Bennett is perfect when a comedy schtick calls for the straight-man role: the CEO, the government official, the news anchor, the no-nonsense judge, whatever. Reasonable folks can disagree over how good he is at other stuff – playing impressionist, doing the whole laid-back frat-guy ‘bro’ persona in odd situations, and et cetera – but he’s pretty much dead-on whenever wacky folks need something to play off.
Kyle Mooney is my favorite of the entire cast. That off-center, mumbly, insecure schtick is right up my awkward alley. He’s one of the few cast members I’d be disappointed to lose.
It was dependent on remembering a lot of Chapelle’s show from more than ten years ago. Presumably his fans liked it, but I think it will have been lost on a lot of viewers.
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It was certainly lost on me. I watched neither Chapelle’s show nor The Walking Dead.
Just watched it.
God damn it all.
He’s basically doing the same job Chris Parnell did back in the day.
I guess there’s room to debate to what extent the song was being performed in character – the wink near the beginning did seem like Kate McKinnon as herself – but I thought it worked (painfully) well if we take it to be Hillary Clinton singing.
“Hallelujah” has been covered hundreds of times, many of them by singers more talented than McKinnon (while I thought she did well, she’s no k.d. lang), but many of them also strike me as emotionally shallow/simple compared to the Leonard Cohen original. But Hillary has surely been dealing with complicated feelings over the past few days, and many of the lyrics to “Hallelujah” seem like they’d be relevant to her: a complex and difficult romantic relationship, the hard-learned lesson that “love is not a victory march”, and the singer’s realization that their own weaknesses (“I did my best, it wasn’t much/I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch”) led to their failure.
The Cold Open dual tribute was quite on point.
“Watching the election results with the white liberals” was a hit with us at the office:
“I guess those Latinos didn’t hear about your toast” – “Republicans go to bed early/Black People Vote Late!!!” – “You have a long day of moping on Facebook ahead of you” – and of course… “This is the most shameful thing America has ever done”… and the Brothers break into laughter.
I had a special connection with that in a sort of mirror-image way, as during the election night I had a privileged seat from which to behold the thousand yard stare forming in the eyes of some of our local blueblood Republicans.
Exactly.
And, for that matter, while Phil Hartman excelled at a bunch of other stuff, they’d ask him to do it back in the day – because it’s soooo damned easy to build a sketch around it. I mean, “goofing off at work,” that’s not a sketch; “and then the boss walks in,” that’s a sketch. And, likewise, “your comical reactions” is a sketch – just as soon as I add a quick “to what the doctor is telling you.” Or we can build one around “how you reply” – you know, “when the journalist asks you serious questions.”
Just think of how amazing Hartman was as an impressionist who could do “wacky”, and then think of how often they’d instead just ask him to play it straight as the dad or the cop or the guy conducting a job interview or the first person to speak at a funeral or whatever – because they genuinely needed a lull-you-into-taking-this-at-face-value jumping-off point to set up the folks who’d then go for the big laugh.
Parnell had that. Bennett has that. Pete Davidson? Leslie Jones? Not so much.
I guess I’m thinking of Bennett in the context of his non-suppporting straight man role, which I admit, he’s very good at.
But outside of that straight man role (which is typically more of a support role), he’s not usually that funny. Hartman at least, was funny in his own right outside of being a straight man.
I still stand by my statement that Kyle Mooney ought to be removed; that guy just isn’t funny. That skit where he’s the loser comedian is the cringiest, least funny thing I think I’ve ever seen. Painful.