Saturday Night Live

yeah, often sketch people seem more recognizably human than stand-up people

SNL is mostly responsible for blurring the lines between those groups

Going back to SNL, it's becoming clear that all of the late 80s/early 90s male perfomers that I always found stellar on the show -- Lovitz, Spade, Schneider, Norm, Sandler, even Carvey -- are firmly in the "you can't say anything anymore!" white bro culture camp. Burr, Seinfeld, all these people now. I find this sort of self-righteous martyrdom posturing very annoying.

amazing because all of these people have been given tons and tons of chances despite some sketchy material in the past. its almost as if the public kinda understands that not all humor lands & some of it winds up coming off cruel?

Everyone in this thread trying to pinpoint exactly what moves the needle from "funny" to "racist" is some real

everyone should have to read the lindy west column from 2012 about how daniel tosh does rape jokes the wrong way and louis ck does them the right way before making any declarative statement about comedy in public https://t.co/MjZOIFY9TA

— suspense none the richard (@Lowenaffchen) September 19, 2019

I find Shane Gillis' racist bit terrible and lame. But I find this equally(?) racist thing funny. Comedy itself is not something that can be easily boiled down to a chart/graph about punching up and intention and meaning and context. Sometimes you're just a lame!

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

yeah that podcast bit was mostly just wack and boring. Like if you heard those guys talking at the next table you'd text someone about the annoying dipshits you're overhearing

taken on its face, that podcast interaction was so unfunny that I thought it was ironic and/or a caricature of dumb guys

self-caricature is one of the hallmarks of dumb guys, so further caricature is kind of superfluous

lol Whiney OTM

i question your love for that south park clip whiney

tbf poop jokes are funny.

I could watch Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris all day long.

I still don't get Billie Eilish.

Zoomers are so mentally exhausted from growing up on the internet that they can only recognize emotion when having a rubbery-faced man screaming at them on YouTube or a girl whispering ASMR.

I still don't get Billie Eilish.

I saw just enough SNL last night to catch Billie Eilish's first set. I had no idea she existed until last night. Nothing I saw suggested she is in creative control of her career, yet. She looked to me entirely like a packaged product, perhaps a Gaga mini-me.

maya rudolph was great

i feel like kate mckinnon only ever plays one character. is that just me?

that is, every character she portrays she plays the same way

are you sure you're not talking about Keenan?

(I love Keenan)

I caught most of Eilish's set on the Coachella live stream and thought she was pretty good. Try that (if still available) to get a better idea of her. I agree last night wasn't that good.

I thought the entire show seemed clunkily executed so eilish may have been hit by that too.

I lol'd at McKinnon's delivery of "I have the energy of a mother of five boys who all play a different sport, let's do this" and Harrelson/Biden's straw joke.

that is, every character she portrays she plays the same way

― Non stop chantar (crüt), Sunday, September 29, 2019 2:59 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

YESSS. There's an unappealing thirstiness about her as well

but she's funny so thirsty doesn't seem the right word? I kind of categorize it as a strong confidence in her comedy.

And Bowen Yang wasn't funny at all, the material was poor but he just doesn't seem to be a comic performer.

The material was very poor, but a good actor can add value to bare lines through expressions, gestures, inflections and timing. He had nuthin' to add.

i searched awhile for an image of dan aykroyd doing motion capture expressions for the yogi bear movie

I thought this was a decent enough season starter but they had plenty of good material to use. Keenan still MVP, I don't care if he's the same in every single sketch, guy is completely lovable, which is not a term I'd use for many other cast members in the show's history.

Kyle Mooney's dad rap video was dumb

Other late in the show sketches were pretty good though I think the screw up with wardrobe and the ensuing breakdown saved that one panel sketch.

Billie Eilish's album is excellent, she wasn't a bad performer but singing over a vocal track in Bad Guy was kind of weak.

I figure it would be more efficient for me to start listing times when Mooney is funny instead of bad.

otm. I think the last time I found Mooney funny is that sketch with him and Beck Bennett as the brothers who fight and have to be hosed down (though that didn't work nearly as well the second time, and hopefully won't recur). And the failed comedian guy on Update.

Other late in the show sketches were pretty good though I think the screw up with wardrobe and the ensuing breakdown saved that one panel sketch.

I don't think the screwup was with wardrobe; it was the direction. The camera was supposed to be just on Kenan, which is why the wardrobe person ran on. During that sequence, the camera is never on who's talking; it looked like the director or someone else in the booth got confused and just went for the wide shot, but that happened to be the moment when the wardrobe person needed to help Aidy.

"Hello everyone, I'm so excited to be back and ruin things a second time," David's Sanders says in his opening comments.
"Last time, my slogan was 'Feel the Bern,' " he added. "This time, it's 'Let's burn this place to the ground.' "

Fuck your little neolib show, guys.

"let's bern this place to the ground" was the only part of Larry David's Bernie that got as much as a mild chuckle from me

Very worrisome, given the powerful and determinative role Saturday Night Live has historically played in presidential elections.

a symptom, you knave

Worth a watch re: SNL's role in Trump's election

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gQFvf19Jec

very good, tho i have never seen that Jost guy (v punchable)

I think he just does Weekend Update (he's been a writer since 2005 and became head writer in 2017)

The Rudy Ray Moore/Royal Family skit made me laugh. Kenan Thompson is still the best thing about this show by some distance.

The monologue was great. Very few are.

just caught up on the Woody episode, wow what an absolute disaster. that whole show I think the "five boys who play a different sport" line was the only thing that made me laugh

i thought the game show and local news skits at the beginning of this episode were 2 very good renditions of overused SNL rubrics

the opening political sketches are prob some of the most embarrassing "comedy" i've ever seen tho

Bowen Yang's weekend update bit was pretty good.

cryptosicko otm. Best sketch of the night. But ugh that old-guy news thing was interminable. I would've much rather seen another Heidi Gardner girlfriend-from-a-boxing-movie bit.

And every time I see Matthew Broderick, I can only think of how he killed two people and got off with a $175 fine.

But ugh that old-guy news thing was interminable.

it was weird to end update w this

overall not really a good ep imo

More SNL neoliberal crap. They hate Bernie, which is no surprise. This version of the show would be pro-Nixon in '68. https://t.co/nQnkcZJBI6

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) October 27, 2019

they are jokes and awfully mild ones, ffs

I really like the proportions of chance the rapper's arms. So weird but I couldn't stop looking at them during the opening monologue.

This was a really bad episode. Everything seemed way underrehearsed.

Most of the sketches were undercooked or awkward (the flying one was a mess; the physical demands of the bit totally threw off any sense of rhythm or timing), but I thought the graveyard skit was really funny, and Chance was an engaging presence throughout the episode.

yeah he was a good host. musical performances were really good too. again, I was stoned so I found the whole episode amusing enough. the flying sketch started stupid but got funny for some reason.