I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I don’t understand the bits, now a regular thing, where someone interrupts the mildly funny mocking of current events to do a few minutes of schtik. It always seems irrelvant, and never funny in the least, to give some featured player a chance to do a bit as some stupid, imperceptive, obnoxious character of one sort or another. If I can, I just fast forward through these bits so maybe the last few of these have actually been hilarious but I’ll never know. Is it just a dearth of material that prompts this padding of Weekend Update? Or does anyone find them funny and worthwhile?
I’d say it’s just one of those things you/some people don’t like. Weekend Update has had correspondents since just about forever. If no one liked them, they’d have been written out decades ago. Plus, in addition to being (IMO) funny, they really do showcase some of their talents.
And these correspondents are hardly a new addition.
It has always been a regular thing. The original Weekend Update with Chevy Chase had rants by John Belushi and appearances by Gilda Radner as Emily Litella and Roseanne Roseannadanna. Over the years we’ve seen Jon Lovitz’s Annoying Man, Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man, Adam Sandler’s Opera Man and Cajun Man, and Bill Hader’s Stefon, just to name a small sample.
They vary in funniness and worthwhileness (just like the rest of the show).
Yeah, but my wager is that their “unfunny” percentage is higher than the show in general. Trying to think of a WU guest I’ve enjoyed recently (tho I suspect the ones I fondly remember from the past were less consistently great than I like to remember.)
IMHO, they’re about the same as the rest of the show, but higher “unfunny percentage” than the rest of Weekend Update. My theory is that, when they aren’t funny or don’t work for you, you find them particularly tedious because they interrupt the flow of rapid-fire jokes that is the “main” part of Weekend Update.
I suppose it’s a matter of taste, and Dinsdale may have it right–memory does affect the way we perceive things from a long time ago. I liked Rosanna Rossanadanna because it was unusual, and there was something amusing about her misperception of things followed by “Never mind…” but most of these things (such as Adam Sandler’s bits, which I would summarize as “I am an imbecile, so laugh at me”) were never funny to begin with. I classify this stuff as “cringe” humor, and I guess I don’t get the appeal of having someone take up half of WU playing some obnoxious character. It’s not impossible for these bits to be witty, or clever, or to have some sort of point, but it seems to me that they’re not even trying for any of those things any more, to the extent that they ever did.
IIUC, “cringe comedy” is something different. It’s comedy that makes you cringe when it works, not because it doesn’t work.
I thought I invented “cringe humor” as a category. Live and learn.
Here’s a comparison that may be useful here: imagine Abbott and Costello doing routines that were merely belligerent. That is, imagine the “Who’s on First” routine, but without the essential element of proper names being identical with interrogative pronouns. The straight man Abbott, would be answering questions, and Costello would be frustrated that he doesn’t understand Abbott, but this time there’s nothing for the audience to see as the part he’s getting consistently wrong. All we get to see is that the straight man (in this case, Jost) is asking an innocent question, often as bland as “What’s new, guest?”, and the guest doing an impression of someone who’s stupid, or hysterical, or irritating, but there’s no actual humor there. Which makes me cringe.
I suspect these bits are the product of individual writer/performers and not created in the writers room. Basically, only one person is informing the humor and that leads to weird stuff that might only appeal to people with a very similar sense of humor.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Adam Sandler, including his WU characters. I’m not entertained by a person routinely sniggering at how funny he thinks his own jokes and characters are.
I’m not even sure if that. Many of them work okay for me and Weekend Update is full of misses too more often than not. Honestly most comedy likely is. The jokes and bits that work (for you) just make the ones that do not (for you) worth it. Weekend Update just has volume on its side.
Problem is biggest when it is a recurring guest character that does not work you.
Or a performer. I have never been amused, not even for a second, by Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler, Pete Davidson, or this new Sara Sherman.
There have always been guest characters in Weekend Update, but there was a subtle change in how they were presented. In the early days, Weekend Update was acted as an actual newscast. It was ridiculous and absurd, but the actors didn’t break character or play to the audience. Curtin and Aykroyd were particularly deadpan. At some point, that changed. It wasn’t (just) that Opera Man was annoying, but after his bit the anchor would wait for the applause and say “Opera Man, ladies and gentlemen!” Whatever illusion of a newscast was left, was thrown away in that moment.
I don’t know if that explains the whole change, but I think it’s significant. It’s like they changed from acted, sketch comedy to stand-up comedy behind a desk. In a strange way, it becomes less absurd that way.
And that’s where everyone has their own sense of funny. I loved Sandler’s songs, such as The Chanukah Song, but you might not have. Sara Sherman’s bit this week was mostly great I thought, and hit me as funny much more than anything in Chapelle’s long tedious sets. Obviously many many others love Chappell more than I do. Davidson had his moments for me.
That said I think the WU guest bits have generated more of the well known catch phrase memes and memorable bits per time on show than any other portion. From “Jane you ignorant. …” to “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” to Strong’s recent serious messaging clown guest bit.
The Grumpy Old Man was hilarious, but those bits had a lot of JOKES.
The ones that are funny are the ones with actual jokes - punchlines and tags to immediate or general setups. The Grumpy Old Man had those. The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation With also has many jokes. The Sarah Sherman bits where she deliberately misinterprets everything Colin Jost says are funny. The ones that don’t have very many jokes, like Pete Davidson appearances, are not funny.
“Characters” and attitude can be funny to some extent - another Heidi Gardner character on WU is Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Boxing Movie Ever, and it’s funny because the character is recognizable and funny and Gardner is funny. But if you run out just Pete Davidson, there is neither a funny character nor many jokes.
Well, back in my day, the Weekend Update guests just came out at stared at the camera in silence for ten or fifteen minutes. And we liked it that way!
Why is that character on the news, though? Bill Murray played an entertainment reporter, and Garrett Morris (as Chico Escuela) did sports; the sorts of people you see on an actual newcast.
That was Emily Litella. Roseanne Roseannadanna was the character who would wander off into gross tangents about celebrities and bodily functions etc. with the catchphrase “I thought I was gonna die”.
I agree that Adam Sandler’s characters were stupid and not at all funny. I’ve never understood his appeal in general.
I find Cecily Strong’s Jeanine Pirro to be about perfect.
That said, I do also get the question above about them moving to non-news characters, e.g. Pete Davidson just comes out as Pete Davidson. But as others point out, they’ve been doing that for a long while.
Emily Littella was on dozens of times. Never seen a “reporter” like that. What newscast would allow a person like that to deliver dozens of “editorials.” The connection to actual reality has always been extremely tenuous.