Dear SNL, this is your final warning

So tonight, I sat down to watch Saturday Night Live. Now, here's the thing. I'm a big fan of old school SNL. In fact, up until the later half of this decade, Saturday Night Live has been really strong. SNL even got a bit of a lift last year with the help of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin. But now? Oh boy. Saturday Night Live has reached a new low.

I love comedy and I like to keep up with what's going on in modern comedy. I'm a big fan of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert and I love "30 Rock," (a show produced by an SNL alum, no less.) I had high hopes for tonight's episode. The last episode I watched from start to finish was Taylor Swifts episode. Taylor Swift was, surprisingly enough, very good. I may not like her music, but she had excellent comic timing and was charmingly self-deprecating. I didn't watch the supposedly disastrous January Jones episode, but I don't follow Mad Men, so I didn't really feel like I missed out. But Joseph Gordon Levitt was hosting this week, so I thought it would be good. Joseph Gordon Levitt is a terrific actor, with excellent comic timing and an intelligence and charm about him. But this episode was a complete and utter disaster from start to finish.

The show opened with a sketch about Barack Obama in China. SNL has, rather unfairly I think, been ganging up on Obama. Now I'm all for making fun of our Presidents. We did it to Bush, Bush, and Clinton, Obama deserves his fair share. But the thing is, there was no satire going on, it was basically just abuse. Personally, I think Obama is doing really well under an extremely difficult set of circumstances. That, and the sketch was abusing Obama for things George W. Bush left for him to deal with, like our 800 billion dollars in debt to China. So SNL's solution was to throw in some disgusting sodomy jokes and really bad Chinese accents on top of it.

Then Joseph Gordon Levitt got my hopes up with an energetic opening monologue tribute to "Singing in the Rain." I was thinking, yes, this is fun, let's go in this direction. But no, it was just all downhill from there. It was just disaster after disaster after disaster. The only bright points for me were:

1. Al Gore: He was hysterical. In everything. So not only should Al Gore have been the President for the past eight years, maybe he should be an SNL castmember?
2. Seth Myers: Weekend Update is the only consistently funny segment on SNL. Which is what's curious to me. Seth Myers is the head writer at SNL. So what's going on? Why isn't all of the writing at the same standard?

And here's the big surprise:

3. Dave Matthews: Not even his music. His hillariously incoherent Ozzy Osbourne impression in what was otherwise a lame sketch.

So explain to me how the entire SNL cast and Joseph Gordon Levitt were completely overshadowed by a politician and a singer? Honestly, I blame the writers, because there are some excellent performers on SNL right now whose considerable talents are being wasted. Under the writing team from the 80's or the 70's Joseph Gordon Levitt could have shone. Kristen Wiig could be on fire right now. Instead she's just doing slapstick.

My advice? Bring in better writers and bring in better hosts. I think it's time to bring in someone like Judd Apatow or even Christopher Guest to shake things up. Because the writing right now is complacent and stupid.

Now the hosts. SNL keeps lining up thin, stupid 20-something starlets to host. People like Megan Fox have no business being on the SNL stage. There are plenty of popular, funny actors and actresses out there who could rock SNL. Bring in Susan Lynch for goodness' sake. Glee is a smash success and Jane Lynch is one of the funniest women alive. Bring in Catherine O'Hara or Monique. Bring in Seth Galifianakis!!!! Why is this so hard for the SNL writers and producers to figure out?

I used to watch SNL for inspiration. Gilda Radner and Tina Fey are personal heroines of mine and I love watching episodes where Christopher Walken or Steve Martin host. There is absolutely nothing inspiring about what's being produced on SNL right now and I mourn for the future generations of comedians who will never have this institution to look to. So either SNL needs to get their act together, or stop and let a new institution take its place.