Andy Samberg was the most musical Saturday Night Live cast member ever, and not just because his main squeeze is indie harpist Joanna Newsome. Bur rather since he wrote the digital short "Lazy Sunday" with Chris Parnell -you know, "the chronic, the chronic, the chronicles of Narnia", he changed the SNL format.
With his band The Lonely Island, and with comic foil Justin "Dick In A Box" Timberlake, he brought rock right to the front of the SNL concept. Sometimes, actually often, to good effect. Has Michael Bolton ever been funnier than on the bucanneering "Jack Sparrow"? I mean, intentionally.
His other stuff worked somewhat less impressively but only somebody in their 20s believes this is a golden age for the comedy institution. And let's be more brutal. The Lonely Island isn't the mindboggling Blues Brothers, by any stretch of the imagination.
And as long as we are dissing SNL, there is no fat guy worth mentioning, no black guy worth mentioning, and Kristin Wiig is surreally annoying at least half of the time. The writing often goes from dull to dullard and… I guess that's it. I like the music, helen doesn't. And I'll miss Andy, who is going to the BBC to work on a Britcom!