Kate McKinnon’s Carole Baskin impression is feeling very SNL in this first Joe Vs. Carole trailer
Co-starring John Cameron Mitchell as Joe Exotic, the Peacock series dramatizes the Tiger King conflict
TV News Carole
Quick question: Who is Joe Vs. Carole, Peacock’s new dramatized take on the tiger-based rivalry between big cat people Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic, actually for?
Because if there’s a single signifier for how swiftly, distressingly weird things got when we were all first getting used to the dull gray realities of Pandemic Life, it’s got to be the rapid ascent (and subsequent downfall) of Netflix’s Tiger King.
Rebecca Chaiklin and Eric Goode’s docuseries about potentially murderous in-fighting between the owners of large felines arrived in March of 2020, i.e., the exact right moment for something bright and loud and trashy to act as a security blanket for our panicking brains. “I might spend 20 minutes a day washing my hands right now, and I’ve been fist-fighting my neighbors for toilet paper,” we’d mutter to ourselves. “But at least I’m not one of the people from Tiger King.”
Fast-forward two years, though, and the trailer for Joe Vs. Carole—which dramatizes the Exotic/Baskin conflict with John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon in the title roles—feels bizarre at best, and two years past its sell-by date at worst. (See also the second season of Tiger King itself, which we just had to go double-check ever actually come out.)
Mitchell, at least, is doing a fairly interesting spin on Exotic’s hyper-masculinized vibe of barely contained anger; McKinnon looks and sounds like she pulled a bag labeled “Dead Husband Tiger Woman” off the discount rack at Spirit Halloween. (Which isn’t to say she won’t be funny; Kate McKinnon is often tremendously funny. But the resemblance to Baskin, in appearance, voice, and manner, is decidedly yet to be proven.)
Joe Vs. Carole is being showrun by Etan Frankel, best known for Animal Kingdom and Shameless. The eight-episode series co-stars Kyle MacLachlan, Brian Van Holt, Sam Keeley, Nat Wolf, Marlo Kelly, William Fichtner, Dean Winters, and David Wenham.
The series is set to debut on Peacock on March 3, 2022.
95 Comments
This is like beating a dead horse. The story’s moment in the spotlight ended two years ago. Outside of clarifying that Don either probably was killed a drug cartel or crashed his plane in the ocean, there’s nothing left to talk about.
This is like reburying a dead abused malnourished tiger.
Yes. How and why is this still relevant?
It’s not.
NBC is just really behind the curve and starved for content.
Play Seinfeld and Friends reruns ftw…
Some notes: Joe fighting a volcano is exciting, for a sequel you’ve got to have something that tops that or people will just watch the original again. I don’t think a Carole really ups the stakes from a volcano.
I would watch a Joe Vs the Volcano sequel.
TK2 got panned badly, but one thing that it did do right (AFAIK; I only watched the Carole-centric parts) was that it admitted that Don was a super-sketchy sleazoid who was headed toward jail if not a shallow grave under any circumstances. That, of course, was Carole’s contention all along, but everyone who was primed by too many true-crime podcasts that seemed to solve (or revise) decades-old crimes walked past the real shady operators to point fingers at someone who just wanted to save the big kitty-cats. Plus, of course, Don’s first wife and family, who seem to have no nobler motivation for pursuing this than that they didn’t get a big enough cut of Don’s estate. They don’t come off well in TK2, either; one daughter yells at Don’s ex-handyman in his driveway, and later enlists the help of a “psychic” who is comically inept even at faking it.As for this movie, I’m not going to subscribe to Peacock to see it, but if it filters down to one of the other streaming services, I might have a looksee. Katie Mac is funny, but (as Ghostbusters ‘16 proved) that’s not enough to carry a problematic project.
Everybody wanted to root for the crazy gay tiger guy and to do that, you had to root against (and be okay with him trying to kill) Carole. The sad truth is that Joe used the fun loving gay tiger guy persona to hide some pretty abusive and exploitative personality traits.
I’m not going to subscribe to Peacock to see it
Pretty sure Peacock is free.
Well, then… guess I still won’t.
Their originals are not free.
yeah but if you have an older TV like my parents (not a Smart TV etc.), you actually have to pay in order to have the “free” channel of Peacock as even as option on your TV.
