I just saw a re-run of Saturday Night Live from October 2000, hosted by Rob Lowe.
Near the end of the episode is a sketch set in an airport bar, in which Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon meet on a blind date. Chris Kattan is the bartender.
I am both a fan of SNL and a sketch performer myself, and I can assure you there is something odd about this scene. Here is an unofficial transcript:
Notice anything? No real jokes, no real punchlines. The sketch doesn’t really go anywhere. It doesn’t even really end, except that Shannon decides to leave.
And yes, I know bad SNL at 12:50 am, and this isn’t it. You can see by all the ellipses in the transcript that there are silences and hesitations, as if the performers have either forgotten their lines (unlikely, because of cue cards) or are making it up (much more likely, with their background in improvisation).
I am a major fan of the show, with several books on the subject, and this sketch has fascinated me. Was it just badly written? Did they abandon the script and just start screwing around? A key line is Will Ferrell saying “I don’t really want to talk about it… Just kidding,” which is a strange mockery of Shannon’s earlier line. It’s almost as if he is making fun of Shannon, or the dialogue, or the entire skit.
Has anyone seen this? Do we have anyone affiliated with the show on the SDMB? Am I obsessing over nothing?
I know the exact sketch you mean, and got a weird vibe from it, too. Why is it that they put such utter crap right before the group scene at the end? I mean, I know the audience numbers have probably tapered off by then, but couldn’t they just make Weekend Update longer or show a rerun for 5 minutes?
I thought the joke was that they were having a blind date at an airport bar. Not especially funny, but the premise itself is the joke I guess. Pretty par for the course for SNL sketches in the last 10 minutes of the show.
At the risk of this thread ending prematurely, I want to again maintain my position that this sketch as we saw it was not written that way .
Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon appear to be killing time. His line “I don’t want to talk about it… just kidding,” appears completely spontaneous. When Shannon asks him if shrimp is his favorite food, he hesitates and then says an enthusiastic “Yes!” – an indication of improvisation, in which you hesitate before remembering the rule “Always say yes”. Improvisational performers can back me up on this.
Obviously, the script wasn’t entirely improvised, because when the pair orders shrimp, Christ Kattan leaves and comes back with a bowl of shrimp.
Again, not to sound like an expert, but I’ve been watching SNL for 20 years, and have been performing improv and sketch comedy for 12 more. This does not appear to me to be just a bad sketch. It seems much more like a structured improv, or some kind of time-killer, than a sketch. Bad sketches have bad punchlines. This scene has no punchlines.
I remember this sketch. I just thought it was a weak idea that didn’t pay off as much as they were hoping – they knew that Ferrell and Shannon work well together, so they thought that it would all pay off in their delivery.
The “gag” is that it’s the worst blind date possible, which explains all the awkward silences and pauses. Shannon was doing her typical “not-quite-all there” schtick, similar to her NPR talk-show host character, appearing to be normal at first and then slowly revealing that she’s deeply unhinged. Ferrell was supposed to be the “normal” one. His “I don’t really talk about it” line was the only real joke in the sketch, as I remember – it was as if the guy was making an attempt at a joke that ended up offending her even more.
So I think you are reading a little too much into it. It was just a weak premise for a sketch that didn’t end up going anywhere.
Maybe I’m reaching, but I wonder if it’s a failed attempt at a skit that capitalizes on socially awkward situations, in the manner of, say, The Kids In The Hall or certain Monty Python sketches? It struck me that way in tone, and the awkward silences may have been written that way to add a sense of awkward tension.
The problem is that the type of humor I’m thinking of only works if the premise is sufficiently ridiculous, or one of the characters’ actions is sufficiently outside of acceptable social behavior. Perhaps the writer found the airport setting and the Ray Murphy character’s paranoia really amusingly odd, and whatever reality checks normally prevent mistakes like this from going to far broke down and the piece aired.
“Well, thank you for thanking me!”
“I’d really rather not talk about it right now-just kidding!”
[taps table once]
“Why are you curious about my brother Mack?”
Come on you guys, this is funny!
