You might be familiar with the recurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch “What Up With That?” in which Kenan Thompson plays the host of a talk show who gets so into signing his theme song that none of his superstar guests get a chance to get a word in edgewise before the show runs out of time.
Many of the guests are real celebrities appearing as themselves, but there’s a running joke in which Bill Hader plays Lindsey Buckingham and he never gets to utter a word, but he keeps coming back.
You can see the real Paul Simon’s face just behind Buckingham’s right elbow and as Buckingham jams, you can see Simon lose character and his jaw drop at Buckingham’s performance.
Great performance! And, unlike Hader/Buckingham, the real Buckingham actually gets to speak. And you can see how good Hader’s costume and makeup is right next to the real thing.
Really, Kenan Thompson has been the only consistently entertaining performer on this show for freaking ever. I love just watching his face.
I love Lindsey Buckingham, but I have to disagree, Kenan Thompson sure has been on SNL a long time now, but he’s an untalented piece of crap and a one trick pony.
I opened the thread thinking you would be talking about the fact that they did an “at home” edition of What’s Up With That? last night:
But, yeah, the episode with the real Lindsey Buckingham was a classic.
eta: I see you mentioned it, above.
In re Kenan Thompson: I’m one of those rare people who don’t like his recurring characters much, but think he adds a lot to every other sketch he’s in. He does a good ‘everyman reaction to weirdness’.
I give Kenan a lot of credit for the amount of dancing around he does as Diondre Cole, and he can actually sign fairly well. (His “Big Papi” character is also pretty good.) I believe he’s leaving the show at the end of this season, and that’s unfortunate. (Though he has been on it for a really long time.)
Back when I was playing more, the “What’s Up With That” sketches on SNL always got me grabbing my guitar and jamming along. Now there’s probably a WUWT jam track on YT. I haven’t looked. Yet.
Yeah? What’s so great about him, as far as I can tell his whole schtick is making goofy reaction faces into the camera for half a second. You have a link to something of his you think is brilliantly funny?
Kenan won me over. I actually used to HATE, “What’s Up Wit Dat?” then I finally gave in to the joke. Guy’s just funny, and SNL is the right format for him.
IMO, “What Up With That” is a great example of how to build an entire sketch around a single joke and make it work. Every single time they do it follows the same formula, but it doesn’t stop being funny.
The Black Jeopardy with Chadwick Boseman - AS T’Challa - was simply brilliant.
If you haven’t seen it, T’Challa - coming from a society where black people are respected and full members of society - is pretty disconnected from the answers Black Jeopardy is going for.
I liked the bit of the “What Up With That” sketch when Charles Barkley said, “I have to be honest. This is weird.” No idea if that was part of the sketch but I’ve been saying the same thing for the last month. This whole thing we’ve all been experiencing is weird.
