from style.com
Internet comedy /gossip sites have been buzzing with the official word: Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch are leaving SNL. Fey made the annoucement last Friday night on "The Tonight Show" that she would be departing as SNL's first female head writer (making way for Seth Meyers) in order to focus on her upcoming primetime series "30 Rock". "30 Rock" will also feature Dratch — SNL's longest running female castmember — as the lead in the sitcom's beleaguered sketch show, "The Girlie Show". (As Best Week Ever put it, Dratch will be "leaving her job as an actress on an unfunny sketch show to play an actress on an unfunny sketch show"). Amid the news of these keys departures, SNL creator Lorne Michaels announced that "massive budget cuts" at NBC would force him to cut the size of the cast. Though this announcement suggests that castmembers other than Fey and Dratch may be asked to leave SNL, The Apiary has speculated that Michaels might just be trying to manage the bad publicity of the Fey-Dratch departure, especially because lately the two, along Amy Poehler, have made up the comedic core of SNL.
With Fey and Dratch departing, and the future of other principals up in the air, the time may be ripe for a revitalization of SNL's cast courtesy of New York's burgeoning comedy scene. SNL, which is currently casting for the next season, has the opportunity to scoop up — at a much cheaper price— comedians who, though virtually unknown to the average SNL viewer, have already made their mark on some of the proving grounds for tomorrow's comedy elite. The New York comedy scene has been on fire over the past few years, most notably at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater (on which the NYP coincidentally happens to have published a fawning two-page spread on Sunday), but also at a number of other outlets for more unorthodox comedy such as Rififi and the PIT. SNL has, in fact, dipped into this talent pool in recent years, bringing in the likes of Rob Riggle from UCB Improv star team Respecto Montalban (though he was sadly underused and dropped after just one season), and, more famously, UCB founding member Amy Poehler . SNL's limited roster, however, only has room for so many newbies; meanwhile, Comedy Central has been scooping up other bright lights on the circuit including Stella's Michael Ian Black, David Wain and Michael Showalter; Louis CK, Judah Friedlander, Zach Galifianakis, Chelsea Handler, Demetri Martin and Patton Oswalt, among many others, all while making SNL's "Weekend Update" redundant each week courtesy of "The Daily Show" and now "The Colbert Report." VH1 has managed to create a comedic force of its own in "Best Week Ever" thanks to its sharp and eviscerating take on trash culture that (and check it out on the web: BestWeekEver.TV is continuously in the top entertainment posts on Technorati). And over at the Cartoon Network, Adult Swim has been on the cutting edge of low-brow absurdity, scoring big with young adults, SNL's key demographic.
None of which is to say that SNL isn't and can't continue to be funny, notwithstanding the steady drumbeat of headlines pronouncing it "Saturday Night Dead." However, some of SNL's most notable hits in recent years, Robert Smigel's "TV Funhouse" and, more recently, the runaway success of SNL's Digital Shorts, especially "Lazy Sunday," have successed in spite, and not because of, SNL's variety show format, which has remained virtually unchanged since its inception. SNL's performers continue to be shackled to the writing staff — and vice versa. As a result, otherwise funny people are sometimes left with little to do but read someone else's jokes off of teleprompters, while talented writers spend their time coming up with punchlines about celebrities. It will therefore be interesting to see whether Lorne Michaels gives SNL's new crop of talent, whoever they may be, the breathing room they need to make Saturday Night Live as great a place for comedy as New York itself.
