Live from Almaty

In many ways, Saturday Night Live has became a parody of itself. (I'm not going to make a point of discussing the fact that NBC has two other shows about SNL to reinforce this conclusion.) The jokes are too often stale and predictable, and it can't hold a candle to the political humor of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. Yet, the past two weeks have actually been funny with John C. Reilly and Hugh "I Love Me Some House" Laurie hosting. The skits were for the most part clever, and it worked as sketch comedy. And on November 11, we have the always funny Alec Baldwin hosting.

Yet the opening sketch, which almost always is a political spoof, simply lacks bite. While in the heyday, SNL has had great comic skits (going all the way back to Chevy Chase as Ford, but some of the best were the '88 GOP Debates with Ackroyd playing a bitter Bob Dole and the famous 2000 debates with Will Ferrell as a clueless GWB and the sighs of Al Gore), today the oikutucs skits don't know where they are going and repeat the same note over and over again. Thus, the shows tend to open weakly.

That being said, this week's opening was great. Then again, it shows what's wrong with SNL because it "sold" the first 5 minutes to the Kazakh government. See for yourself.