Saturday Night Live

as said upthread i liked the handjob sketch and the timecrowave sketch the best.

i didn't really see the bfd about the Jay-Z performance last week but i think it subconsciously set me up to be disappointed when Tom Petty didn't do a 10-minute hits medley

lol redick going hard to the rim

Perhaps it reveals my rockist leanings, but I thought Tom Petty was awesome.

whoops rong thread

my hip-hop/pop leanings had me thinking tom petty would be a snooze but yea i thought he was real good

i enjoyed Petty's new jams and might have to check out the album when it comes out, but y'know sometimes you're like damn i'd like to hear some "American Girl" and it's hard not to be disappointed by anything else

not really feeling petty the bluesman. that band is great and can kick out the jams on pretty much anything, but honestly blues does not play to his strengths AT ALL...sometimes i think a "blues album" is a great way to get around writers block for some ppl

I was a little nervous about the return of Stefon -- easily one of my favorite recent characters -- but Hader totally killed it.

Best sketch was Timecrowave.

it was wayyyy too soon for them to be doing a 2nd sketch w/ that character and the execution felt sloppier (like, every bit started with "the hottest club in New York," no variation in the word choice).

I think that was how it was in the original sketch, too? "New York's hottest club is..." That's part of why it's funny.

first time i had seen stefon. the whole update was great but that had me almost in tears: puppets in disguise ("oh yes that totally common thing...?"), 300 lb chinese baby dj with little ravioli hands, and then hader cracking when explaining the party room full of human bathmats ("oh you know, it's like that thing where...").

yea i thought all 3 update guest segments really brought the lols & the interplay w/ seth was key

Yeah, I've always liked Garth and Kat, too. The songs have to be improvised, right?

my theory is that Fred is mostly improvising and/or reading, but Wiig has no idea what to expect...Fred stares at the audience while Kristen stares at him the whole time, laughing.

eh i always assumed they were more playing at not knowing what they were gonna say, although there definitely is at least some spontaneity to it

i guess he did say "New York's hottest club" a lot in the first one too but still, they introduced the guy 2 episodes ago and just did the same sketch over again with slightly different jokes. i wish they at least had SOME kind of progress or variation in recurring characters.

If it's scripted, then Armisen and Wiig do an amazing job of making it look spontaneous.

I'm pretty sure it's spontaneous on Wiig's part at least.

I think it's all improv and Fred's just better at not making it obvious it's improv

if it was scripted, it would be hackier/jokier, like the rest of the show

haven't seen the new one yet though

I think it's all improv and Fred's just better at not making it obvious it's improv

I think Fred is the leader and Wiig is the follower in that theater game, so she has to struggle more because she doesn't know what he's going to do.

Yeah, I don't remember what it was like in previous installments, but in this one at least, Armisen definitely took the lead and so Wiig was largely imitating him rather than vice versa. Ideally, when you're doing this kind of improv exercise, it should be more give and take, to the point where the audience is unable to discern a leader at any given moment. But Wiig is pretty good at picking up on and anticipating what he's doing, so it works.

btw this is how my dad sings any song, since he's incapable of remembering lyrics. he's always singing like one or two words behind everyone else.

i liked it the first few times, but i'm just sick of them now. i wish i could be in the writer's room to yell "if they want to see the exact same sketch twice they'll watch it on Hulu or Tivo".

Do they even do improv on SNL? I thought Lorne was notorious for despising/forbidding it?

He must've made an exception for Garth and Kat, because that just wouldn't work at all if it was scripted.

well that would be an example of improv within a very tight, specific framework -- i think generally they're more concerned with keeping the live show on schedule and not having sketches run long and cut into ad time than forbidding any riffing at all. (xpost)

http://www.powerthemagazine.com/issue/apr2009/conversations/michaels/index.html

>I read somewhere, and maybe its wrong, that you frown on improvisation.
No, no, no, I love improv as a source.

>But on your show?
Oh no, no, we never improv on the show.

>And when actors have done it, you ...
They’ve never done it.

[Interviewer laughs]

There are spontaneous moments; I am okay with that, completely okay with that. The problem is that every line of dialogue has a camera shot next to it. So if you are not giving the cue to either the control room or to the other actors you’re working with, and you’re going off on your own, that tends to play as selfish.

So that would suggest to me that Armisen writes it at least.

well, if the problem with improvising is that it throws off the direction of the show, then maybe he would be a bit more lenient with that since weekend update is really only one shot?

Right. And that interview is from April 2009, while the first Garth and Kat sketch was in December 2009, so maybe there really had been no improv before then.

Fred: "Let me improv this bit on Update."
Lorne: "No, we don't do that."
Fred: "I'll stop playing Obama and you'll have to hire a second black actor."
Lorne: "Improv away."

lol

there's stuff in the Live From New York book about how some guys (I think Will Ferrell in particular) would kind of swap out different lines of dialogue from the dress rehearsal to the live show, to crack up the other cast members or keep things more 'live,' and I think that kind of thing has probably always been accepted as long as it doesn't screw with the length of the sketch or the camera cues, so you guys are maybe thinking it's more strict than it really is.

i think there are always moments, esp during update, where a line or joke or gag is thrown in adlibbed, you can always tell because it sticks out and either isn't as funny or is funnier or in any case is unexpected, but it's not the whole skit.

Since Seth is constantly interrupting them and calling them out for not being prepared, I would not be at all surprised if 90% of Garth and Kat is improvised. (Also, while Fred leads most of it, sometimes he does follow Kristen. Also holy lol when he cracked up.)

it'd be a fuckton harder to write out a wandering nonsensical song in full and make it look fake than to just riff it with some basic keywords prepared. lorne doesn't want actors improvising off script in a sketch. But if the gag is two people making up a song as they go along on weekend update, i doubt he'd be like NAY THE COMMANDMENT STANDS

If that isn't improvised, those two are the greatest actors I've ever seen.

fred will be fired next week for improvising off script from his weekend update "improvised song" sketch

It's probably 3/4 improvised, but it's pretty dumb, so who cares. Not near as funny as Stefon. I just want Bill Hader to stop cracking up in the middle of his bit, because if he could sell it straight, it would be golden.

I want people to stop say Kristen Wiig is funny over and over again until it becomes some de facto truth. She's almost always horrifying, you guys.

how are we supposed to repeatedly stop doing something

I feel like you haven't thought this through

Starfish was annoying but totally worth it for Kenan's "STARFISH! Your teeth are in the shot!"

starfish was one of her better VOICE!! AND!! FACES!! characters of recent memory

xp I feel like you didn't edit that post.

Alls I know is, the Target Lady is the reason people without parents choose to cancel their cable and just live off of internet.

i'm just curious who's in the kristen wiig fan club you're raving about

SNL doesn't come on cable.

I mean, it does, but not exclusively.