Kieran Culkin makes a solid, three-decades-later Saturday Night Live return
At least the Succession star didn't have to compete with his big brother for attention this time
TV Reviews Saturday Night Live
“What an unexpected and frankly horny surprise.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [mercifully well-adjusted and successful former child] star!!”
In his monologue, Kieran Culkin noted the mixed messaging he gets when people tell him he’s perfectly cast as Succession’s fecklessly snarky Roman Roy. That’s the curse of a character actor, which Culkin has most assuredly become since his days spent in his big brother Macauley’s Home Alone-sized shadow. And while the now middle-aged former child star has forged an impressive resumé since his Father Of The Bride and Nowhere To Run days, being a go-to choice for directors in search of a wanly sarcastic ensemble member isn’t a bad niche to live in.
Culkin wasn’t shy about his past association with Saturday Night Live, playing a clip of the nine-year-old him looking poutily at host brother Macauley’s triumphant ride on the 1991 cast’s shoulders during the goodnights. (The young Kiran eventually, channeling all little brothers everywhere, finally got Kevin Nealon to hoist him up, too, so he could try to steal Macauley’s thunder with some hammy posing.) Referring to his semi-retired brother throughout as “Mac,” Culkin carried over his monologue reminiscences into his own goodnights, with Chris Redd and Kenan Thompson sneaking up for a thirty-years-later cast member ride around the Studio 8H stage which, even if choreographed ahead of time, capped off Culkin’s winning appearance with a warm little touch suited to someone clearly so happy to be there.
And I was happy to see him, honestly. Nothing the writers came up with for him to do was especially inspired, but Culkin was game to appear in a skintight turkey costume and rap at one point, while his acting chops grounded the mostly straight-man roles he was given otherwise. I suppose the one big swing he was given didn’t really work, but the off-key execution of a weird premise (Seabiscuit period piece veers unexpectedly into 90s skaterboy ska-rock video) can’t be laid at Culkin’s Vans. Culkin channeled the era’s extreme Mountain Dew bro vibe pretty impeccably, and, while the tonal switch of the sketch is suitably jarring, the resulting, horse-surfing shenanigans play out with a wheeze.
Culkin’s performances throughout the episode are more than capable, but he was rarely the funniest part of any sketch. Guy who can’t get his cable disconnected; guy who gets stuck embarrassedly reading disaster news in a turkey suit; Jason Mraz, nonplussed as to why Dionne Warwick is making fun of his fedora—these are not roles designed to allow the host to drive a show. Still, Culkin did what character actors do, fitting in and making what he was given a little better. Not funnier, necessarily, but better.
Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night
The Best: As invested (literally) as SNL has become in product placement in recent years, I’m giving points for a sketch I assume was not underwritten by cable provider Spectrum. Now, nobody’s saying that this cable company is any better or worse than any other, but I will share that I related pretty strongly to Culkin’s character as he attempted to get Spectrum’s robotically friendly but preternaturally unhelpful customer service people to just let him cancel his service already. (Here’s to the guy who called to say he was outside my apartment ready to install equipment I’d never asked for the day after I inquired about cable prices that one time.)
It’s a hackneyed comic idea, sure, (check out Superego’s Rockstone Investments sketch for an all-around better example) but the sketch gave Culkin some prime fuming to do, and pretty much the entire cast opportunities to get some screen time as the parade of smilingly unhelpful helpers on the other end of the phone. (And Cecily Strong as the recorded on-hold voice touting Spectrum’s “no-nut November” sexless movie recommendations.) Apart from perhaps exorcising some collective customer service trauma, the sketch isn’t hard-hitting or anything. But it is admirably funny in how each successive operator has their own idiosyncratic way of being unhelpful, with the running joke that Culkin’s getting a landline he doesn’t want recurring with expertly timed regularity.
The maddening experience of being ensnared in bureaucracy’s web is ripe for absurdity, and if Culkin’s hapless customer isn’t going to get his cable disconnected (and he’s not), the journey suggests the human toll for people on both sides of the receiver. The reps who aren’t automatons at this point are on the edge of breakdown, with Heidi Gardner’s tearful operator seizing upon the recently broken-up Culkin’s expressed unhappiness to break out in sobs, and Ego Nwodim’s rep seemingly as baffled by the messages the hot-potato transfer system is sending her as Culkin is. It’s a quick-moving, nimbly funny bit of business throughout, finally seeing the frazzled Culkin shocked by installer Kenan’s appearance inside his apartment, ready to hook up that landline. There is no escape. You’re getting a landline.
