Saturday Night Live

Destroy: The writing staff.

Now *that's* funny.

I hate Jimmy Fallon.

D: Jaret's Room, Mango, Adam Sa...I mean, Jimmy Fallon's guitar parodies

I think Jimmy Fallon is rather funny, but not nearly as funny (nor original) as he seems to think he is.

Actually, I think the plight of SNL is that they have some extremely talented cast members, but don't have the solid writing to back it up like in some days of yore. There are sporadic bits of amazingly funny stuff ("I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"), but it's just not SOLID.

Weekend Update is awful, sorry. There's no bite to the jokes. they seem happily surprised if a joke does well, and if it doesn't they lean reaaaal hard on the "it's not funny; isn't that funny!?" thing that is the death-knell of television comedy (cf Johnny Carson, Conan's monologue)

Everyone keeps banging on about SNL and I've never seen it - indeed, living in the UK with no Sky means I probably never will. Is there like a SNL Best Of DVD around? Or should I not bother - is it over-hyped rubbish?

I liked the bit about Larry David. The part with him and Dick Ebersol standing by the elevator sounded just like something out of "Curb Your Enthusiasm".

make talk about the old snl. converse about the dim bulb sketch.

The M'OD bio "Mr Mike" is worth a read. He bitched when the original cast started to do recurring characters, cuz he thought that was too much like Carol Burnett etc.

the writers' terror of offending anyone makes most of the sketches heavily dependent on unfunny gimmicks and repetition, much like conan o'brien's show these days.

(i ACTUALLY roffled the first time i saw this sketch)

-- joseph (joseph), Wednesday, 25 May 2005 04:22 (2 years ago) Link

was actually bumping thread to say i have a crush of shame on kristin wiig

why shame?

maybe shame bc she's totally annoying?

yeah, that

shes kinda horsey too

i dunno i used to get real madtv vibes & think she was really untalented but now i kinda think shes the funniest person on the show

she never tina fey

Yeah, she's great.

It's a little funny that during the Gardner/Fineman thing we're getting the Ego/Sarah ascension.

Gardner and Fineman are good. Mulaney is an all time great though his monolgue was kind of weak. those musical sketches are amazing but I get why not everyone appreciates them. Chappel Roan is incredible, I want a full musical special from her with costume changes for each song.

The Harvey Epstein one was funny. Wonder how many people know that’s a real dude

Garrett Morris on the racist shithole that was the 1970’s SNL writers’ room

https://deadline.com/2024/11/snl-alum-garrett-morris-recalls-lot-racism-writers-room-1236165929/

The Guardian piece that's quoted there is quite good: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/ng-interactive/2024/oct/31/garrett-morris-snl-interview

I didn't know his work in Cooley High was what earned him the promotion from the writer's room to the cast.

Just watched the Kamala cold opening and OMG Samberg has the worst case of "reading a cue card" eyes I've ever seen

oh yeah he's terrible but I get the feeling they may have written that day of.

Kamala was great at reading her cue cards, better than half the actors they have host

I'm going to miss Dana Carvey's Biden.

Sadly they really leaned into the least part of those Kamala sketches—-adding amala to a bunch of words

They did, but see, I think that part made the normies giggle, gave her a chance to smile real big and seem able to laugh at herself, and softened her image for a handful of folks. As dumb as it sounds, sitting her across a vanity from likeable mama figure Maya Rudolph was good, too. I thought she came off great.

She was having a ball, because hanging with a bunch of comedians is more fun than making yet another speech at yet another city/town/village/ crossroads in MI, PA, GA, WI, NV, or NC.

I thought this episode was pretty solid tbh. I even liked the monologue despite lazy/offensive asian people are short jokes. Was better than his last stand-up special which we didn't even finish. His fingers were twitching strangely though, made me nervous.

Tim Kaine was the star of the episode though. He did really well, better than plenty of professional actors and comedians who host.

I just had to google to make sure that was his name though, so point taken.

His fingers were twitching strangely though, made me nervous.

i noticed this too! also why does he suddenly look like jason bateman?

As someone noted upthread, apparently he got a chin implant!

And that's okay!

weird. his twitching fingers made me nervous too. like steve kornacki's erratic movements.

i suppose we could also discuss pete davidson's tattoo removal but there isn't much to say. he got a bunch of tattoos removed.

maybe its meds.

chin meds.

looked more like a jawbone thing to me -- are we calling that the chin?

Jawn Mulaney

Big Mouth

(That's the post)

yeah it’s jawline not chin, the jaw is more square now than before.

I had a feeling SNL was going to be painful tonight. Made it about three jokes into Bill Burr’s monologue before we turned it off in disgust.

MKGEE is saving this one for me.

I'm gonna start watching Woody Allen movies again.