:rolleyes:
It was a badly put together sketch. Simple as that. It’s a bunch of maybe funny ideas (awkward date, Molly avoiding the topic, Will’s one funny line) that they hoped would become really hilarious. It just didn’t come together.
The whole table tapping thing does sound like something from Monty Python. I don’t know about actually seeing the sketch, but it’s really annoying when you read the transcript.
One time a few years ago I was watching the last ten minutes of SNL and they had a “recording studio” based sketch involving two session musicians who also happened to be brothers with a bad case of sibling rivalry. It seemed to be written with a lot of musicianly inside jokes that would only be “gotten” by musicians who knew the score. While I got most of them, the whole skit was dry to the point of pain.
Like RexDart said, par for the course in the last few minutes.
I remember watching that sketch. I liked it, but I think the whole point was just that, as you say, it was odd. I don’t think there were any jokes that were supposed to be there. It was just an odd sketch, with no punchlines or resolution. You can imagine why she doesn’t want to talk about her brother or where she lives, but you never find out the truth.
I remember the sketch. Very weird and off-putting. I think they were shooting for a sort of comedy of manners. The joke is the tone of the sketch. The awkwardness of the situation is what we’re supposed to be laughing at, in a sort of deeply ironic mocking of the mundane. It was quite pompous. I got the impression that, contrary to beinig a last minute improvisation, it was one of the writer’s pet “high-brow” concepts that they allowed him to cram into the end of the show in exchange for writing another dozen Ladies Man sketches.
I saw the sketch recently as I was channel surfing. Not unusual because The Comedy Channel runs SNL enough that they could be renamed The SNL Channel…
I didn’t get it, but I so often don’t get their sketches. Anyway, it didn’t strike me as any worse than most of their sketches. So very many of them seem to be meaningless that I don’t see how this one stuck out as worse than the rest.
Didn’t see it, but from reading the transcript, it just seems like a bad sketch. Though this whole section could be funny, if pulled off properly:
Especially that last line, if it was supposed to be a new topic…“You know…it’s funny…I…I’m…[enthusiastically]driving a rental car, and–”
I am no expert, but I’d guess the premise is that Will Ferrell is supposed to be trying way too hard, and failing miserably, on a shitty date. What you see as “say yes no matter what” improv, I see (or might, if I’d seen it) as “Say yes because I don’t want to start a fight on the first date”
I’ll see if I can find it on Kazaa (can I mention file sharing without getting the thread closed?) and report back, possibly with a full retraction.
Saturday Night Live has had a history, dating right back to the beginning, of taking a sketch that would be funny at five minutes, stretching it to ten or fifteen minutes, and running essentially the same sketch a dozen or more times each season.
Then they make a 90-minute movie out of it. (Does anyone remember It’s Pat?)
I may have been influenced by some recent sketches in which the performers have ad-libbed and/or cracked up – the recent phone call between Osama bin Laden (Jimmy Fallon) and Saddam Hussein (Horatio Sanz), or all 4 Jeffrey’s sketches, in which even stone-faced Will Ferrell starts laughing.
In defense of the overlong sketches, BrotherCadfael, keep in mind that the show is live, and every new sketche requires a set change, costume change, make-up change, etc. Once they’ve raced around to put everything in place, can you blame them for wanting to leave it up as long as possible? Or to keep the sketch going to cover the next scene’s preparation?
The trend to take a popular character and launch them into films is pretty terrible. You can usually tell the point where the character jumps the shark, to mix metaphors. Mr. Peepers recently had a long, multi-scene story that you could tell was a trial run at a feature film.
A fascinating look behind the scenes of teh show is the 2002 book Live from New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. Interviews from every living cast member and writer, except for Eddie Murphy – a strange response to the show that made him a movie star and a millionaire.
So, Will and Molly didn’t crack up, they didn’t depart from the script, and they didn’t improv the whole thing. I guess the scene falls into the category of sketches where the laughs aren’t on the punchlines, but in the silences. A good example of this – which still reads poorly even though it’s hilarious to watch – is Chris Farley’s awkward interviews with celebrities like Paul McCartney, Jeff Daniels and Martin Scorsese.