The Worst: The Jockey is too flat to carry off its own absurd premise. Again, Culkin’s not at fault here, as his cluelessly rad horse-surfer is pitch-perfect to the period stereotype the sketch gives him. But once the snap of the joke is revealed the energy all bleeds out of this one, leaving the short filmed piece feeling interminably long by the time Culkin’s rider is finally trampled to death. Here I will toss in a compliment to James Austin Johnson, though. He’s got one line as a somber doctor in the old-timey framing device, and he’s so present and inhabited in the role that I wanted to follow him around for a while instead.
The Rest: On the other hand, The Heist takes a simple joke and couches it in a peerlessly accurate approximation of a glib Hollywood crime story. Culkin’s good as the smug mastermind whose plan for a slick Lambo heist is foiled by thief Chris Redd’s inability to drive stick. That is a simple joke, but from such humble ideas come some inspired silliness, as Redd’s cocky Ghost never cops to the fact that the “new-new tech, military maybe” standing in his way is a simple manual transmission. Redd is great at channeling outsized types unwilling to admit doubt, and Ghost, nodding along placidly to the patient instructions of both boss Culkin and sexy Russian client Gardner, never lets his braggadocio waver. (“Bitch, I can drive anything!” “Including stick?” [Long pause while working a toothpick in the corner of his mouth] “Nawww…”) Throw in Kenan unable to contain his laughter as the tied-up security guard, and I’m happy.
The men’s room sketch fumbles at the goal line when, seemingly, everybody blows the closing cue (perhaps thrown off by surprise guest Tracy Morgan’s ever-loose relationship with live TV pacing). Before then, though, its a very funny showcase for Redd, Bowen Yang, Culkin, Andrew Dismukes, and Alex Moffat, as their office workers’ innocent trip to relieve themselves turns melodramatically introspective about guys’ penchant for performative bro-nonchalance at the urinal. The first time Yang turns to camera and, bathed in a blue spotlight, confesses his inability to refrain from mindless chatter with his fellow men’s room men, the premise takes off.
Redd is especially funny, his character’s sweaty need to spout every meaningless bit of guy-talk he can think of (“’See you on the ice’? Is that even a saying?”) collapsing once he, too, stares into the abyss of bluff male banter. I love some unanticipated escalation, so Alex Moffat finally confessing to himself that the too-loud men’s room joshing is the only thing that can distract him from the gnawing guilt of having killed a man back in 2012 took the whole scenario up a notch. And if Tracy’s crowd-erupting emergence from a bathroom stall got swamped by the sketch’s messy ending, the joke that it was his brother that Moffat killed is at least a rare button on an SNL sketch.
“Wake Up Rhode Island” is where Culkin gets into that turkey suit, as his local weatherman unwisely took the last few nights neglecting the approach of an upcoming superstorm to work on both his Thanksgiving costume and accompanying rap. It’s the most energetically goofy as Culkin’s allowed to be all night, even though he once more winds up playing straight man after his rapping turkey dance is interrupted by an especially dire emergency broadcast system alert. (“May God have mercy on your souls,” concludes the announcement’s robot voice.)
The laughs (apart from Culkin’s cluelessly silent dancing behind the interrupting emergency crawl) come from Kenan’s co-anchor inexplicably shouting “Boo!” in disapproval as Cecily’s other anchor keeps trying to get the breaking disaster story back on track. And from Punkie Johnson’s field reporter who, her innocent beachside story about boy scouts picking up litter turned suddenly tragic, responds to Cecily’s question about the boys’ whereabouts with an anguished, “The sea took them!!”
Weekend Update Update
It was all about one correspondent piece tonight, really, so I’ll just give the usual props to Che and Jost for some above-average deliveries of above-average jokes, complain that they’re not doing enough with the whole satirical newscast concept, and move on. (Che won the night by joking about Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe losing to Republican race-baiter Glenn Youngkin by joking that “losers in Virginia usually get a statue.”)
First up was Kenan, bringing back his Ice Cube now that the actor and rapper has publicly added “unemployable anti-vaxxer” to his name. Kenan’s always Kenan, really, as he’s not so much an impressionist as a cheekily endearing put-on artist. But he does snap off Cube’s particular cadence and confrontational style (Che is appropriately baffled by Cube calling him “Bozo” for no reason), and, once Kenan Thompson really sinks himself into a character, the comic momentum is impossible to resist.
