September 20 2006

SNL sans Sanz, has no Finesse and something something Parnell

Filed Under Sketch Comedy

Variety has confirmed with Lorne Michaels that Horatio Sanz, Chris Parnell and Finesse Mitchell are leaving Saturday Night Live. Horatio Sanz said on his myspace blog that he has “decided to not return to Saturday Night Live this season”, apparently suggesting that it was a personal decision despite a denial of previous rumors that he was out at a recent ASSSCAT show. Huffington’s Eat the Press is reporting this may be because Horatio was hoping for the Weekend Update spot, something I think at least one of own commenters was hoping for.

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?

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Comments

Posted by seamus on 09/20  at  04:01 PM

So as I read this, they lose five cast members (the three above plus Fey and Dratch), but they keep the same format, length of show, and number of episodes. Sounds like the Bataan Death March for these guys.

I thought the major problem the last two years was the writing—too many “Gays in Space” and “repeating a double-entendre over and over again” and other high-concept, one-joke bits. Not good. I’m hoping they’ll reach out for some fresh writing talent.

In the meantime, I’m guessing “Studio 60” will be more entertaining than the show it’s copying.

Posted by Nukethewhales on 09/20  at  09:36 PM

Its sad that two of the cuts were minorities since diversity has never been SNL’s strong suit (at least since the Eddie Murphy days which don’t really count since Lorne had nothing to do with it).

Posted by Mike on 09/21  at  08:37 PM

I’m assuming that this is a net loss of three, and no new feature players will come on board. The cast was certainly getting a little bloated, but I don’t think that the absence of these 3 is going to make much of a difference.  Nor do I believe that the lower budget or tinkering with number of episodes will make much impact either.

It all starts with the process of how sketches make the final cut.  With as many writers as they have, they surely must come up with a good 7-10 solid sketches each week; however, scant few of them seem to get selected.  I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, maybe what we see each week is the best the staff could muster, and that would be truly sad.  If that was the case, they definitely need new writers.  That seems unlikely, though.

No amount of money or cast changes will matter.  I predict this season’s quality to roughly mirror that of the last few years.  Even with Tina Fey leaving and Meyers helming the ship solo.

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