha Tyler was a fill-in host between Kilborn & Ferguson ten years ago? I'm sure she'd (or, say, Julie Klausner, or Amy Poehler, or many others) be funnier than fucking John Mayer.

Ah, yes, The Day After. I was too young to watch it (like, 2!) when it initially aired, but I caught it many years later on cable (can't remember which channel--perhaps the History Channel?), and holy fuck! Disturbing as hell! Also, that Six Feet Under episode in which David is driving the van at gunpoint throughout the episode and, at some point while this was going on, forced to smoke crack cocaine. And piled on top of why I found this disturbing was feeling the character's mental anguish through my TV.

But I thought I'd read from Bill Harder that he & John Mulaney had already had a Stefon movie pitched to them, & they said no (after discussing it, of course)? The whole Stefon-as-son-of-Drunk-Uncle-&-Aunt-Linda in that article confuses me. (Also, as much as I dig Bobby Moynihan's Drunk Uncle as a Weekend Update character, that sort of person as a main character in a movie, at least without some other character or characters to complement them? Oof.)

So apparently, this wasn't the first time Michael Che had foot-in-mouth disease on that particular topic--tjust the first time he got caught publicly (most likely due to his star having risen because of Weekend Update).

My bad! This is only his 4th.

Also, The 5 Timers' Club Sketch, I believe!

Agreed on Parnell being underrated. He had a versatility on SNL that Aykroyd, Hartman, Hooks, and, even more recently, Bill Hader also had on the show. More recently, on Suburgatory, he played off one-time SNL castmate (also Groundlings) Ana Gasteyer excellently, I thought.