The joke here is twofold. One rests on Cube’s belligerent belief that nobody tells Ice Cube what to do, as the prolific former rap icon angrily laments all the projects derailed by his decision to hop on the anti-science, coworker-endangerment train. Sadly, we’ll never get to see Cube starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s aborted Uh Oh, Twist Comin’. (The twist: there is no twist. As Cube tells Che, “Everybody went home and the day was a good day.”) The second spin is that Kenan’s Cube can’t help but admit that Che’s suggestions for how Hollywood will proceed without him are actually pretty reasonable, with Kenan downshifting into head-nodding reason at Che’s reasoning that finding a second lead for a movie called Oh Hell No might not be that difficult. We’ve reached the pandemic tipping point where mocking the willfully unvaccinated is the only way to go (see below), and at least Ice Cube (no stranger to some deeply disappointing personal beliefs) finally admits, in Kenan’s version at least, that it’s all about being scared of the needle.
But it’s Cecily Strong’s night. At the end of her appearance as Goober the Clown, Strong urges SNL to “disable the comments,” but, in her four minutes as the garishly decked-out Goober, Strong offers up one of the most eloquently strange (and sure to be commented on) pro-choice statements on TV this year. There to address the upcoming Supreme Court debates on Texas’ latest, Old West bounty-based end-run around Roe v. Wade, Strong’s Goober persona functioned as a bracing commentary on how the comedian felt she had to find new and disarming ways to introduce the topic. And it fell away almost immediately, as Strong’s clown, hurriedly and loudly twisting an indifferent ballon animal for Colin Jost, revealed that she had had an abortion when she was 23.
Is this Cecily Strong telling her story through Shakes The Clown-style metaphor? I honestly don’t know, although the way that Jost, interrupting Goober’s manic presentation, refers to Cecily by her real name, sure suggests that it is. “It’s a rough subject, so we’re gonna do fun clown stuff to make it more palatable!,” exclaimed Strong’s Goober, before getting Jost to lean in for the old squirting flower gag, leaving the anchor mopping his face as Goober laid out her clown-abortion story on live television. Cecily Strong’s long been a vocal pro-choice advocate, a spokesperson role that’s often been couched in comedy, and her appearance here deconstructs just how it feels to be a professional comic tasked with talking about something important to her. And it’s riveting stuff.
“It’s a worm, I don’t know,” Strong brushes off Jost’s question about her snakelike balloon creation, her animated clown voice slipping for just a moment before she hurriedly throws it back on. The current move by Republican legislatures to ban abortion (emboldened as they are by a GOP-stuffed conservative Court) has brought the ever-simmering issue to a head, and Strong’s appearance here emerges as a bizarrely affecting plea for people to understand how many women have had abortions, how talking about their abortions needn’t be loaded with shame, and how now is the time for real talk, should Americans have any hope of thwarting the anti-abortion movement’s momentum. All while punctuating her points about how a third of all American women have abortions in their lifetime, and the deeply personal pain of navigating societal judgements about abortion (and doctors’ dumb-ass jokes), with helium voices, spinning bow ties, and other distracting clown patter.
“I know I wouldn’t be a clown on TV here today if it weren’t for the abortion I had the day before my 23rd birthday,” Goober/Cecily says, finally, her voice squeaky with balloon-gas, a performer’s smile plastered on her face. The best jesters tells the truth while distracting you with tricks, and Strong making the necessary and heartfelt statement that all abortion bans will bring about is “a bunch of dead clowns in a dark alley” while inhaling helium and dressed in clown clothes is an all-time striking TV moment. Sometimes you laugh so you don’t cry, and sometimes you make people laugh to make them listen for a change. Bring on those comments.
“What do you call that act?” “I Married A Monkey!”—Recurring Sketch Report
It wasn’t a “sneaker-upper,” per se, as singing legend Dionne Warwick’s appearance on Ego Nwodim’s Dionne Warwick talk show sketch was obviously planned for the 80-year-old guest star. “Sneaker-uppers” are, according to Tina Fey, backstage term for when SNL engineers a would-be surprise appearance from a celebrity, supposedly incensed at a cast member’s impression of them. And, as Fey explained in Bossypants, they roundly and routinely drag the show down, along with the mood of writers assigned to the crowd-pleasing but generally deadly stunts.
