Saturday Night Live

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...

it's a tough one...
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/d7ogcb3mky9.png

they are each of them hacky and unambitious in their own individual way.

While not familiar with whole episodes in the pre-Jost era, it seems apparent that Fey's external work on 30 Rock shows a greater ambition for laughs, structure, satire and emotion. Meyers' transformation of his talk show into a life support system for Gentile's segment could be a later blossoming of ambition that he didn't hold as head writer, but I can't see Che graduating to that from his current outside-work ambition of relentlessly bullying one single leftist ex-comedy writer on Instagram for not being as wealthy as Che. Poehler might be facing a reckoning this year for the way her school retained the same financial structure over the decades that its influence grew, but she also built a school that became one of the most significant developers of American comedy talent in several generations. MacDonald's personal ambition seems limited simply to earn enough money to gamble with, but he evidently saw the Update platform as worth exploiting to make savage and accurate attacks on corrupt or hateful people in power, rather than having them sit at the desk to apologise to in person.

Sitcom writing and skit comedy tied to a weekly live format are wholly different beasts. The tight deadlines and need for material to fill a 90 minute show of five and ten minute segments strongly encourages gag writing, not "structure, satire and emotion".

Che and Jost's respective activity outside of their stewardship of this bad show does support bison's judgment, though, as does comparing their Update work to MacDonald's.

"Poehler might be facing a reckoning this year for the way her school retained the same financial structure over the decades that its influence grew," sorry what?

I think Che and Jost are fine on WU. It's still the strongest segment of the show though Melissa Villasenor's bit was terrible as was the Village People bit.

I was surprised to see SNL's ratings so high this year. Give the people what they want...

"sorry what?"

Keeping tickets at mostly $5 maintained a flow of 4x nightly full houses, but effectively resulted in the students paying to perform & run most of the business, while excluding them from any decision-making power. The workforce"s opposition to moving the Chelsea location to Hell's Kitchen in 2017 was borne out by the financial collapse of that location. The Los Angeles workforce"s complaints about financial mismanagement and diversity have this year been compounded by the aggressive actions of the consultant hired to handle shutdown, and followed by the founders" attempts to transfer the entire business to a diversity board as a nonprofit, and selling off the one location, out of four on two coasts, that they actually own.

I've literally never heard of John Mulaney (usual disclaimer: I'm sure that says more about me than him), but that was a solid monologue. The slumber-party detour was great.

comedian, also used to be on Kroll Show, and was one half of "Oh, Hello" on Broadway. I saw his special in 2018 that he recorded at Radio City Music Hall live, it was dope.

Also it's his 4th time hosting.

I'm so far from keeping up, you can be famous and host SNL and I might not know you...I read up on him a bit after his monologue.

Also was an SNL writer, providing some of the high points of the show during the Seth Myers years (including purposely giving Bill Hader no choice but to break while reading Stefon cue cards during Update).

confused threads for a moment and thought you were talking about Nate Silver

lmao

Mulaney was an SNL writer for some years before his stand-up career took off (creating and writing the character Stefon for Bill Hader, notably). He's hosted SNL once a year for the last three years*, each time mounting an elaborate & musical sketch that he'd had rejected while staff there as the finale.

He has several very good stand-up specials that are worth searching out if you enjoyed his monologue, and a variety special on Netflix starring himself, David Byrne, Jake Gyllenhall, and an ensemble of kids, called The Sack Lunch Bunch.

*not counting tonight

oh xpost

comparing Trump to having a horse loose in a hospital was pretty inspired