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I never watched “Saturday Night Live” during its heyday (late ’70s and ’80s), but I did start watching during the late ’90s and now, and I’ve noticed one thing: the cast don’t seem to have bothered learning their lines before the Saturday night taping. I say this because it’s painfully obvious most of them are reading from teleprompters during the skits. We’re talking about even the veterans of the group.

It’s acceptable for the week’s guest not to know their lines, since they’re fly-by-nighters, but if being on the show is your sole job, isn’t it unacceptable that you don’t know your lines? Shouldn’t you be required to memorize them? How many sketches do each castmember do? At the most I’d say 3 a night. You can’t memorize all your lines for three sketches that runs about 4 minutes each? Or 4 or 5 sketches for 10 minutes each?

The silliest thing about the current “Saturday Night Live” show? It’s that the producers don’t seem to give a crap that their actors aren’t even bothering to learn their lines anymore. It would be okay if one or two castmembers were too lazy to learn their lines, but we’re talking about all of them.

Now as I said, I never watched the show when it was in its heyday, but I’ve seen some reruns on TV, and I didn’t notice a complete lack of professionalism back then as there are now. Not only are these people too unprofessional actors to bother learning their lines, but they are break character constantly. Sometimes this is good for a laugh, but when they do it almost every time it just gets annoying.

The biggest offenders were that complete dork Jimmy Fallon and his partner-in-crime Horatio Sanz. These two guys could not only be bothered to learn their lines, but they couldn’t even keep from giggling like schoolgirls during their sketches. Which is funny, because I don’t see those sketches they keep f–ing up as being that funny.

Overall, I watch “Saturday Night Live” for the one or two good skits they’ll have on. I watch mainly the reruns on E! for the Jeopardy parodies and Darrell Hammond’s insane impersonations of various people. Now before you call me a purist, I don’t actually think all those SNL episodes from the ’70s and early ’80s are that funny, back when Belushi and Murphy were around. Sure, they were good for a chuckle or two, but I don’t see them as being nearly as “brilliant” as people make them out to be. So don’t call me a pretentious SNL purist, because I’m far from it.

Still, at least Murphy and company weren’t giggling and reading their lines off cue cards during every friggin sketch like the numbnuts they have “acting” in “Saturday Night Live” today, and for the last 5 years or so…