Here, however, Ego’s Warwick, born as it was out of the singer’s unlikely emergence as Twitter’s amusingly unplugged auntie, has always been more affectionate than cutting. And Warwick finally showing up at the end of this one to sing a duet of “What The World Needs Now” is undeniably as sweet as it is comically inert. It’s nice. Nwodim having a recurring character is a good thing, and the concept of the sketch—that the regally out-of-touch Warwick can barely be bothered to know what a Post Malone is—is low-key charming whenever it pops up. Here, Chloe Fineman’s solid Miley Cyrus is brushed off as “Miley Circus” after clearing up Warwick’s confusion about Doja Cat. (Singer, not a Pokémon.)
When the real Warwick comes out (in a nearly matched silver-spangled ensemble to Nwodim), there’s no bite to the stunt, and that’s fine. I’m not looking for Saturday Night Live to really stick it to the estimable Ms. Warwick. But “nice” isn’t very exciting, is all I’m saying.
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
James Austin Johnson was hired for SNL largely thanks to his viral impression of Donald Trump. Of his genuinely impressive Trump, Johnson has said that the improvisational approximation of Trump’s own rambling, track-hopping oratorial style is what made it work, noting, prior to getting the SNL gig, “When I go online and I watch other people’s Trump impressions, they’re so written out, with these written-out jokes. It just doesn’t sound like Trump.” So it was with some trepidation that I saw Johnson’s Trump finally make his SNL debut in this fifth episode of the season, wondering just how Johnson’s inimitable, free-form take on Trump would translate to SNL’s more necessarily cue card-bound format.
I needn’t have worried. There’s the impression itself, which simply eclipses all of Alec Baldwin’s years of labored, lurching hamminess right from Johnson’s first lines. Johnson is a technician, and it’ll be interesting to see if his meticulous craftsmanship will extend to regular sketch work out of the prosthetics. But, man, is he outstanding at the craft, his Trump’s swallowed syllables and garrulous topic-jumping punctuated with specific vocal tics that all ping off of our collective memories of the man. (Baldwin basically just hit the misapplied soft “G” in words like “China,” while Johnson marks out an entire lexicon of elided consonants and sudden pitch changes.) It’s uncanny enough that the crowd wasn’t roaring in the easy laughter Baldwin’s Trump was greeted with, a comically potent unease I can only hope Lorne doesn’t see as a weakness.
As to the necessary looseness of Johnson’s portrayal, the whole ESPN-style rundown ticker of topics at the side of the screen is a masterful compromise. With the ever-showboating Trump shunting aside Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin (Alex Moffat) in favor of a 60-second clock for him to run through everything that’s on his mind, we watch each upcoming subject line (“advice,” “Star Wars,” lasers vs. swords,” “Dune”) with anticipation, as Johnson’s Trump careens through his off-the-cuff gibberish, ticking off point after point in deliriously funny meandering lockstep. It’s like a glorious little magic trick, melding Johnson’s need to imbue his Trump with a freeform absurdity with the show’s need to keep the sketch moving forward.
These cold opens have long been a dire slog, the obligatory nature of the beast—and, it’s got to be said, SNL’s lukewarm satirical instincts—turning the top spot of the last four-plus years’ shows into a chore for everybody involved. And while Season 47 has introduced some variety in the all-Trump formula, I have to say I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing James Austin Johnson turn the cold open into appointment viewing again.
Oh, the actual sketch was about Pete Davidson’s outed anti-vaxxer NFL QB Aaron Rodgers, and Alex Moffat’s Youngkin, both interviewed with reliably hilarious dippy aplomb by Cecily’s Jeanine Pirro. Everyone was fine—Rodgers’ Joe Rogan-consulted, tone deaf anti-vax bullshit gets taken out for a walk, with Davidson assuring Pirro that his teammates were in no danger, even though they’re consistently huddled three inches from his “wet mouth.” And Moffat’s Youngkin, whose campaign tried to distance itself from Trump’s twice-impeached toxicity while successfully appealing to white voters who view the ginned-up outrage over “critical race theory” as their latest white supremacist bulwark against diversity, unsuccessfully tries to dodge both a definition of critical race theory, and the confused yet effusive Trump’s linking praise.
Saturday Night Live has addressed Trumpism most effectively when it’s come at it most obliquely. In talking about his Trump, Johnson has said that the more accurately hateful and incident-specific his Trump got onstage, the less effective it was comedically, and I’m all for SNL allowing its Trump satire to emerge through Johnson’s glancing glimpses of what exactly is going on in that guy’s head. So, in a direct entreaty to Lorne Michaels, I’ll be so bold as to request at this point: Don’t fuck with what Johnson is doing here. Lean into it, extrapolate out from it, but do not bend it closer to the flabby, prosaic thing it’s been on SNL for so long. Seriously—I’m watching you.
