Saturday Night Live

I am so ready for laffs, go get ‘em Comcast and edgelord Lorne Michaels!

I hope they do some skits recreating different congressional hearings and one of them ends with like a song or something lol

Jim Carrey is great as Biden, but the cold open was predictably awful otherwise and was it just me or did the timing and direction of the entire episode seem really awful and stilted (more so than usual)? people looking into the wrong camera; pauses between dialogue for no reason. Weekend Update was good and everything else was crap except Meg

The aspects that make SNL unique are the same elements of self-sabotage that bring it down week after week. If its scripts were not cobbled together under duress and the skits pre-recorded - you know, like regular TV - I bet it would be more consistently funny, given the biggest laughs it often gets in recent years (besides pre-recorded bits) typically come when the actors break or otherwise screw up.

Carrey using the "smile learned in anger management" was twisting that smile such that you forget it is him playing the character. It's kinda wild seeing him in his 50s kind of getting into that Fire Marshall Bill character, which seems to me he was kinda channeling a bit within Biden sketch.

Man rough ep so far (32 minutes in)

Oof it was bad

liver-spots makeup on Carrey's Biden was great

otherwise, otm

Carrey’s Biden is way too over the top, and the script writers try to both sides he and Trump but it ends up being a false equivalency

they haven't figured out how to make fun of him yet. I feel like making him the oatmeal grandpa might work. but not until this fucking election is over

I'm someone who is generally more forgiving of this show than others, but the last two episodes have been stunningly awful. Just abysmal. This weekend's was slightly better, I liked the pay off of the Chicago politicians and Issa Rae's charm was so much better than Burr. But still rough. The 5-hour Empathy set-up was completely wasted.

Also, Rae's monologue joke about being the first black host of SNL would have landed much better if Chris Rock hadn't just hosted... two weeks ago.

She joked that she was the first Black woman to host SNL. (Cicely Tyson was, in 1979)

And yeah, generally bad episode, but Heidi Gardner's increasingly nutball characters on Update -- even though they're not dramatically different from one another -- always kill.

She was the 13th, as far as I can tell.

"Not bad for a show that debuted in 1975," he types, the sarcasm melting the keys as he presses them

the wife in every boxing movie ever is one of my all time fav characters

She joked that she was the first Black woman to host SNL. (Cicely Tyson was, in 1979)

Got it, must have misheard it, my wife thought the same thing because she said, "wasn't Chris Rock just there?".

the wife in every boxing movie ever is one of my all time fav characters

I miss that one, I don't think the '80s cocaine wife was as good as that.

what a waste of Issa Rae this episode

like jon i am pretty forgiving of SNL but this was just so bad. the one where the guys were in a militia, i guess, just yelling? painful.

*this episode WAS

is what i meant to say

even though that is a terrible sentence

The conventional wisdom is that the best era of SNL is whatever was on in your early teen years. Accordingly, I have a lot of affection for the early '90s Hartman/Carvey/Myers era. But after not really watching the show for at least a decade after that, I started watching again as an adult around 2008, and I think the cast that was around then (and for the next few 5 years or so) was also genuinely good and funny.

I mention that because I feel like, with a few exceptions, it's been kind of bad for at least two or three seasons? Have I just never clicked with this cast? Is it because I no longer watch the show while stoned? Or has the show indeed lost a step?

no it's been horrific the last couple years

Yeah the last few seasons have been more miss than hit, but the last two episodes have been low even by that already low bar. It's sad because I think they have a really talented group of young people that they haven't figured out how to use yet. Bowen Yang is pretty good when he gets some screen time, Heidi Gardner is probably the best current cast member at creating unique characters and I absolutely adore Chloe Fineman, even if she only sticks with impersonations, she is damn good at them. As much as I love McKinnon, she seems to have slipped into late period Kristen Wiig territory - overused in too many sketches and mostly coasting by on minor tweaks to older characters she's been doing for years, that Greek doctor character she did really felt like a lazy Wiig character.

