A blog about television by TIME’s TV critic James Poniewozik.

What Seth MacFarlane Can Teach SNL

Yesterday, I posted a review of a web-video snippet of a single SNL sketch.

This morning I wrote about Seth MacFarlane's venture into Web video, which shows that his humor works best isolated into 90-second chunks.

There's a connection here, right?

I've seen several reviews today of the season premiere of SNL, which seems like a kind of quaint throwback. I mean, as a TV critic, I force myself to watch a whole SNL now and then out of obligation, but isn't the whole question of whether SNL is "good" kind of beside the point now? The beauty of online video is that you are able—nay, encouraged—to just skip the bad stuff. Why on Earth would anyone watch an entire SNL nowadays, when you can wait a day or less for the Web to filter it, then watch whatever's worth watching?

I put it to you: Do you still watch Saturday Night Live, well, live? And if so, why? Pleasure? Habit? A close relative on the show?

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