Saturday Night Live

We've listened to his "Salt and Pepper Diner" bit possibly more than any other stand up bit ever.

I even saw him do it live...and it's still funny)

I've rewatched just the long Bill Clinton story from The Comeback Kid several times as a reminder of the joy of seeing him do it in 2014.

the JT Bittenbinder story is cry my eyes out funny

as is the Delta Airlines bit. Somewhere my son actually drew that sketch out as a comic panel and it was hilarious, I should see if it's still in his room somewhere (he did it when he was like 11).

I actually thought this episode was pretty mediocre, tbh. I liked the monologue most of all found a lot of the other skits boring, except maybe the "Birds" one.

I also liked Kyle as Influencer Baby Yoda but ymmv

I totally liked him, but I like him in most of his bits.

Have sometimes liked Mulaney in the past, but he bugged me this time. The dumb "both sides" line in his standup opening about no matter who wins, we'll have an old White guy running things, and a few other bits in that routine just weren't funny. I did like the Times Square shop musical one (which followed the theme of that airport shop one he did the last time he was on), but not too much else.

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

You can put it in the mail or you can go and write down which elderly man you like and then we'll add them all up, and then we might have the same elderly man, or we might have a new elderly man, but just rest assured, no matter what happens, nothing much will change in the United States.

The rich will continue to prosper while the poor languish, families will be upended by mental illness and drug addiction.

No lie detected?

I thought Dave Chappelle's post-election monologue four years ago was great--ended up watching it three or four times in repeat. Tonight's meandered.

The one four years ago was good but I did let like, then, that he was saying give trump a chance. Tonight’s meandered but I liked it more, but the AIDS joke was unnecessary.

Fucking phone; “I didn’t like, then.....”. I also meant to say I like it even less after four years of living it while people gave him a “chance”

Chappelle is, politically, an idiot. He is also a funny man who thinks a lot about human nature, prejudice and motivation, from a distinct and mildly idiosyncratic perspective. I thought tonight's was much better than four years ago, because he was making several good jokes, several jokes that were funny if you accepted his starting premise, various statements that provided an interesting view into the thought processes of someone with an interesting life, and bcz he wasn't suggesting that we give the world's biggest failson racist idiot a chance to fuck up the world before we assumed he would, based on everything he'd ever done or said.

Hopefully that's the last Baldwin-as-Trump ever: if they need to show him again, and refuse to lose face by hiring Atamanuik, Jay Johnson is 9x funnier than 90% of the cast. It's really charming seeing Carrey bring full-on In Living Colour energy to a dumb sketch show again, but they should overhaul the entire writing staff if they're going to waste him again.

(They should also do this if they bring Sudeikis back as Biden, hire Mulaney as Biden, or use one of the many white guys with veneers already on staff.)

chappelle breaking pete davidson got me

"Jay Johnson is 9x funnier than 90% of the cast" who?

u can call him ray or u can call him jay

It was nice of Dave to not make a joke about how NBC paid Donald Trump $427 million to use their network to sharpen his "executive image" with the electorate, and then let him host SNL a year before his election.

Chappelle standing on that stage in 2017 and condescendingly telling us "I wish Donald Trump luck" was pretty fucking infuriating then and tbh it was pretty hard for me to go along with him standing in the same spot on the day the election was called and make "lol trump is racist" jokes

None of you understand Black people

Chapelle was fine. And he wasn't joking when he said he was nervous. He had things he wanted to say but he mistrusted the audience wanted to hear them. Because he doesn't script himself that struggle is evident in every sentence he delivers, except for the few fallback lines he's prepared that knows will get a predictable reaction.

Someone needs to tell him about nicotine patches though.

Idk I'm biased bc I hate the comedian-as-serious-truthteller meme to start with, but the "I cant tell you the truth without a punchline" got a groan for me - hes not exactly constrained by the demands of a fickle marketplace if he's got stuff to say. Especially when he tried to bail himself out with "Are u triggered, I thought this was a comedy show!" a minute later. Reminded me of the "ME JUST SILLY JOEK MAN" ejector seat Jon Stewart would activate whenever he was backed into a corner. He's one of the greats but I just thought the set was super lazy.

None of you understand Black people

I do! I actually understand every single thing about every Black person who ever lived or ever will live. What I don't understand, is sellouts.

Just kidding, I understand selling out too. I just don't think it's funny.

ok pump yr brakes

there's a ton of comedy out there to keep you happy that doesn't fit the comedian-as-serious-truthteller meme. chapelle isn't doing it as a meme, but as his choice. it's how he wants to perform. as audience it's your privilege to react by hating it. but instead of being lazy, i think it's more that he's worn himself out.

The funniest man in America got on TV for 16 uninterrupted minutes and everyone is picking apart little lines, foh with that

"Jay Johnson is 9x funnier than 90% of the cast" who?

