The first season of The State is now on iTunes. Though much of its alumni have gone on to do incredible work in splinter groups including Reno 911 and Stella, the original sketches which featured the whole troop have been primarily unavailable, save for a 1995 VHS release entitled Skits and Stickers, which has a few sketches from the entirety of episodes, a far cry from our completist DVD releases today. Skits and Stickers is somewhat of a rarity now. Although eight people are trying to sell it from between $48 of $135 on Amazon, there’s four copies for sale on eBay under $10. I picked up a copy when it was originally released and the sketch involving a softened language version of the play Tenement is still one of my favorite bits ever.
There’s hope that strong sales on iTunes will lead to a full DVD release. To help promote the availability on iTunes, the State produced the following dark, dark non-promo-like promo for the release.
The interesting thing about the article to me was a mention that earlier this year Lorne Michaels said he decided to make the number of cuts to preserve SNL’s traditional output of 20 shows a season. First: would NBC say, “here’s a budget, give us how many episodes you can make out of it?” Wouldn’t they want their standard 20 no matter what - after all they got advertising commitments (plus two primetime shows based on SNL)? Isn’t doing 20 episodes with cuts vs. doing less with none a false choice? But if is a real choice, considering the endurance march writing for SNL is, does anybody think Michaels would have been better off going with, say, 13 episodes and keeping these folks?
There’s been a little discussion that it was insensitive to start the Emmys with a plane crash bit, considering the Comair crash that had occurred only hours before. I can see why they didn’t cut it - the crash is really incidental to the rest of the sketch but necessary to set up the Lost bit. (I’m sure that there was no time to shoot another bit at the same production value probably factored in as well.) It’s obvious their intentions are to parody Lost not attack a recent tragedy. I don’t think they had to cut it for that reason alone. Intentions trump an uncomfortable setup.
But perhaps the setup wasn’t necessary - could the skit have worked just as well if it began with Conan wandering out of the ocean? After all, anyone watching the Emmys probably knows how the Lost castways got there. What do you think?
Update: Well, NBC apologized. No real need to - nobody was making fun of the victims. Everybody feel better now?
I’ve been fortunate enough to be provided with a track from Norm MacDonald’s upcoming CD entitled Ridiculous. It’s a bit different from previous Comedy Central Record releases in that it’s a sketch comedy record - though some stand-up of his is on a hidden track. The people performing the sketches with him include Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, and Artie Lange. This one is entitled “The World’s First Two Gay Guys” and includes Jon Lovitz and Will Ferrell.
Wow, way to prove William Goldman right, huh? Nobody does know anything. There was no real concensus in the comments in our “Be the Lorne” Game either. Everybody seems to like someone or if they don’t like him or her, think there are much bigger problems to be addressed. I was surprised at the couple of voices that Amy Poehler should leave - simply because she’s too good for the show. People aren’t even optimistic that dropping six players will help. That’s rough.
To me, the house cleaning should be even bigger… not because the players aren’t good, but because the compromises that are made to keep 16 players or even 10 players happy are just too much. Sketches have to be put on simply to throw a bone at a player. I don’t know if I have a better number in my head, but let’s go with seven. Seven should be enough to handle any idea the writers have, keeping in mind that at least one role in almost every sketch will be handled by the guest host.
If I had my seven it would be: Armisen, Parnell, Poehler, Rudolph, Thompson, Samberg, Sudeikis. Some of these were tough to make and to be honest, I’m filling holes here with a couple that I would want better players for but need because of their physical types. I think I’ve dropped a fair amount of the players who supply the bigger impressions, mostly because I come from the school of Chevy-as-Ford, i.e. you don’t need to look like the guy to play the guy. What do you think? Is seven too few? Too many? How wrong am I here?
Commenter Jack Szwergold made a good point in that again, why should SNL be 90 minutes? The last half hour is dead weight anyway. It’s a great point and time could be spent on the premises that do survive the shorter airtime. But I think this has to be done in conjunction with a deep staff cut - so the focus won’t just be getting on air but getting something great on air.
The New York Post points out this is a big week for SNL with four cast members departing (apparently they already know who they are) and auditions starting for the Weekend Update chair Tina Fey’s vacating.
So, a little game. Here’s last year’s cast, minus Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey who are already gone to 30 Rock:
Main: Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Darrell Hammond, Seth Meyers, Finesse Mitchell, Chris Parnell, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Horatio Sanz, Kenan Thompson
Featured: Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Jason Sudeikis, Kirsten Wiig
Pick the four you drop and give your choice to join Amy Poehler at Weekend Update (unless you drop her, in which case you pick two). I imagine it’s possible there’s still a chance they might bring new blood on, so you can drop five if you really want to for a Second City/Groundlings/UCB player to be named later (or name him/her now if you know it).
And as teach says: Show your work. Explain your choices.
The YouTube link in my previous post on the Chappelle Black Pixie Sketch has gone dead, but doing some research on YouTube showed two versions of the sketch - something I noticed at when the episode aired but decided was not worth mentioning, figuring the previous version I had embedded was an incomplete edit.
The difference between the two is the inclusion of a second pixie in the blackface sketch when plays the banjo and has a bit more stereotypical Steppen Fetchit voice. This is the version Comedy Central aired initially:
Are either socially irresponsible? Does leaving out the banjo player make that part of the sketch palatable? Is the more acceptable version more or less funny?
(My answers are “Not to me, but I can see the line here”, “Yes” and “Less” but your mileage may vary.)
Patton Oswalt goes straight to his demo this weekend, performing in Saturday's closing ceremonies for BlizzCon for players of World of Warcraft. A more perfect nerdgasm I cannot imagine.
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. It’s a bit different from previous Comedy Central Record releases in that it’s a sketch comedy record - though some stand-up of his is on a hidden track. The people performing the sketches with him include Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, and Artie Lange. This one is entitled “The World’s First Two Gay Guys” and includes Jon Lovitz and Will Ferrell.
The New York Post 
, at least according to reviewers on the Amazon site, mentioned the sketch is missing the second pixie. (The absence is also mentioned by 
and the South Park collection 
