Apparently nobody ever told him that that was creepy AF.
I mean Johnson, the current one.
Comedian and actor James Austin Johnson on how he perfected what many people are calling the internet’s best impression of the president.
Critics at Vulture and TheWrap said Johnson “stole the show,” or at least the cold open.
“‘Saturday Night Live’ finally has a truly great Trump impersonator,” wrote Dan Spinelli of Mother Jones. “Close your eyes and you’ll think new cast member James Austin Johnson is the real thing.”…
Vice’s Josh Terry wrote last year that “there’s something jaw-dropping about how accurately Johnson is able to channel the president’s cadence, speech patterns and eccentricities.”
Season 47 opened with a doubly refreshing changing of the guard, as newly hired featured player James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden elbowed Alec Baldwin’s beyond-tired Donald Trump off of the cold open stage. And while SNL ’s political satire continues to dish some weak sauce, Johnson’s Biden is at least as much of an upgrade as the actual Biden is over Trump. The noted impressionist’s take on the new POTUS is a masterpiece of subtle observation in comparison to the broad caricature we’ve been stuck with (in real life and as an SNL character). Johnson immediately established himself as this cast’s Darrell Hammond, a meticulous craftsman whose Joe Biden is equal parts cantankerous, folksy, and already exasperated at the parade of Republican loonies he’s suddenly tasked with corralling into some semblance of functional governance.
That’s how I felt about their mercifully bygone humor-column parody:
His Trump is uncanny. I agree his Biden is nothing special.
I’m getting tired of all his shit. The back and forth with JB (bandleader dude), the stupid over-long setup for “Meanwhile”, just pretty much all of it.
I’m sure I’m wrong, but everybody on the set of that show strikes me as just being a too-cool asshole, and they really think they are doing us a big fucking favor for putting on the show. I just get a feeling of ultra-smug condescension from the whole crew. I rarely watch it anymore, only if something happened the day before worth hearing what Saint Stephen deems us worthy of hearing a funny about.
I highly suspect the problem is with me…
I’m not sure you are. I remember thinking something like this, about a month after Colbert started The Late Show. Everybody thought that on The Colbert Report, he was doing a parody of an ignorant, condescending conservative asshole. After watching several episodes of The Late Show, I realized that the ignorant and conservative parts might have been a put on. But the condescending asshole part? I’m very much afraid that that’s the real Stephen Colbert.
This is about the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me! 
Thanks! I don’t feel so bad now.
Colbert couldn’t find a tone for the first two years of The Late Show. That changed when he brought in Chris Licht as showrunner. And in 2016 he had Trump to endlessly mock. The combination worked. He’s consistently my favorite.
Licht just left - to become president of CNN. That’s sounds like a joke but isn’t. Colbert hasn’t announced a new showrunner, but they have so much influence that I wouldn’t be surprised to see changes.
Seth Meyers is very good but he only needs to spend 15 minutes on A Closer Look once a week. Even John Oliver, the master of the long take, can’t hit the target every week. Samantha Bee takes a lot of chances, so fails a lot, but her best is very good - and she seldom has running gags, which is a plus.Trevor Noah is wildly inconsistant, sometimes hugely insightful and sometimes filling time. Jimmy Kimmel does good monologue jokes, but his bits aren’t my style. Jimmy Fallon is overall not my style at all and neither is James Corden.
As for the run-up to Meanwhile, etc. Record the show, watch the next day, and hit fast forward. Works like a charm.
David Letterman’s long drawn out digressions were the first thing I thought of.
Second thing I thought of: the also long drawn out “jokes” on Family Guy. Something will happen that has potential for humor (let’s just say a fart), and then it goes on for a ridiculously long time, until the joke becomes that it’s still going on! Har de har har. Or the joke might be mention of a song, but Family Guy’s going to play the whole thing! Sometimes the show is actually amusing, but I can’t seem to get through a whole episode without screaming “Fuck you!” and changing the channel.
Yeah, his schtick with George Clooney, or with buying crap he finds online, was funny once, maybe twice, but JESUS! Can you drop it? It’s not hilarious anymore.
I LOVE the run-up to Meanwhile! It’s the combination of hilarious wording and him pulling off the reading of it with a straight face (most of the time) that gets to me. The juxtaposition of the very good and the very bad is funny. IMHO, of course.
I only started watching Colbert when he started quarantine in “the closet” - so I don’t have back story. I don’t like aviation glasses Biden much. I do like it when John does sound effects to him “putting things away.” It’s cute.
It was. The first couple times. Now I despise it. It’s “Oh, look how cool we are!” at this point
Eh, its me. I can’t stand people who are more talented and rich and famous than me. I pretty much hate everybody.
Love George Carlin, but hated his old Hippy Dippy Weatherman routine.
McFarlane’s asides are also what makes The Orville nigh unwatchable IMO. It’s got the potential to be a spiritual successor to classic Star Trek, but he can’t help himself from bogging down every single episode with his obsessions with showtunes, '80s pop culture ephemera, and weed evangelism.
He got tired of it, too. He dropped it from his act by the late 60s as he changed his style of comedy.
I thought Abbott and Costello’s “Whose on First” bit was hilarious the first time I saw it. I was about 5 or six years old. The third or fourth time I heard it I thought it was unfunny and borderline stupid. I was about ten years old.
Speaking more broadly–the sitcom Wacky Neighbor.
Do you people realize what it would be like, to have a Wacky Neighbor?
First–you’d call the Cops.
Then, you’d build a tall fence or wall between your homes.
Then, you’s sue.
Then, you’d move out.
With possible excursions into Arson and Assault & Battery, against your Wacky neighbor & his house.
It would be Hell.
Not funny.
The biggest problem with “Who’s On First” by today’s standards is that it goes on too long. They continue it long after we’ve gotten the joke.
Surprisingly enough, they apparently did it like once a month on their radio show. Contemporary audiences seemed to never get tired of it.
I got tired of the “nail yo’ ass” bit in Intolerable Cruelty a lot faster than the Coens did.
Friday thank you notes by Fallon.