I also don't feel like they've figured out how to take advantage of Ego Nwodim either, I've found her really hilarious in other settings (her and Paul F Tompkins are the only recurring guests that keep me coming back to Comedy Bang Bang) but only rare flashes of it on SNL. And, true to their skits together, Kyle Mooney seems to have lost his spark since Leslie Jones left.

I mean, I am mostly looking for something lightly diverting when I watch SNL and it delivers that most of the time, so I think a lot of the doom and gloom is overstated.

I also think Aidy Bryant absolutely slays every single time she appears in a sketch

She's been mostly MIA this season though, I was actually wondering if she's not in New York or something since her only contribution these last two weeks was the clip of her standing in a field of cows on Weekend Update.

On the plus side, the Chris Rock episode was solid and I still giggle over the name change office skit.

(I didn't see this past one and I agree that interpolating Biden with The Fly didn't work at all, even though Carey going "full Goldblum" was kind of funny; I also think Bill Barr's monologue was really fucking funny start to finish and the sportscaster sketch had some execution bobbles but was REALLY REALLY great to watch and yeah, the name change sketch in Rock's episode had me screaming right from "Edith Puthy")

I think Aidy Bryant has been shooting Shrill.

Ah, that makes sense.

jaymc

The conventional wisdom is that the best era of SNL is whatever was on in your early teen years.

The way my wife puts this is: "when it seemed cool to be allowed to stay up late."

I feel like in the streaming era this has changed, because most people I know just watch it the next day.

translation = I am an old

Cecily has been almost totally MIA, I think this last week she was only in a voiceover?

I happen to really like this cast mostly, but the ideas and writing are just not cutting it.

Too busy filming those Prego ads?

Shrill is great, love Aidy but I think she's ready to bolt SNL and probably should

Che and Colin Jost have been head writers and the show has pretty much gone to shit under their reign

I feel like in the streaming era this has changed, because most people I know just watch it the next day.

― they see me lollin' (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, October 20, 2020 10:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

streaming is probably the one thing that's kept me watching, because with no commercials and skipping musical acts I don't care about, it's like a 40 minute show

I don't look in very often, but I gave tonight's debate opening a go--just terrible.

Episode utterly dire. When Adele’s acting is the best thing....

Guessing that Cecily may have some risk that made her decide she didn’t want to be on set

It’s not even interestingly bad, it’s supremely mediocre to the bone

I’m kinda surprised that Africa sketch made it to air.

Yeah that was some racist shit.

And they had a whole sketch about not having to think about Trump anymore. Projection, much? Have they had a single cold open in four years that wasn't a Trump sketch?

The only political sketch that made me LOL on SNL in the last 20 years was Dana Carvey coming back to be George H W Bush, taking Ferrell's Dubya on a hunting trip, pointing the rifle at him as he walked away, and saying "Nope, not gonna do it. It's only 4 years"

I've been informed that Cecily strong is filming a movie in Canada and Aidy Bryant is shooting the next season of Shrill.

Che and Colin Jost have been head writers and the show has pretty much gone to shit under their reign

UMS otm, the worst WU anchors since colin quinn, just hacky unambitious dreck

unambitious dreck

the only ambition that counts in comedy is to provoke a laugh. satire requires more ambition, but SNL has almost always been bad at satire.

thanks i knew what i meant when i wrote ambitious

Chevy Chase as a pratfalling Gerald Ford was hacky unambitious comedy, too. Why would you bother to criticize the show for not delivering what it has never delivered in the past 45 years?

are you arguing that Che and Host are exactly at the same level as all head writers through SNL history

"exactly the same"? no. I am not such a silly goose as that. they are each of them hacky and unambitious in their own individual way.

I think I'm becoming an SNL truther and that maybe the early 90s was the peak

I'm trying to think what 90s image is funnier than this still image
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/p7bwcknzo7n.png

I'll find one...