This is painful. He is waiting for laughs that aren’t coming. Laughing at your own jokes when nobody else isl laughing is just sad. OK he now seems to be hitting his stride. His jokes are better but his rhythm is still really off.Meanwhile, Biden killed it.
Biden did well, but Jost isn’t. Some just plain unfunny stuff.
link?
Well, it’s pretty much all over now, but I’m sure that you’ll be able to find a link with a replay soon.
I was watching the CNN live broadcast on TV; I wasn’t watching online.
Speeches start at about 2:20:00.
Biden did nail it.
Colin was stilted but had some good lines. Wierd style to throw out the line and wait for them to land (or not). Kinda felt like watching a football game.
On a second watch, Jost’s material isn’t bad but his timing is way off. He does sort of hit his stride at the end but the beginning with him waiting for nonexistent laughs is still rough. Meanwhile, Biden of course has brilliant writers but he also managed to be on point with his timing. When he walked in he looked old and frail but he really turned it on for the speech.
My favorite jokes:
“I hadn’t done this is a year and my wife was worried about me. I said ‘Don’t worry, it’s just like riding a bike.’”
also
“They say Congress is now just political theater. I disagree. If it was theater they would have thrown out Lauren Boebert.”
Yeah, I wonder if his day job as host of the Weekend Update threw him off.
That’s what surprised me. He hosts Weekend Update, so he must be used to using a teleprompter. But he didn’t this time, though a teleprompter was there. Biden was obviously using it. Jost’s head was often down, reading from his notes, then looking up to see if the joke had a reaction.
He reminded me a little of Bob Hope, really. (Yes, I have heard Bob Hope do live standup monologues at a couple of tapings of his TV specials.) Throw out a joke, wait for a reaction. Throw out another joke, unrelated to the previous one, wait for a reaction. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maybe if there was a drummer there to provide rimshots …
It was like Andy Samberg’s roast style of deliberately unfunny jokes to evoke uncomfortable laughter, except Jost was evoking more discomfort than laughs.
I caught most of the Colin Jost stuff on the YouTube video – thanks @psychobunny for posting. I’d have expected Jost to be much better than that.
Fun fact for those feeling sorry for Jost: he’s married to Scarlett Johansson.
funny that’s how I first heard about Imus in the early 90s was he flopped at one of these ( I think one in clinton’s first term) right around c-span was doing a thing on “American Talk Radio”
Jost may be used to the need to pause or something since he’s usually quite funny on SNL?
I haven’t seen the whole bit yet, but his words about his grandpa were very sweet and he is a fan of Biden, it seems.
I find it hard to think of Colin Jost as a “comedian” in a traditional sense. He’s more of what I might call a “wry observer.” He got off a few zingers, and my wife laughed more than I did, but this is a losing gig. More people have failed at it than succeeded. (Though I recall Trevor Noah got pretty good reviews.) You’re assigned the task of telling jokes for and about a roomful of politicians and journalists who, in my observation, often have very little sense of humor, especially about themselves.
Or as he said, “A even better black widow than Coretta King.”
Note: Michael Che wrote that joke.
Force of habit from Weekend Update?
I’m going to have to rewatch Stephen Colbert’s turn. Colbert, in the satirical persona of his conservative pundit from The Colbert Report, played to the television audience while most of the room seemed uncomfortable as they didn’t get it or slowly realized Colbert was skewering them to their faces.
I agree with others, the problem is the crowd – DC politicians. Every expression they make is carefully calculated based on how it’ll play with such-and-such constituency, and they needed time after each joke to figure out whether they should laugh or not (based in part on whether others were laughing.) It threw Jost off. As an old DC hand, Biden knew what jokes they would immediately know were “safe.”
He’s been a standup comic a lot longer than he’s been on SNL. He’s a comedian. It’s a pretty much no win situation with a bad crowd.
Maybe. But how many of them are actually DC politicians, as opposed to journalists? I don’t know the answer, but isn’t the “Correspondents’ Dinner” supposed to be, like, for correspondents, not for politicians, although clearly some politicians are invited?