You have no idea how pissed my Dad is that he can’t watch MacGruber.
I think Don raped the wrong 15 year old girl and her family took care of him.
It’s worse than beating a dead horse. If you beat a dead horse for long enough, something gross and interesting usually comes out. This is like wringing a dry sponge.
The story’s moment in the spotlight ended two years ago.
So was COVID’s and yet here we are. 😀
Tiger King ended tho, COVID did not.
Both just keep persisting though, like the viruses they are.
Playing up Carole is a murderer, which is beyond ridiculous, is how Netflix “both sides” this story because it makes a lot of people feel good to see a “bad woman” whenever a bad man is presented for totally not misogyny. This conflict and drama gets eyeballs and gets people talking, which creates profit for Netflix. Also its important for capitalism to make animal rescue groups look like weirdo crazies because if it didn’t then we’d all have open and frank discussions on animal suffering in the meat industry and how our diet contributes to some very awful and morally wrong things. So its a double whammy of “wimmin bad” and “vegans stupid” sentiment that middle America seems to love so much.Now Peacock is trying to run the same con and hopes all the people who believed the dishonesty of the Netflix documentary are going to flock over to them to see how bad Carole really is. They are probably right, it will make a lot of money, but its pathetic.
This is what you worked your ass of for 10 season of SNL, Kate?
Yes. Exactly this. She quite SNL to do this. Aside from her not quitting SNL and her doing a holy shit FUCKTON of other stuff WHILE still doing SNL.
Was there anything resembling a point to your cunty snark?
She’s an amazing performer but the right movie/show never seems to come along.
She did make the mistake of being in the Ghostbuster movie that decided to be slightly original(and still kinda sucked) as opposed to the one that was basically just a 2 hour and 20 minute hand job to the fans.
I do like her in the Magic School Bus reboot…
slightly original? Cmon, it lazily tried to reverse engineer the first movie and had just as much fanwank
Just as much fanwank? I am pretty sure if you saw Afterlife in theaters, the ghost of Harold Ramos personally sucked your dick at the end. Ghostbusters 2016 was 2/3rds of a fun movie(its the last act that really sucks), Afterlife was just crap all the way through. No idea why people liked it so much.
After sitting through all 900 minutes of Jurassic World, I swore off nostalgia baiting legacy sequels unless they restrain themselves to a tight 110 minutes (tops). It’s been a surprisingly effective strategy, since nobody can make a shit movie under 2.5 hours.
Been watching some 80s classics with my son lately and it surprises me how many of them are not only under two hours but many are a tight 90 minutes.
“Slightly original” is not how I would describe a movie that ends with the same sky portal laser thing that’s been used in the third act of every vaguely sci-fi movie from the last 15 years.
That’s a very favorable description of a movie whose ideas consisted mainly of inverting things from the original movie in obvious and uncreative ways. The Ghostbusters are now female! The wacky assistant is now a guy, and instead of mousy, he’s super hot! I don’t have the raging hate boner that much of the internet had for that movie, but I also don’t think it was particularly original or particularly good. It was a movie that seemed like they once they had the rather obvious concept, it pretty much wrote and/or improvised itself.
Ghostbusters 2016 wasn’t a comedy masterpiece or even particularly clever, but I had a lot fun watching it. Or maybe I just find Kristen Wiig funny something like 95% of the time. Still haven’t seen Afterlife, and I don’t imagine liking it.
I do like her. She was great on SNL (so is McKinnon) and Bridesmaids was really funny. I dunno, the movie just did nothing for me. It seemed very carelessly put together.I don’t quite understand Wiig’s career of late. After Bridesmaids I figured it was a forgone conclusion that she’d become sort of the female Seth Rogen or Will Ferrell or one of those guys, appearing in a long succession of improv-heavy, Apatow-esque comedies. And I figured most of them would be pretty damn funny. But that really didn’t happen. She made Ghostbusters (expected), did a bunch of voiceover work, had a small part in The Martian, was in a couple of indie movies, was in a Wonder Woman movie for some reason… I don’t know if she didn’t want to get pigeonholed or just wasn’t interested in being that kind of star or what, but it feels like she squandered her momentum.
