Saturday Night Live attempts to take USA Networks highest-rated scripted drama down a peg or or a million in a game show skit titled "What is Burn Notice?" by suggesting that despite its high ratings on cable, nobody in the real world has any clue about the show.
It is interesting to see NBC picking on its sister cable network. Someone e-mailed me that NBC could have just as easily have done this with Mercy from its own network. But the premise of the skit is that here you have this hit show soon to enter its fourth season (things that can't be said about Mercy) and most people have no idea what the show is.
"Is it a reality show...about sunglasses?"
I realize it’s a hit show for cable but 5 or 6 million viewers and really no named star in it? Well Sharon Gless but how often is she around. It’s not The Closer who has Kyra Sedgewich or Monk which had Tony Shalhoub who most knew from Wings.
I think it was done to generate buzz and interest for Burn Notice by NBC. Mercy’s going to be history and they want attention for Burn Notice. More power to them.
It is the single dumbest show on USA. The fact that so many people are obssessed with it continues to amaze me.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who think Gossip Girl/Dollhouse/Castle is the best thing on television.
It was a funny sketch, but it’s purpose wasn’t to mock the show, but to promote it. It was kinda obvious.
SNL attempts a lot of things that don’t quite work out to be funny, in my subjective opinion. It’s why I kicked that show to the curb years ago. This video clip did nothing to change my mind.
BTW, Happy (belated) Birthday, Gabrielle/Fiona (February 4th)! You may be 40 years young but you sure don’t look it.
Chmarin, you can guess at the purpose of the sketch, but the sketch itself absolutely mocked the value of being a cable hit.
HARRIS WATCHES BURN NOTICE
@themsnumbers, I was about to say that! You stole my mojo man!
anyway…here goes
“Who watches burn notice? Harris watches burn notice!”
Green with envy, I would imagine. A virtually “unknown” show, at least in the minds of SNL and NBC brass, that is doing better than their most publicized shows must be eating at them…
Burn Notice is a great show! Wouldn’t miss it!
Wow, how horribly not funny. Just the premise of the entire sketch fails.
I watched SNL last night with friends – something I rarely do (watch SNL that is). Some of us were Burn Notice fans, others were not. No one laughed or “got” whatever they were trying to achieve. My guess was that NBC made SNL do something to promote the show from a sister network – and SNL didn’t like having it’s skit subject dictated – so they purposely did a bad job. We did love the skit on Obama’s COS on a tirade …
That was a terrible sketch. I know it made fun of the show, but I felt like its real purpose was to promote the show.
Great show. Lame sketch.
SNL is usually hit or miss. They usually have about fifteen to twenty minutes of good material and the rest doesn’t work. It has always been like that, even in the beginning, in the so called Golden Days. It is the nature of the kind of “comedy” they are doing. What I always find odd is the fact that they don’t have better skits when they come off a break. Couldn’t they be developing something that is funny?
As long as Burn Notice makes money for USA the NBC umbrella should be happy.
I love that show & can appreciate humor. However that was not even the least bit funny. The best it did was the stupid faces by Ashton. SNL is garbage & has been so for over a decade now.
SNL has a funny idea of what’s funny.
Remember Garret Morris in a baby diaper and Matthew Broderick (from Ferris Bueller’s Day off) at a high school as a classical fairy? They walked down the hallway as people chanted “Baby!” and “Fairy!”. For several minutes.
The comedy style hasn’t really changed.
This comic idea might make a knock-knock joke, or some one-line pun…not a five minute skit. There’s just nothing there.
And since when is it NBCs job to promote USA?
Great sketch about a lame show.
I’m glad someone said that SNL has always been hit or miss, even back in the day cause I get sorta tired of the moaning about how “it’s not funny anymore”…Sometimes it’s a massive hit and sometimes it’s not. Doesn’t matter about the decade. Everyone just chooses to remember the past with rose colored glasses.
Anyway, that said…How much better can it get than “What Up With That?” & the latest and one of the greatest impressions ever of Jersey Shore’s “Snookie” …Comedy gold!
You have to admit that when they showed the promo that told you nothing about the show, it was hilarious.
Wonder what the folks at SNL think of this tweet from Burn Notice?
As a Burn Notice fan, I thought that sketch was pretty funny. Perhaps I’m the only one… but the comments made by the host in between answers were great (I say this because I’ve said basically the same things to about a dozen people who’ve never heard of Burn Notice). Honestly, this sketch was right on the money.
I found it funny because, while I know a little more about Burn Notice than those contestants do (he’s like an ex-spy, right?) everything about the show’s advertisements comes off as vague. You can compare that to a show like Psych or Monk on the same network, I’m not sure how the ratings compare, but everyone pretty much knows what they’re about.