Saturday Night DEAD! Ha, ha! Get it?

(It's a play on words, see. Like instead of "Saturday Night LIVE," which is what it's called, I used the opposite of live- or actually the opposite of alive- which is dead. Because, you know, the show's not real funny this season. Get it now? Yeah? I know. Hey, thanks!)

The show's in its 31st season, and that goddamn headline is in its 30th. Can you really recycle that pun- now in its fourth decade of life- and then go on to criticize unimaginative writing?

Okay, yeah, I guess you can. It's the Post, after all. And, hacktacular choice of words or no, the guy's right. I'll TiVo SNL for the rest of my life, and I root like hell for it, but the last year or two have been, dare I say, sub-Denny Dillon.

Consider this, though: save for maybe two seasons in the late 1980s, the show has always, on balance, kind of sucked. I know people masturbate and cry about the first 5 years, but dear God- have you ever watched a whole episode from the Seventies? Not the clips of Gilda Radner that you get on nostalgia shows, not even the 60-minute versions you get in reruns, but a whole episode? The short films? The Laraine Newman character monologues? Leon fucking Redbone? That's a 90 minutes that will tax you, historical or not. If they put the 1977-78 season on Saturdays at 11:30 starting tonight, you'd hate it so much you'd even try to think of a new headline.

At its best, the show gives you 2 or 3 really good laughs per episode. Not spectacular, but better than Anthony Clark's entire sitcom oeuvre. It's just that the last few seasons don't seem to be making anyone laugh even once, except the cast. (Memo to Horatio Sanz, Kenan Thompson and Rachel Dratch: when I want to see people with fat heads act pleased with themselves, I'll go get that Death Cab For Cutie DVD.)

Whatever. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Franz Ferdinand tonight.
Come back. All is forgiven.