Saturday Night Live

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!

yes and still less funny than the actual event. SNL seriously hamstrung by the absurdity of the actual proceedings which transcended satire

I've said it before but political satire on SNL was funnier when the state of the state was more benign. I get very little relief from the Trump sketches cos the reality is pretty damn scary.

i do wonder how much last minute rewriting they have to do on SNL these days due to the fact that by the time Saturday rolls around, 75% of the potential jokes about anything topical have already happened on Twitter and elsewhere

I don't think that stops them from using those same jokes.

It doesn't stop Weekend Update, for sure.

Weekend Update wouldn't be funny with good material due to the terrible delivery of each joke

https://i.imgflip.com/1kec70.jpg

I love that he was the one guy that would say "here's the fake news"

and explain half of the jokes

Caught the opening last night. I don't know all the cast members now, but the guy who does Pence might be the worst political impression they've ever regularly aired. These can work because someone looks the same, sounds the same, or says funny things that are either lifted verbatim or--even better--are purely imaginative but capture something elemental about the politician. The best ever for me remains Tina Fey's Palin, which covered all four. The Pence guy isn't even close on a single count.

that's Beck Bennet; that sketch sucked like all their political sketches lately (and moffat isn't filling me with confidence with his Biden either) but he's done a better job as Pence in the past. Pence is so absolutely personality free it's kind of hard to parody him.

Other than that sketch, this episode was good almost the entire way through which is some kind of achievement for this year, even if some of the recycled Wigg bits weren't really different from the past. She's just really good.

Did Jim Carrey cancel at the last minute or was it just a coincidence they had Biden and the Grinch on that ep

Jim Carrey said some time ago he wasn't going to do Biden on an ongoing basis.

I think last week's episode was good? I can't even remember. But last night's definitely was; lots of credit to Dan Levy who was pretty effortless in everything. Does anyone who isn't an asshole dislike Dan Levy?

I love Phoebe Bridgers but her voice sounded kind of weak last night, not sure if it was the mix or what. Smashing the guitar was funny, wish she hadn't had to cut a whole verse out of that song for time though.

Can't speak for the whole episode, but I thought the Super Bowl opening was pretty bad; didn't hang around any longer.

oh yeah that sucked, it was one of the worst parts of the show as almost all cold openings have been for years now. There was some bad direction happening too (I think this happened last week also) where the camera didn't cut to the right person while talking.

That’s been happening all fucking season and it’s kinda embarrassing

Haven't watched a new episode since the Eddie Murphy one, but the recent (I'm guessing?) clip of Bowen Yang as Fran Lebowitz that my husband showed me was pretty great.

the zillow ad made my morning.

I keep on getting suckered into watching clips from this show and they're never very funny (sorry but the Zillow ad is just the latest example.) The Fran Lebowitz thing was -- well, to be honest, it wasn't exactly funny, but at least it was an impersonation that showed some real study had gone into it.

the zillow ad was so well done. I am a basic bitch like that.

the zillow ad was v funny

eephus is a tough audience and knows it. nothing wrong with that.

Dear @SNL, since you stole my Zillow joke last night please Venmo me the sum of 1 million dollars. My full special Cut/Up is on youtube if you need more ideas. pic.twitter.com/lC3yBpcs1h

— Ted Alexandro (@tedalexandro) February 7, 2021

tell it to eephus, ted.