Saturday Night Live

i think The Departed is a pretty great example of his across-the-board talents being used wisely in a supporting role. i don't even want to suggest he's bad at comedy, but it's like how Tom Hanks was an extremely talented natural comedian able to nail pathos and drama when needed, and how it was a loss when he abandoned comedy for dramatic roles (roles in which he is often extremely good, but still...)

yeah I think with Baldwin -- and DeNiro too -- you get the sense they just don't wanna work that hard anymore

he was fantastic in 30 Rock. every comedic role/cameo (there are wayyy more of those) he's done since has felt like some variation on Jack Donaghy.

I suppose Baldwin's career did take a major hit in the '90s, he made some poor choices. The Getaway remake was DOA, the multiplex audiences weren't exactly trampling each other to get into screenings of Heaven's Prisoners...i do remember his role in Malice making some waves but the film itself didn't do anything, it was one of those twisty thrillers trying to sell itself on a single speech from his character (it didn't work as well as Neeson's Taken speech did, let's put it that way.)

turning into a straight-up comedy oaf.

yeah he's gold in 30 Rock but is putting zero effort into SNL these days, and his Mission Impossible character just feels like Donaghy without jokes.

he got furious* when it was reported that Atamaniuk had been asked to audition for SNL as Trump, just so that Michaels had the impression on tape to show Baldwin. obviously he's countered the accusation by no longer doing an actual impression at all, let alone lifting one.

*like, closing his twitter bcz he couldn't stop shrieking abuse furious, and then logging in to his charitable foundation's twitter account to keep shrieking abuse

yeah he's gold in 30 Rock but is putting zero effort into SNL these days, and his Mission Impossible character just feels like Donaghy without jokes.

― My Gig: The Thin Beast (sic), Wednesday, October 17, 2018 3:43 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he even snuck a "Good God!" into Mission Impossible that left me wondering how many times they had to shoot it before he remembered not to say "Lemon" at the end.

I remember when Taran Killam (I had to look it up) was let go (along with Jay Pharaoh) he gave an interview where he sounded confused/sad/disappointed he was let go. didn't know about any movie he directed.

― flappy bird, Wednesday, October 17, 2018 12:07 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah those two being asked to leave felt really weird

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, October 17, 2018 5:24 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk Jay Pharoah was good at impersonations but wasn't *funny*, imo

yeah but he was reaaaally good at impressions

His Stephen A. Smith was fucking legendary imo but I don't know if the people who want a great Stephen A. impression intersects w/ppl who watch SNL

I did not like Will Ferrell, Tracey Morgan or Fred Armisen at all when they were on SNL. I like them 100 xs more in later work.

I am too lazy to check if I already said this above, but I really dislike Jost and Che as weekend update. some jokes are fine, but they both seem to get off on messing up their deliveries.

i hate the SNL thing of having some absurd characters spout nonsense (usually not particularly funny tbh, sometimes it gets by a bit bc of the performers) and everyone else's dialogue is just like "what are you saying, that doesn't even make sense" etc. I feel like it's a "thing", though maybe i'm overestimating how frequent it is. like the Driver sketch upthread or the movie talkback one. idk.

I am too lazy to check if I already said this above, but I really dislike Jost and Che as weekend update. some jokes are fine, but they both seem to get off on messing up their deliveries.

― Yerac, Wednesday, October 17, 2018 5:51 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed - i loathe SNL personally tho but this is a big deterrent for me, very few people can get away with laughing at themselves and actually still be funny - norm for one

golden era SNL casts were always on point and in character, w/rare exceptions. they never cracked up, which is weird because those eras were actually funny...

Jay Pharaoh's Ben Carson impression is the GOAT

omar otm about skits with one character saying something ludicrous and everyone else reacting, that does recur over and over

Those are some of my favorite sketches! I like when they just drift into surreality.

can't believe yerac doesn't like any of those guys.

i can

yerac hates

rice

the movie Q&A one is not that surreal though

i liked the 3 way more after they were on the show, whoops and i meant to say chris parnell and not fred armisen. I have a deep dislike for Che and Jost. Not as much as Mooney though. I do agree with one of the statements above though, some of the other guys blend in together too much that they don't really stand out for me to dislike.

i got a strange whim to look up all of the "Under Underground Music Festival" skits last night, goddamn they're funny. "play Farmville with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed!" "NBA star Dirk Nowitzki shoots at you with a BB gun in an open field!"