“Kate McKinnon’s Carole Baskin impression is feeling very SNL in this first Joe Vs. Carole trailer”
So…did you just not see John Cameron Mitchell’s Joe Exotic impression?
Take all, ALL the production money that this show sucked up, and instead just make a fucking awesome documentary about tigers, and throw the rest of the money towards actually ensuring the species survives and thrives.
Just…nobody asked for this. What a fucking waste of talent, too. Christ.
Not only does the show feel dated already, but I think that casting McKinnon as Carole feels really off considering the kind of shift in that perception. Not necessarily on pop culture front, but if anyone followed the story. She no longer feels like this over the top caricature, but rather someone seemingly unfairly maligned who was just trying to do good. Which really isn’t what you are going for with McKinnon.
Very unnecessary to fictionalize this when the documentary is still out there. And, the documentary wasn’t that great. I mean, Joe Exotic tried to have Carole Baskins murdered, and yet, SHE comes off as the bad guy in it. Doesn’t seem fair to me.
She didn’t come off as the bad guy. A bunch of internet misogynists decided she had offed her husband, and that’s what everyone ran with.
Yeah. Except for the one episode focused too intensely on trying to make us question what happened to her husband (when the probable answer was obvious), overall I think they portrayed her about right: as a very kooky lady who was about the only noble person in a business full of shady, cynical characters, and someone rather baffled by the mostly one-sided rivalry she found herself in.
“the documentary wasn’t that great.”
I’d even argue that it was actively mediocre. It was seven episodes of a story that could only fill 4 1/2.
They had to leave out all of the racism and sex with stuffed tigers or the material would have been unpalatable to general audiences.
His Joe voice isn’t very good at all. And his teeth are too good.
Is this the guy that’s gonna fill all those David Spade roles that we’ve been lacking for so long?
Get out of here. John Cameron Mitchell has a much better career than David Spade will ever dream of. Let’s see David Spade write and direct a Hedwig or Short Bus. David Spade couldn’t even blow up his school and become a member of the Band of the Hand.
The male actor looks like “Joe Exotic” is just a country music stage persona and not an actual meth-addled dumbass criminal. Can’t the actor at least try to look like a drug addict with delusions of grandeur?
Yes… see Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
The male actor created Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
I didn’t watch Tiger King, but doesn’t Carole Baskin have a female friend — or could they gin one up? — so that she could be played by Aidy Bryant and they could just use their “incompetent shop keeper” voices?
That’s the buddy movie that we need so hard.
The Tiger King situation is one where the truth is stranger than fiction. As such, there’s no need for this. The original documentary was [more than] enough.
The original Louis Theroux doc was already more than enough
Remember when we wanted this? March 2020 was a tough time for all of us. We made poor decisions.
Not a huge surprise, as McKinnon is not an impressionist.She plays lots of real-life people on SNL, but they’re never impressions. She always plays them as versions of the same Kate-McKinnon-Weirdo character. (Which can be funny! But she’s not a sharp impressionist at all.)
Imo, a good comedy impressionist makes the character funny by getting the little details and personality quirks down pat without having to overact, otherwise it feels like a caricature instead of a character. One example I can think of is Debra Wilson’s impersonation of Whitney Houston. It was funny, but not over-the-top (It also helped that Debra could sing very well).
Yeah, every Kate McKinnon “character” is just a different costume for Kate to do the same schtick in.
Honestly, impressionists comedian never made a successful actors. They only find the groove in other medium when they actually not starred based on real life individuals they used to caricatured on stage.
In case of Kate McKinnon, I’m afraid she is not a lead actress level, yet (maybe). She hasn’t find a groove outside her comfort zone to be a versatile actress.
It’s sad because she was great on The Big Gay Sketch Show with all of the characters she played.
I dunno. I got bored by the doc and gave up after a few episodes. Maybe because I have no allegiance to the original—to me this looks pretty great. Also I’ll take scripted wackos over unscripted wackos any day.
Kyle MacLachlan really needs a better agent.
Well, that trailer sure left me feeling nothing.
I’ll watch it for JCM. If they lean into the camp it will be worth while.