PRES TRUMP TODAY IN CALIFORNIA: " 'WEIRD AL' WAS VERY MEAN TO MR. COOLIO!! DIDN'T ASK FOR RIGHTS. NOT VERY NICE!" pic.twitter.com/kgF5UFYRLP

— thanks austin giving (@shrimpJAJ) October 18, 2020

yeah that is not that funny thanks for playing

it's funny

Yeah he might have cracked the first actually funny trump impression

Wishing--very guardedly and tentatively, as I remember it--an incoming president good luck, which to me translates as "I hope all this nonsense so far was just for attention" (of course the world knows better now; I don't think it was an outrageous hope in 2016), how that is condescending escapes me. But putting that all aside, I found Chappelle's monologue in 2016 really funny--the Bradley Cooper asides were brilliant--and last night's, not funny.

(of course the world knows better now; I don't think it was an outrageous hope in 2016)

We only had 40 years of his public statements and actions to go by in 2016, so it would have been hasty to judge - with 44 of them, we can finally see what he was all about.



(I knew about the Trump content in Chappelle's 2017 monologue before watching it, which surely coloured my appreciation of the rest of it, as opposed to watching last night's cold.)

Those 40 years of statements also had lots of instances where he'd seem to take positions aligned with Democrats. He was all over the place. I know what you're saying, but I wonder how many people honestly expected him to be as unremittingly and as uniquely awful as he turned out to be. You and others will want to argue this. Who cares at this point. But I really don't see Chappelle's words in 2016 as indefensible.

yeah the mr chamillionaire/ scoooby doo guy is the funniest and best Trump impression

Yeah not indefensible by any stretch, agreed that we don’t need another Trump thread, but at that time a Thomas Friedman-ass “lets all hope this confused man rises to the occasion” position about a guy who was taking about sending Obama back to Kenya in 2012, from the guy who is supposed to be famous for telling it like it is it felt like a very disappointing cop out, another celeb on SNL trying to thread the needle

The bits of David Letterman's interview with Chappelle that I've seen represent what I like about him much more than that monologue did.

40 years of statements also had lots of instances where he'd seem

I disagree, but am happy to strike "statements" from my post.

Thing was when Chappelle did that first monolog, Trump was going to be president whether you liked it or not for the next four years. I guess hoping it did not end up the sh1t show it did kind of blows away hoping for the best.

I would have thought it to be ugly and dumb as a stump, but gotdamn king cheetio brought the stupid and malice in equal doses unrelentingly so nearly every single day for 4 years. And the thing ultimately was the dude was able to expand the cult of MAGA another six million votes. WTF...scary.

Whatever the results for 2020 election, I think we got off lucky he did not accidentally start a war and Biden at least defeated him period. It's going to take a good while for the slime that has been brought up from the dregs to settle back down. Democrats better get good at going to the polls and that is the only way to turn this tide, considering the never ending propaganda and money that will flow into every election.

On the off-chance you haven't seen it, I think it's worth looking at the 2016 monologue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--IS0XiNdpk

After an eloquent, lengthy story about visiting the White House himself, Chappelle concluded with this:

"So, in that spirit, I'm wishing Donald Trump luck. And I'm gonna give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too."

I find zero fault with that. Under the circumstances--speaking to an audience and a viewership that was almost to a person nauseous and in shock--I think it's pretty great.

("That don't mean I'm in the Wu-Tang Clan" kills me.)

agree

Ta. If the general audience could be expected to have your level of recollection, he would have missed two big opportunities for callbacks in last night's show: his shock at "a white riot in Portland the other night" hits different in November 2020.

And one wonders if he remembered saying, there, that ongoing mass shootings were a bigger problem than anything Trump might do to the country, when he was writing last night's joke about it taking an unchecked pandemic to slow down mass shootings in America.



(I was startled at the number of N-words last night, and he got a couple in the old one too - are these bleeped on TV, or is there a watershed NBC's allowed to skate or pay fines for, given the specifically off-junction start time?)

I found those unsettling too (not bleeped)...and, last night, not particularly funny.

(I wasn't unsettled, just surprised, given received wisdom on US TV standards.)

yeah I was kinda surprised by the n-bombs too, but maybe we just don't understand Black people

still, no more offensive than Pete Davidson intentionally spitting out his Count Chocula fangs when he broke character like the phony-ass Jimmy Fallon biter he is

Contemplating the presupposition that there's a genus of sincere, honest Jimmy Fallon biters.

She needs better material to work with, but does Maya Rudolph ever have Kamala Harris's voice down. Caught the (not-very-good) VP debate on repeat last night.

How in the world is Morgan Wallen not actually an SNL sketch?

Nice to not have Baldwin/Trump in the cold open!

yes, but it was still not funny. which is something considering the source material.

really, maybe they should have taken this year off.

farting Giuliani!