I Am Hip To The Musics Of Today
Look, at this point you love Ed Sheeran or you don’t. I think his scrubbed ginger pop stylings are pleasantly manufactured for my easy listening pleasure. The singer (and occasional actor)’s appearance as himself in the Warwick sketch suggests perhaps that someone at the show is eyeing a possible, Halsey-style double-duty appearance in the future, but, since I’m offering unsolicited advice to the powers that be: Nah.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
Kate remains elsewhere, leaving the field wide open once again. And I’m torn, as James Austin Johnson was a game-changing revelation at the top of the show, while Cecily matched him there as her indelibly bananas Pirro, and provided an Update piece for the ages. I could weenie out and call it a tie, but Cecily has gifted us with her unexpected return this season and been throwing strikes all season.
On the second tier, Redd continues to impress, Kenan is Kenan, and Ego had another good night.
On the other hand, no Aristotle that I could see, Sarah Sherman had a brief one-scene appearance alongside Melissa Villaseñor, and Punkie, though she had two speaking parts tonight, continues to be underused. Even platooning a cast this big still leaves a lot of people out in the cold.
“What the hell is that thing?”—Dispatches From Ten-To-Oneland
The trio that is Please Don’t Destroy gets another branded short tonight, as SNL’s quest to mint a Lonely Island successor marches on. I like these guys, actually, as Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy’s office hangout schtick continues to impress with some reliably offbeat laughs. Here, John’s heartfelt talk with his pals about a recent breakup leads to an attempt at telephoned reconciliation, only for his buried resentments to surface in some deeply unproductive (heavily bleeped) abuse.
Three twenty-something slacker types indulging their inexpensively filmed backstage penchant for absurd goofiness is certainly a well SNL’s gone to, quite profitably, in the past. But Marshall, Higgins, and Herlihy (the latter two literally born into the show’s family) have an undeniably assured and idiosyncratic style, here seeing John’s unwilling assholery seemingly jumping to each friend in turn as they try to smooth things over with his unheard ex. The shift from intentional sincerity to blurted insults is deft and deeply funny each time, as the guys are all genuinely freaked out at their inability to suppress the ugliness inside. (Higgins managed to make a sincere apology, finds out the phone’s been muted the whole time, and then immediately snaps, “Fuck you, dickhead” once it’s back on.)
I’m on record as thinking that ten-to-oneland should expand its territory into the show as a whole, so I heartily endorse the concept of just handing over the last five minutes to whichever writers and performers have the weirdest idea that week. There’s always plenty of airtime for the talk show, game show, and celebrity impression sketches that Saturday Night Live relies on to get YouTube clicks and pay some bills. The Please Don’t Destroy guys therefore have my support to do whatever the hell they want.
Stray observations
- The Saturday Night Live tradition of booking very young hosts is, thankfully, looking like a thing of the past. Honestly, the queasy unease of imagining a kid, however professionally seasoned, in that pressure cooker of an environment has never been anything but anxiety-inducing, and a little creepy.
- Strong’s Pirro, after agreeing with Rodgers’ “my body, my choice” stance, admonishes, “And please never use that quote for any other issues.”
- “Screw you, science, I know Joe Rogan.”
- Heidi Gardener’s CRT-obsessed white mom runs down her list of books (Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man) to ban, just to remind everyone that the GOP is currently, actively banning fucking books.
- The aside from Redd’s Ghost about “Fred Flintstein” pushed the nitro button on the car heist sketch for me.
- Bowen Yang didn’t have too much this week, but his turn as Spectrum (the disembodied consciousness of all data, who still really wants to sell you a landline) was quality over quantity.
- Jost, on Trump’s World Series aping of Atlanta fans racist-ass “tomahawk chop,” reported that Native Americans were especially offended that their culture was being mocked by someone who can’t even run a decent casino.
- Next week: It’s another intriguing booking, with rising The Harder They Fall, Loki, and Lovecraft Country star Jonathan Majors being backed by musical guest Taylor Swift, who you may have heard of.
126 Comments
That sure didn’t look like James Austin Johnson. The make-up folks did good. So I thought it was some other guy who had been obsessively studying James Austin Johnson videos. Last month I showed my SO a JAJ video and he said “No, that doesn’t sound like Trump at all.” He was real smug about it too like he’s the one with all of the liberal arts degrees. Pffft, we showed him didn’t we, SNL.Btw: I’d give this episode an A. This is a show that I can barely stand. The writers must be feeling very inspired because so much about many of the sketches brought back the feel of SNL comedy over the decades. I’d get a Gilda Radner vibe at one point and a mid 90s sense in another. If only every episode could be this solid.