Not only is this story a shitty reheat, this looks entirely like an SNL sketch. Like, not just McKinnon’s Carole Baskin, Mitchell doesn’t make for a particularly enticing Joe Exotic and THAT is saying something.Who wants this?
Kate’s not playing Joe???
The problem with a Tiger King movie is that the wacky tiger people story plays like a comedy but when you peel back half a layer all the stories are fucking bleak and none of the characters make you want to root for them.
Help me out here, folks. If I didn’t watch the original Tiger King, don’t know anything about the original Tiger King, am not interested in the original Tiger King, and also am not interested in a dramatization of the original Tiger King…is this show for me?
No. Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place is currently on Amazon Prime. Go watch that instead.
No, Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place is currently on Youtube. Go watch that there instead.
Hopefully she isn’t doing her stupid Sessions voice
Never mind.
I think we all just wanted a five minute SNL Tiger King skit with Kate as Carole Baskin,but instead we get a six part miniseries. Hard pass. At least the people behind the Amazon Tiger King project with Nic Cage as Joe Exotic realized it wasn’t necessary and the project didn’t go forward.
I’d posit that a project with Nic Cage playing Joe Exotic is ALWAYS necessary.
The best I can say is that it meant Kate took a half-season break from SNL and more people got a chance to shine…
Hey…. I know this is a lot to ask because I’ve seen several articles this passed year that discuss a new trailer that don’t even have the link to the trailer available, but, is there anyway the AV Club could post videos that can also be viewed by Canadians? It’s a very minor inconvenience that I open a new tab and search it myself but…. would it be too much to ask for USA to acknowledge that Canada is the second largest country in north america and we make up probably a significant chunk of viewership on this website?
Thanks.
USA actually isn’t the only country in north america although I’ve met many americans that feel that way. We exist!
I’m from an outback country town called Toronto so you guys wouldn’t care.
JK Toronto is a massive chunk of your viewership I’m sure. Get your shit together AV Club. Nobodies forgiven you yet for the Chicago-LA thing yet.
I see Mckinnon went to the Zoolander school of acting.
What’s with John Cameron Mitchell’s obsession on playing the worst kind of gay characters? He really loves those evil guys and he is obsessed on hamming them up to the stratosphere.
When is SNL going to stop their whole “Please love me!!!” parade of “comics” who all seem to have the whole Jolson “Mammy!” thing down and the look into the camera that says “get it??” They’re all terrible. Going all the way back to Belushi and Larraine Newman.
A whole fucking season? Madness. Peacock goes right to the bottom of the barrel already.
Fuck, no. I can’t imagine a show I’m less interested in.Two years ago, after haranguing from friends, I gave in and watched Tiger King and it was one of the least interesting, least enjoyable television experiences I can recall, outside of when an old girlfriend used to make me watch Big Bang Theory.It was just a depressing carousel of pathetic people and amounted to nothing more than “laugh at ignorant, narcissistic, white trash,” but Donald Trump supporters already fill that niche for me.
Anyone who has seen literally any Kate McKinnon character on SNL should have been prepared for this. She has no range. Every single one of them has the exact same mannerisms and voice.
I will probably watch this because I have an obsession with White Trash. Stevie, The Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, etc.
Goddamnit. Why?I think that Kate McKinnon is funny but not much of an actress. I don’t see how this will be anything other than Kate McKinnon doing Kate McKinnon shit. The Tiger King doc was fun in real time because we all needed a diversion, and it had a bit of a “Wait, wtf?” thing going on. It was fun to watch in the way that a .gif of things exploding is fun to watch. It was fun to laugh at, and not with, the scuzzy rogues gallery that comprised the cast. There but for the grace of God go I, and all that… Tiger King 2? Godawful. The family brings in a damn psychic and we’re supposed to take it seriously, I guess? What? Everyone feels bad for diming out Joe? What??? Now a show about it all? Nah. Pass.
What’s the point in re-enacting scenes from the actual documentary, which is still available on Netflix, and anything in it is more batshit than anything that can be invented about these wackos?
Remember when the AV Club used to cover music, and they’d do a brilliant annual end-of-year list of the Least Essential albums? I think they could revive that concept, but with streaming series.