It's The '90s!

weird episode. which makes sense considering it's such a gloomy week.

Movie BluRay

Coming to Blu-ray 1/7/25 from Sony

Saturday Night (2024) Blu-ray + Digital

At 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television – and culture – forever. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Gil Kenan & Reitman, Saturday Night is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Full of humor, chaos, and the magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, we count down the minutes in real time until we hear those famous words…

Special Features and Technical Specs:
The Making of The Movie of The Show That Almost Never Made It
Filmmaker Commentary, and More!
Optional English, English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles for the main feature

Bill Burr's opening monologue was easily the shoutiest, worst, biggest pile of shit trying to pass itself off as comedy that I've encountered since Gallagher retired.

Burr is given a lot of credit for not being as much of a dipshit as many of his peers but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sound a lot like them.

Being half a dispshit still makes you a dipshit. I've never understood his appeal.

he used to be funny. i swear. now he like the rest of them old bitter rich comics who are out of it and don't know what to do with themselves because their hero louis c.k. has fallen and they are afraid they are next or something who the fuck knows. even jim gaffigan has fallen prey to the old unfunny rich guy syndrome. the hot pockets dad! i swear he used to be funny too!

Burr definitely has more than his share of funny bits out there.

that monologue was truly terrible, though.

it felt like the Shane Gillis monologue ... choppy and just didn't land w/ the audience at all. except Gillis was saying funny things. Burr wasn't, really.

i've seen other stand-ups on snl do monologues where it sounds like they are just throwing stuff out there that they're working on instead of just writing five solid minutes and it always seems weird to me. just write something, dumdum.

I imagine he had to throw out some stuff after last Tuesday.

...and he replaced it with "Kamala should've ho-ed it up more..."

now he like the rest of them old bitter rich comics who are out of it

I saw him in 2013 without having heard him before and walked out ten minutes in because he was just complaining about difficulties parking and with his housemaid

didn't watch the SNL monologue tho

I was pretty giddy seeing Charli XCX in a Lou Reed New York shirt

that appeared to be an actual Olsen twin in the thanksgiving sketch but I'm not sure, and they only showed her for about a fraction of a second.

This may not have been an SNL skit, but I am losing my mind trying to find it/identify a 90s comedy sketch (MadTV? In Living Colour?), so maybe someone here remembers:

The basic premise was that it started off as a commercial for a medication, but the medication had a side effect (maybe headaches), so then it turned into a commercial for a headache medicine, only that medicine also had some other side effect, and then it turned into a commercial for a medication to cure that side effect, just a daisy-chain of medications and side effects. Visually I remember it being shot in an office, and this was before the days of the modern pharma commercial with the narrator rattling off 100 side effects over senior citizens running on a beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2XsvyzLUmM

It’s easy to forget the impact this show has had on modern comedy until you see something like this

Me seeing the names of anyone who joined after the Pandemic

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/EZc22XxWoAELttw.jpg

https://64.media.tumblr.com/493697369bbc5e518b5fb8feacd5bfc3/2f04a82089dccfdc-50/s640x960/04762a7ea8188268ac48e3e26abca9f8ab002153.gif

Finally watched the “Saturday Night” movie

I didn’t love it
the cast was ok to fine, some pretty good (the Rosie Shuster actress, Lamorne Morris as Garret Morris) the Ackroyd actor, Cory Michael Smith’s Chevy)

Gilda was so underwriten as to be embarrasing & the actress was suuuuper not great. All she did was frizz her hair!

the invented Willam Dafoe character was stupid and not needed.

my main beef is the only time the movie shows any life is when characters just interact in fun ways like Ackroyd with the stoned cousin, or Morris singing. BUT IT HAPPENS HARDLY EVER because they’re constantly having to run up & down hallways & explain their personalities and The Stakes!(tm) to each other & thd audience

it’s 98.5% airless
and so preoccupied with telling the audience soooooo much that all the fun and existing tension of what *was actually irl there*, is completely drained

yknow who i really liked?
whoever played Billy Crystal, and i kind of liked O’Donaghue too

all of that being said, I’m fully in the bag for the lore of s1 SNL, and fully in the bag for that original cast lineup. they were already mythic to me as a teen in the 90’s

and my bias is bound up in the idea of even “introducing” them to people who dont already know everything about them …its embarrasingly kind of alien to me.

so this movie was never going be for me

but i dont know who it is for anyway if they can’t honor the spirit of that time and place

Gilda was so underwriten as to be embarrasing & the actress was suuuuper not great. All she did was frizz her hair!

terrible. she is also apparently british.

Damn, just hearing Phil's voice at the beginning of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McV2Kl7LmRM

spade did an exceptional hunter biden in this. episode was fairly weak. I do like the new cast members a lot though, Ashley Padilla in particular seems like she could have a long career.