Saturday Night Live

Peele's O is good

Darrell Hammond was a much better Trump than Baldwin but still not great. Trump is a surprisingly hard impression, maybe because he's already such a caricature. Atamanuik is the only one that's come close.

re: problems in the writers' room - the difficulty in satirizing current events is that they are beyond satire. pretty much all of the cold opens recently simply recite the news & are practically transcripts (Kanye, Kavanaugh, most Trump)

I hate all the "jokes" that are just meta-commentary ("I will just make this face I call the Booker Look" "Refer to me as the prosecutor, not the lady prosecutor")

like putting that Kavanaugh sketch up against the opening they did during the Clarence Thomas hearings shows how dire things have become

Matt Damon was so randomly mis/stunt-cast for that. They should've gotten, I dunno, Gilbert Gottfried to shriek Kavanaugh's testimony.

I pretty much hate all the Kate McKinnon stunt casting as various political figures. She gets this hoot of approval like a conquering hero, but I don't think her squirrelly mugging deserves it.

It's not really stunt casting when she's part of the ensemble.

i mean there are so few cast members that have any charisma or pop the crowd is gonna react that way to her

She's pretty much their most powerful player right now?

JIC otm. McKinnon is hella talented but absolutely does mug, I get the feeling she thinks she steals any sketch she shows up in, which I think was the case early in her stint on snl

She's pretty much their most powerful player right now?

― Yerac, Thursday, October 18, 2018 2:34 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's been that since like Sudekis left!

It’s a complete misconception to play Trump as a louder version of his IRL persona, the joke would be to play him as totally competent and soft spoken and thoughtful behind the scenes.

xpost yeah, I almost said she's been at the top for the last couple of years but i didn't really want to do the research on who she usurped. Sudekis doesn't seem right (I only remember him for being married to Olivia Wilde, for Maine Justice and his dancing).

Then the double joke would be that the IRL leaks reacting to Trump’s incompetence and how scared the GOP inner circle is would be theyre negatively reacting to how measured and decent he really is.

It's not really stunt casting when she's part of the ensemble.

It's stunt casting when each role - Sessions, Rudy, Graham - is her under garish piles of gender-swap make-up.

Maybe Bill Hader.

this show is not interested in effective political satire. Lorne Michaels and the entire writing staff should be fired and the show either cancelled or completely retooled if that's what you want from this garbage.

Hader was great.

I don't even like the current weekend update crew, which feels lazy and hedged in.

I miss "What's Up With That."

Damon's Kavanaugh may not have been a great impression but it was funny and engaging nonetheless, seemed like a needed spark of life

this show needs more cecily strong. she needs better material though. she def. has star quality.

How is Kate not new Kristin Wiig?

not as funny

not as funny

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, October 18, 2018 3:13 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kate is def in that Key & Peele vein of people who just have completely mastered this as an artform and craft, which I guess doesn't mean they necessarily has the personal touch of a Wiig or a Farrell or whoever

I feel like I would've liked Farrell more in SNL if he hadn't had that terrible recurring cheerleader character.

It’s a complete misconception to play Trump as a louder version of his IRL persona, the joke would be to play him as totally competent and soft spoken and thoughtful behind the scenes.
― omar little, Thursday, October 18, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8

mckinnon also seems to have graduated to a stage where she doesn't need to be in that many sketches any more and probalby makes a shit ton of money anyway, while it seems like MIkey Day is in every single thing and kind of continually sucks

there's a guy named MLKey Day?

is it consensus that Heidi Gardner is the next big star once McKinnon leaves?

seems to me that she should be

McKinnon’s HRC was great. All the Trump people she’s played - terrible

Or maybe alex moffat will do something so that people will remember his name ( I just had to look his name up and it didn't even sound familiar).

Who?

Beck Bennett has a weird body

there's a guy named Luke Null that it seems like has never been in a sketch, I just noticed him when they had their Moms on at the end of the show

he's already gone lol no longer in the credits

Total nullity

https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/366136/SNL-Late-for-Class/ (sorry for sketchy websites, i can't access snl on youtube from canada)

omg the lack of laughter is astounding

Alex Moffatt plays Eric Trump. xxxp

haha wow xp

yeah I know, I just had no clue what his name was. Total void, besides him playing eric.

this is alex moffat's third season on the show. the only thing i really remember him doing, bar parts in sketches where he has few lines, is a character on weekend update called "guy who just bought a boat"

jesus that late for class sketch....

Oh I remember that guy (Luke Null). He gave me a 21 Jump St. Penhall vibe.

Luke (null)

man when you watch Hartman in that Reagan sketch, his timing is so good and his characterization is really on point. the current cast is just lethargic.

Current cast and skits are like they rehearsed for something up until the last minute, then everyone lost the scripts and they had to cobble together a show overnight.

Basically the SNL equivalent of zombie Simpsons.

It's kind of bizarre, since improv comedy has become such an industry-- that SNL continues to pull these non-entities from such a big pool. Like, maybe these guys audition well and just fail to shine in the written sketch format?

There was an interview with Nick Kroll I just saw, where he says that yes, he did at one point audition for SNL, and fellow comedians who didn't make the cut that year included Ellie Kemper and Jordan Peele. So clearly SNL attracts top talent, but that top talent for whatever reason does not always make it to the cast. I wouldn't be shocked if they sometimes come across a really talented person and don't pick them for that reason, worrying that they won't stick around.

I kinda doubt they're worried about that tbh

I do think a lot about the fact that Key & Peele got their start as third-stringers on MadTV. auditioning for a sketch comedy show must be a lot like scouting baseball or football, where at best you get it half right and at worst all-time greats like Albert Pujols and Tom Brady get picked in the 13th round