Saturday Night Live

Backups in case she didn't show up, or passed out backstage or something.

otm

She was so awful in that Scared Straight skit.

She was bad...but she wasn't any worse than Channing Tatum, for example.

otm, this was a better than average episode with an average (ie pretty bad) host.

John Hamm is also in a new movie written and directed by his wife that also stars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. So no doubt promoting that.

I thought the episode was OK, had some good moments, but LL didn't add anything, had very few good lines and was mostly a straight-man.

so to speak.

tl dr ! ! !

but i was glad to see that lindsay lohan seemed to be in good shape. the snl writers i can only assume are in far worse shape than is she. laughed more during the blood-soaked local news preceding it

John Hamm is also in a new movie written and directed by his wife that also stars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. So no doubt promoting that.

― dan selzer, Monday, March 5, 2012 12:07 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't you need to mention something in order to promote it?

John Hamm is also in a new movie written and directed by his wife that also stars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. So no doubt promoting that.

Also, his appearance was a joke about the fact that he is a frequent and well-loved host.

Synergy, mang! They ran the ad for the film about 10 times on Saturday night.

thought this was going to be a discussion of the Neil Young / Springsteen thing. that was pretty hilar. or was that web-only or something? (I watched it on Hulu.) Fallon does a p amazing Neil impression.

That was on Fallon's show a long time ago, assuming you are talking about their cover of Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair".

Nah, they did Sexy and I Know It together on Friday night.

i think they did that on his show too or just took the video of it

oh whoops you said friday

Have they always cracked up so much at the end of the 'Scared Straight' skit when Sudeikis jumps on the desk? I feel like I've seen that happen before.

It's usually Kenan's mission to crack up Bill Hader, but this time Sudeikis was the spoiler.

It looked/sounded like Sudeikis knocked something over when he jump-sat on the desk; that's what I thought broke everyone up.

they were just happy to laugh at something imo

gawker said he knocked over some pencils

The last episode that had a skit where everyone couldn't stop corpsing was another Lohan-hosted one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7bf-3uL2gg

i'm not sentimental but it's sorta painful seeing lohan like that

Bill Hader as James Carville on the news segment was the best bit.

i only made it through the first 30 minutes of this, but i still feel hungover from it. isn't the show supposed to be front-loaded with the best bits? whatshisname's shepard smith bit was indistinguishable from his keith morrison

they really need to ditch the obligatory political cold open

Hader's done Shepard Smith before, but that's the first time I can recall them adding the "Psycho" element to it.

Holy shit, Scared Straight was so utterly awful and embarassing. Rape jokes really creepy and nagl in any context tbh

Yeah, but that skit is nothing new, its been around for a couple seasons now and really the only funny part is waiting to see when Hader breaks.

Why is it funny to watch an actor laugh?

I've been disappointed that Lorne Michaels has relented and allowed his program to turn into "The Carol Burnett Show".

Most television should strive to be even half as good as The Carol Burnett Show, ffs.

the orig point of 'scared straight' wasn't really the rape jokes in and of themselves, but to see how far from scary the movies they riffed on would be and how dumb the puns were in consequence. just busting out "you'll get aids" is uh taking the low road with it. not that they weren't prison rape jokes all along, idk why i'm defending this really.

I love how SNL writers think that prison rape is somehow different than "regular" rape and therefore totally OK to make jokes abt, especially if they throw in a character who mildly chastises them

It's not just SNL, tbh. Prison rape is considered funny throughout much of comedic tv for some reason.

that clip is such a strange time capsule.

prison rape is a thing that is generally considered funny "in the culture" because people are uncomfortable with the notion of men being in a position to be victimized in that way and need to turn it into a joke to be able to put it to rest. it sucks.

well i think maybe part of it is that some people are very comfortable with the notion of that happening to a guy who's in prison and presumably did some bad things to end up there and 'deserves' it

Any way you slice it, the "joke" is lazy as fuck.

but people make those jokes even when the conversation isn't about actual prisoners (i'm thinking young dudes here.) i think it bespeaks a larger anxiety about masculinity compromised and a real aversion to imagining men in a sexually victimized position. (cf. the benito martinez rape storyline in The Shield for just one example that popped into my head.)

but yes, i think part of it is about dehumanizing prisoners

IMO the joke is about how tortured/labored Kenan's shoehorning of a prison rape comment into whatever subject he's talking about is, which problematically minimizes the seriousness of prison rape even more than what you guys are talking about

to be fair i didn't see the SNL episode in question i am just blabbing

but i think it's a bigger phenomenon than SNL for sure

i wonder how much those kinds of scared straight programs lean on prison rape tbh

When I was in 8th grade, a cop spoke to our class about jail, but he stopped just short of explicitly mentioning rape. He said, "You will be your cellmate's date! You'll be his date for the evening!" I remember thinking, so I'd have to get dressed up or something? That doesn't sound too bad.

(i feel the need to be pedant here so forgive me) to be fair to SNL the setup for these skits is that:

1. kids are being 'scared straight' for some minor crime, 2. kenan thompson tells them about what he did to get into prison and what prison is like, saying 'this is real', 3. he's obviously describing the plot of a recent movie, 4. the movie is not remotely criminal or hard, 5. the puns about prison violence/rape are a ridiculous stretch based on the lightness of the movie.

like "the king's speech" was used, and the line was "it's not gonna be helena bonham carter, it's gonna be hella boning in your farter". which i admit cracks me up. yeah they are still prison rape jokes, but it is usually about a level of wordplay that is a step above the "you're gonna get aids" crap in the last one with lindsay lohan

I admit that cracks me up, too

Why is it funny to watch an actor laugh?

I love when ilx gets incredibly reductive about an argument and removes the entire idea of context completely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fcu1nCphbQ

Why is it funny to watch actors on Saturday Night Live break character and laugh? I hated it when Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz did it and seeing Hader lose it - a guy who light years funnier than those other two when they were on the show - is disappointing.

I assumed that my "Why is it funny to watch an actor laugh?" question would be read in the context of this thread, but w/e.