Saturday Night Live

Personally I'm in the camp of "Che can be amusing on Weekend Update but his solo special was meh."

I am also in the camp of sometimes being amused that comics start out making observational jokes about parts of life that more or less everyone experiences (being at a coffee shop, having relationships, etc.). Then as their careers progress, they subtly shift into making observational jokes about the life of being a reasonably successful comic (planes, airports, hotels, nightclub audiences, having Netflix specials).

I begin to suspect that most comics would be funnier to us if we were all constantly flying places, staying in hotels, and standing on stages saying things.

good observation there, YMP

Patton Oswalt had a bit of a "what's the deal with being an extremely successful comedian?" slump some years back, but managed to get at least one funny bit out of it (being paid obscene money for drunken audience members to shout his movie roles at him for 20 minutes).

A very famous Danish comic had this journey. He grew up in a rough area, had a lot of great observational humour on both the rough parts of the country as well as condescending elites. Got very famous. Then his next show there's a bit that goes 'so I was on this yacht...' and another bit on what the deal was with bulk discounts, why not just pay for what you need? And then the next show was about how tax rates are two high and people are too envious of those who do well.

"What is the deal with assistants who break their NDAs?"

What's bad about The Outline?

― JRN, Wednesday, January 22, 2020 7:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

poorly edited, full of bad takes, pretty much every bad web design trend employed at once. they publish decent stuff once in a while though

this piece kinda sucks however, djp otm

jack allison is very annoying, SNL is intolerable and must die, I will not be reading this but I hope everyone involved loses

a lot of people on this thread have placed weird expectations on snl. It's fine. Some weeks are better than others. even some of the gilded periods were kind of iffy. I enjoy watching it on Sunday morning. I didn't read that article because I had thought the guy who wrote it had been the one engaged to Lena Dunham. I am wrong.

it's terrible and should be put out of its misery

The Hartman-Carvey-Meyers era is p good. The Sandler-Spade-Farley era is awful, most of the 80s stuff is awful, the original cast has some very high bright spots and a lot of garbage. Peak was actually the Fey-Farrell era. Everything after has been diminishing returns, and the Trump episode was the point of no return.

I am trying to think of a show I hate watch. hmmm. I did watch a bunch of episodes of Say Yes to the Dress the other day Sometimes I want to poop all over the OA thread but I didn't watch it past the first season.

I haven't watched this show since they announced Trump would be on. I've seen clips and tweets and shit like that I guess.

Hartman-Carvey-Lovitz-Dunn-Hooks-Nealon-Miller-Jackson era was great. Myers came in a bit later but really added to it nicely. Sandler/Spade/Farley/etc was a decent crew but it started to be less of a great ensemble and more of an outlandish highlights reel in terms of the characters. Fey/Farrell/etc is ok. I think the ideas they came up with were more inspired than the execution a lot of the time. those two are fine but v overrated in SNL history. the original SNL troupe was great most of the time though some of the material falls flat. and Dennis Perrin....otm....about Jane Curtin upthread.

(xpost to shakey) ^ This. As a life-long minor league SNL obsessive (even while acknowledging its plentiful flaws), it's still occasionally stunning to me how quickly and easily I walked away after Lorne pulled that shit.

Random bite-sized notes on other eras while we are unmoored from the present moment: I really like about 1/3 of the Doumanian cast (I rail every chance I get about Gail Matthius being robbed of the career she deserved due to being shackled to that doomed season), and Danitra Vance (RIP) was an MVP in Lorne's first season back while Robert Downey, Jr. shocked the hell out of me by being quite possibly the worst cast member in SNL history.

Danitra Vance was great, never got her due.

Downey was awful, but worse than Anthony Michael Hall?

good observation there, YMP

only if your exposure to comedy is watching rich people do Netflix specials. PEBCAK, not with "most comics".

xpost Yes. Downey was a terrible comedic performer in that context and perpetually seemed like he just didn't want to be there.

"I'm not a Michael Che booster or anything but I got about a third into that article and my overwhelming takeaway was "white man mad he can't say any old thing to black man and not get called on it""

he wasn't really saying anything to Che though. Che just jumped on him for criticizing the show.

that said I think Che is great on SNL, as is Jost.

che seems like a sad fuck tbh

he's better than jost but that's "best dressed man in albania" territory

Yeah I think Che is clearly weird as hell and mocking people through Instagram stories filled with twitter screenshots would seem to be the dumbest way of engaging with criticism. On the other hand when I look at Jack Allison’s twitter he’s posting links to discussions of this drama on fucking livejournal.

I think I dipped on twitter as this beef was starting, but Leslie hitting Che with the Dan Crenshaw zing is 😙👌

On the other hand when I look at Jack Allison’s twitter he’s posting links to discussions of this drama on fucking livejournal.

lol

imo reflects even worse on Che that this is his nemesis

lol I can get behind that

OK this is one of the best monologues in a while

actually a decent episode overall

Lorne all in for Bloomberg?

what gives you that idea?

this was probably the best episode of the season, even Lovitz was good as Dershowitz.

I promise Nora that her re-education camp will have an improv class. https://t.co/edxzOJFH98

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 6, 2020

Lorne is totally not a 1% shit

well this is totally horrific https://t.co/K8hksyjLpN

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) February 9, 2020

that cold open was strong, sharp writing, what's going on

it's just lazy, so lazy all the time

how about *not* recreating a debate?

"I'm George Stephanopolous" HAHAHAHA

oh look they have wigs and voices

it's gotta be accessible and light-hearted. what do you want?

oh does it

that's what made it a landmark in '75, sure

ayway accessible+lighthearted ≠ calcified

Morbius and Dennis Perrin: wishing it was still 1975 since...well...

Is Bernie the most popular Dem candidate on 4chan? Seems like his demo, tbh.

watching chevy as ford from season 1. yeah, it's better. there's just a feeling that's so palpable that the performer and the audience are one, there's no separation or condescension. that's the main thing that has been lost (for the most part)

xp it's yang

According to the 1 minute of “research” I’ve just done it seems everyone on 4chan is a Jewish hating Nazi so it’s inconceivable Sanders could have support there. I guess 4chan is different than what I thought it was.

it's ron/rand paul but they're not running

Actual power rankings

1. Hitler
2. Trump
3. Yang https://t.co/MSPzQmYssf

— Krispy Scream (@mitchysuch) February 9, 2020

im against "accessible and light-hearted" in political sketches

also against unperson

Watched the debate skit
This show is fucking embarrassing

debate skit was mostly dumb but rest of the episode was great.