Saturday Night Live Roundup
First, you may have heard that legendary musician Prince passed away on April 21st. On the twenty-third, NBC aired a special tribute to him in lieu of the standard rerun. Titled SNL: Good Night, Sweet Prince, it features clips of the best of Prince’s musical performances on the show, introduced by Jimmy Fallon. It also has segments of Fred Armisen’s classic impersonation of Prince in “The Prince Show.”
Secondly, the next season of Saturday Night Live will feature something new. Two commercial breaks will be completely eliminated in favor of introducing ‘branded content’, possibly in the vein of The Onion’s “Onion Labs”. The change is reportedly being done to increase live viewership in an age where casual viewers simply watch clips on YouTube the next day. I am of two minds on the proposal. On one hand, I’m always up for more content. On the other hand, will the melding of ads and sketches actually be good? Sketch comedy channels on the Internet have proved that you can combine humor with product placement, but I’m not sure of how that will work on live television. Either way, I’ll be interested to see how it works.
Third, the hosts and musical guests for the two final episode of the season have been revealed. The twentieth episode will feature Drake as the host and musical guest, while the twenty-first will have fan-favorite Fred Armisen as the host and Courtney Barnett as the musical guest.
Finally, the first batch of promos for this week’s episode, featuring Brie Larson as the host and Alicia Keys as the musical guest, have been released. They feature Kenan Thompson and Brie bantering in a restaurant.
Zachary Krishef is an evil genius. Do not question his knowledge of Saturday Night Live trivia or the Harry Potter books.
