Saturday Night Live

"if a short film is just weird and somewhat impenetrable and clearly not interested in laughs"

they haven't done this in a long time, but these things used to be some of the coolest things on the show (like the Gilda Radner one).

didn't watch JLo but did watch this week's, which was, again, ok. Though revisiting mind-reading-dog didn't work at all the second time. best segment was the Macy's ad.

Bowen Yang seems to be standing out a lot, considering it's his first year.

I feel I would be remiss in failing to point out that season 12 (1986-7) is also, at times, kinda shockingly regressive. Like Carvey's Chinese chicken salesman that for some reason doesn't feature among his list of recurring characters even though we're already up to an ill-advised three appearances halfway through the season. Let's just say there's some material here that you're never likely to see in any future retrospectives.

All of Bowen Yang's characters are the same character. They all speak the same way and all make the same 'funny' faces. All that changes from skit to skit are the costumes and the lines.

Like Kenan Thompson

Aka he's an american improv comedian in the ucb mold

Xp. Foh

I feel like there was a backlog of jokes that they couldn't really do right before because their cast was not that diverse, so Bowen Yang is doing a lot of those jokes now and skewing it younger. I was a little surprised that all the dirty jokes in the Sara Lee sketch got on air.

Whether or not you find Thompson funny it’s hard to argue his one note isn’t “saying something in a funny voice with odd emphases” + meta/winking isn’t-this-funny smile

that is his one note but i'm not tired of it yet.

it's the notes he doesn't play

reese de'what!

really sad none of you are anticipating Murphy

don't tut tut at me dr morb.

i would be if i watched this show

i don't anticipate anything that I am not actively eating or touching.

I mean I WAS until I heard Dennis Perrin wasn't writing for the episode

Like Kenan Thompson

So, you're saying Yang will never leave the cast, no matter how many more years they keep the show going, until he becomes the next 'SNL mascot'?

Keenan is like a one man Simpsons- always on, sometimes still funny

xp lord I hope not

for a long time I thought morbs WAS Dennis Perrin and he was just sharing his tweets on ilx

I am mad that no one has invited Dennis Perrin to post directly onto ilx to save morbs some time.

Yang's not affable enough to be a Kenan or Tim Meadows

really sad none of you are anticipating Murphy

Not as sad as Murphy's career post-1990. I mean, based on his track record, what's to anticipate?

dolemite is my name was good

i mean as a movie it was corny but eddie was great in it

The Dolemite movie is pretty good.

I like Yang. The other new person Chloe has gotten a lot of airtime as well and is pretty solid but not really memorable.

really sad none of you are anticipating Murphy

I mean, based on his track record, what's to anticipate

Gumby, Mr Robinson, Velvet Jones

"post-1990" eh? Nutty Prof was '96

Dolemite movie was great! it's ok to just be a feel good movie and not to heavy

I'm more interested because of the animosity between Murphy and the producers (Lorne and ?). May be some underlying tension in the skits. (Or he may want to make nice to get his career back on track.)

Dreamgirls was also good, as were Boomerang and (challops alert) the first Shrek movie

I liked what I saw of Bowfinger (only saw the first half)

"Life" was also v.v. good.

Agreed

bowfinger worth finishing, and the two lads are undeniable in life

bowfinger was great and i can't believe it's 20 gd years old

life is the one i've only caught in bits & pieces on cable through the years. prob should remedy that.

"The other new person Chloe has gotten a lot of airtime as well and is pretty solid but not really memorable."

she's a good impressionist as her instagram proves but she hasn't really done that at all on the show, and she's also used the same creepy little girl voice twice so I hope she has more tricks in her bag.

I'm more interested because of the animosity between Murphy and the producers (Lorne and ?). May be some underlying tension in the skits. (Or he may want to make nice to get his career back on track.)

― nickn, Wednesday, December 18, 2019 12:23 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think Murphy ever worked with Lorne. Jean Doumanian was the producer on Eddie's first season, and Dick Ebersol was the producer during the rest of Eddie's SNL tenure, and when Eddie hosted in 1984. Any beef he had with Lorne was likely due to the David Spade "Look, a falling star!" line, which Spade has since apologized for, and for Eddie, it's water under the bridge.

"The white people came
And changed everything
But I am still your neighbor"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whfQf3Pd5bU

Pretty good episode. The Mr. Robinson and Velvet Jones sketches did a clever job of placing those characters in 2019, even if the timing in the latter was a bit wonky. Buckwheat felt like more of a missed opportunity; as with Gumby, I suspect a lot of younger SNL viewers had no idea who these characters were, but the Gumby bit was a least funny.

Michael Che forcing Colin Jost to tell self-incriminating racist jokes will never not be funny.

Thought this was great. The Bake Off skit had me in tears. That hasn't happened with me and a comedy skit in years. Also - hysterical elf!

watched this with my wife and son (my wife, same age as me and her first SNL exposure as a kid was the Murphy years) and those were all gold for us; my son (13) has actually never seen him so I wondered how those would go down and he thought they were really funny (probably funnier than I thought they were; I loved it but it's hard to tell how much nostaligia painted my view)

the bake off skit was great, I want someone to make me that cake. Murphy slipped up twice and cursed, right? We got to silenced bits on Hulu Live, one at the end of that skit and one later but I can't remember where.

I thought he only cursed at end of bake off skit? Watched the individual skits on YT so not sure how it went down live.

Of the recurring bits, Eddie seemed to be having the most fun with Gumby. Bake-off sketch was killer, and yeah, I think that was the only time he cursed. He did curse in a cut-for-time sketch, but obviously that didn't air live.

Would the kids today get Buckwheat in 2019, though? In the early '80s, the Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts were staples on UHF channels, but the chances anyone would come across those by accident in the last 15-20 years seem slim.

yeah my 13-yo niece has no knowledge of Gumby or Our Gang, just Mr Rogers

… but ppl who have seen fewer than 300 westerns are missing many jokes in Blazing Saddles

Eddie cursed in bakeoff, and I could have sworn Cecily said "Merry Fucking Christmas" in weekend update. Eddie was OK. I doubt most younger people know his characters (like, the fame of Gumby, let alone Buckwheat, at this point is several times removed), and he flubbed a bunch, breaking twice, but I did appreciate seeing him enthusiastic for once. My 12-year old didn't think any of it was funny, fwiw.

He skinned a few things but in the whole I thought he was much stronger on stage with cue cards than most guests.

Also Cosby can fuck right off with his freak out bullshit re: Murphy’s monologue.