Heh, thank you! I had taped the Sandra Oh episode and didn’t watch til Friday. Got my episodes mixed up.
I liked a lot of the last show. The weekend update LSD guy cracked me up. “You still believe in time, Colin?”
I like when they try daring weird skits. The Burlesque one amused me and Kit’s awkwardness enhanced it. GOT spinoffs was good. Undercover boss had some laughs.
Nephews sketch was a weird leadoff. Felt much more like a back of the episode slot.
I think we’re in an above average period of SNL. It’s not a golden age, but it’s pretty good. I think Kate McKinnon is an all time great. Cecily Strong rarely gets to shine, but she’s reliable and versatile and holds a lot of things together.
I actually think the politics is below average right now. I wonder if reality is too weird to be able to properly make fun of it. Or because you can’t really exaggerate Trump. No matter how weird or stupid you take it, it’s uncomfortably close to the truth. Also, Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression isn’t very good. There are dozens of people that do Trump way better.
How about having Kate McKinnon do the Trump impression instead of Alec Baldwin? I mean, Baldwin does a good job with it, and I’m sure that Kate McKinnon could pull it off, but more importantly, it would drive Trump crazy to be portrayed by a woman. I remember hearing that he made fun of Sean Spicer because he was portrayed by Melissa McCarthy.
HEY! Putin got hair!
Just posting that for some reason the Sinatra/Michael Jackson thing had me rolling. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop laughing out loud during that skit.
I found the burlesque thing delightfully absurd as well, especially Melissa Villasenior.
Alex Moffat is the guy who did the LSD film critic segment. I’d like to see him in more stuff.
SNL has always been uneven. I say this as a former kid who programmed a VCR to let me watch things I shouldn’t from 1981-1984ish. Some of it was genius, some of it was dreck. It should be that way because comedy figures itself out by experimentation.
I think any classic comedy gets mis-remembered, with our brains editing for us. I recently watched some Monty Python… not the skits, but the actual shows. Incredible amount of filler, and many bits that don’t rise to the title “filler”.
So I tried that with SNL. Even the second and third seasons, while the source of some great comedy, were 50% awkward attempts. By the way, watching Bill Murray or John Belushi be Not Funny is painful.
The current cast has some members I really like, like Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, and Kenan Thompson.
But I have a lot of issues with the structure of the show that I believe inhibits its potential, the main one being the frantic, last-minute, stay-up-all-night work schedule. I would rather see them take their time putting together a really good 30 minute show with well-vetted scripts, rather than the 90-minute fire drill that it ends up being.
Why does it have to be live (or rather “live”) anyway?
Because otherwise it wouldn’t be Saturday Night Live.
You don’t want it to be SNL. You want it to be a different kind of show, a kind that there have been and will be plenty of other examples of. It’s bloody SNL. Shut up.
One benefit with a live show is the humor can reference anything crazy happening in the news as of the moment the show is aired. And with a president like Trump, the crazy happenings change hour to hour. A hamberder tweet on Monday is ancient news by Saturday. If major craziness happens on Friday, I want to hear Michael Che and Colin Jost opine about it.
Also, I think the roughness of a live show makes it funnier in some ways. Lots of times the humor of a sketch is just in the absurdity of it all. Someone fumbling their lines or holding back a giggle makes you see that absurdity.
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That’s the Baroness von Sketch Show*. That’s not SNL.
*Which is pretty funny at times.
I loved MadTV and In Living Color, especially because they weren’t obviously reading cue cards in every scene (which I find is a HUGE turn off in newer SNLs and not as much in older ones). However, because it’s live, it’s extra funny when things go hilariously wrong.
My personal favorite is Massive Headwound Harry.
I mean, I’m not sadistic. I don’t watch to see someone break, but when something wrong happens and they roll with it? It makes it extra special. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU LIVE IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.