RIP Ass Dan.

like the Driver sketch upthread

idk, i think the driver sketch had its own internal logic, which contrasted with the setting of the sketch. and i liked that the response wasn't just "what the fuck is happening," but had villasenor enjoying the hell out of driver's nonsense.

that Driver sketch is maybe the only genuinely great sketch this whole season so far

Because he was really selling it. Many hosts, even the good ones, give sort of limited monotone cue-card readings, but he was into it.

Pete Davison breaks more than Jimmy Fallon ever did.

idk i think the Driver sketch had the energy and an exceptional central performance but not the jokes so much, it was a pretty easy setup with zero decent writing for any character beyond Driver, just have an embarrassed son and a pleasant teacher and one student who's all "whoa righteous dude" or whatever, i mean it is the type of shit that is student film level. the standard should be a lot higher, no one other than Driver in that sketch is any good and he was admittedly extremely good.

even the line the firefighter at the beginning was supposed to land and it was a nothing, they didn't even try to come up with anything better. i'm not an anti-comedy lex but i just thought it was lazy.

the Baldwin Trump atrocity is even worse when you consider what a great job someone like Hartman did w/Reagan, or on a lesser skill level scale what Carvey did w/Bush, which utterly defined the actual Bush for a time.

nope, not gonna do ir

it*

lol

it’s weird i don’t think i ever watched snl at the time (bc i was v v v young) but dana carvey’s impression still *is* bush to me

His Bush was memorable enough that he still does it!

Will Ferrell was great as W.

Yeah, he and Hartman defined their presidents. They never nailed Obama, but Jordan Peele found a way in.

and don’t forget tina fey...

not having this gut reaction to baldwin as trump that you are. I'm a little tired of it now but that's becaues I'm a little tired of trump and all of the presidential impersonations over the years got tired after a while.

I thought this week's was weak, partly because it's hard to even make fun of the Kanye Oval office meeting which was surreal enough in and of itself; and also because it went soft on Jim Brown who doesn't deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Peele's O is good

Darrell Hammond was a much better Trump than Baldwin but still not great. Trump is a surprisingly hard impression, maybe because he's already such a caricature. Atamanuik is the only one that's come close.

re: problems in the writers' room - the difficulty in satirizing current events is that they are beyond satire. pretty much all of the cold opens recently simply recite the news & are practically transcripts (Kanye, Kavanaugh, most Trump)

I hate all the "jokes" that are just meta-commentary ("I will just make this face I call the Booker Look" "Refer to me as the prosecutor, not the lady prosecutor")

like putting that Kavanaugh sketch up against the opening they did during the Clarence Thomas hearings shows how dire things have become

Matt Damon was so randomly mis/stunt-cast for that. They should've gotten, I dunno, Gilbert Gottfried to shriek Kavanaugh's testimony.

I pretty much hate all the Kate McKinnon stunt casting as various political figures. She gets this hoot of approval like a conquering hero, but I don't think her squirrelly mugging deserves it.

It's not really stunt casting when she's part of the ensemble.

i mean there are so few cast members that have any charisma or pop the crowd is gonna react that way to her

She's pretty much their most powerful player right now?

JIC otm. McKinnon is hella talented but absolutely does mug, I get the feeling she thinks she steals any sketch she shows up in, which I think was the case early in her stint on snl

She's pretty much their most powerful player right now?

― Yerac, Thursday, October 18, 2018 2:34 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's been that since like Sudekis left!

It’s a complete misconception to play Trump as a louder version of his IRL persona, the joke would be to play him as totally competent and soft spoken and thoughtful behind the scenes.

xpost yeah, I almost said she's been at the top for the last couple of years but i didn't really want to do the research on who she usurped. Sudekis doesn't seem right (I only remember him for being married to Olivia Wilde, for Maine Justice and his dancing).

Then the double joke would be that the IRL leaks reacting to Trump’s incompetence and how scared the GOP inner circle is would be theyre negatively reacting to how measured and decent he really is.