Yes, this episode felt a little more like episodes of the ‘80s or ‘90s than the show usually does now. I think because they had several sketches revolving around concepts that were easy to relate to and slowly built them up into being crazier and crazier. The cable sketch and the bathroom sketch (until the ending anyway) both had this strength.
Christ you and your SO seem like insufferable assholes
Holy shit that was the best Donald Trump vocal impression. He needs to work on the physical fatness and overbearingness and the look of barely peeking out of the vicodin haze but the voice is just incredible. I understand we have now turned on fat suits, as if somebody’s physical girth is an immutable characteristic…I expect to see DJ Qualls play William Howard Taft soon…but if they made him appropriately fat this could be a great impression.
I kinda wished they’d done something else for his Trump debut. The makeup really wasn’t that convincing, and at least Alec Baldwin had the physicality of Trump. Have him do a call-in or something. But good god, his vocal impression is on-spot.
Agreed. He didn’t look remotely like trump. Great vocal impression, but he looked like a random local sports reporter. And the impression almost came across as flattering. At least Baldwins impression actually got under trumps skin, and he was clearly wounded by it.
After reading more comments about the Trump impression, I have to agree that this is a very favorable and also not particularly funny version of Trump. Senor Perkins seems really enamored of JAJ, noting every one of his bits so far as spot on…but in addition to that the physicality (grotesque obesity) of Trump was all wrong, this was Josh Hawley as Donald Trump: Trump as a triangulating talking points expert, not as an incoherent self-obsessed idiot. it was a very flattering portrayal, including by making him 120lbs lighter at least. Perkins seems too happy just to have a competent male impressionist on the show, but JAJ isn’t nearly as good at impressions as Chloe or Melissa. Plus the Biden impression really isn’t that good…and it also isn’t funny, Sudeikis’s Biden is at least funny.There were a lot of people missing in this episode, but I was again impressed as I always am by Bowen nailing all of his lines and cues, he just doesn’t fuck up; I do think he’s funny but he’s maybe the crispest performer I’ve seen on the show ever. This was a pretty good episode, I thought the Spectrum sketch built very well and all of the cut-to cut-away worked (it’s often stilted). Culkin was sharp throughout. Somebody still needs to be tasked with ending each sketch, though. Keenan blew the last moment of the Spectrum sketch, then the SNAFU or whatever with Tracy in the bathroom, just make it somebody’s job to write the last second of each sketch!
Speaking of Josh, check out his interview on Axios.He explained his definition of masculinity and they asked him what his ideal man is.Apparently Axios is now writing Grindr profiles.
I love going straight to Godwin so I’ll note that Josh Hawley opining on masculinity is like Hitler on what makes a good 6ft blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan…or Ted Cruz on what makes somebody not physically repulsive
Someone found a photo of him “kissing” his wife. I think her name is Beard.
Conbine JaJ’s vocal impression with Baldwins physicality and dialog and we’d have a winner
then Dennis would explode, because everything Baldwin did was wrong and everything JAJ does is better than Belushi
Trump as a triangulating talking points expert, not as an incoherent self-obsessed idiot.
Oh, I strongly disagree with that. The whole point was that he rambles incoherently, and bounces from subject to subject at random. The PTI “rundown” graphic wasn’t showing he was hitting his “talking points”, but setting up that randomness.
During his presidency I had to actively avoid news or anywhere I might hear his voice because he drove me that crazy. Saturday night I fell asleep on the couch during the news and woke up to that cold open hearing his voice and was VERY ALARMED.
People didn’t laugh at Johnson’s Trump because it wasn’t funny. Yes, it was technically very good, and the loopy choplogic topic switches were well written. But the precision ruined the comedy by making Trump seem too smart and engaged. That’s the problem with injecting too much cleverness into a Trump impression: Trump isn’t remotely clever. Baldwin’s Trump was bad and also not particularly funny, but at least it was always clear that it was meant to ridicule the buffoon.
While I agree with you on all you wrote, I think the biggest reason that it’s not funny anymore is because the joke is stale. Even the most voracious “Never Trumpers” can only laugh at the same thing for so long. Sure, he’s still floating around on the periphery of the media/political landscape as much as an former President would, but he is not really deserving of the attention anymore that people still irrationally give him. Hell, even raging alcoholics get tired of puking after awhile. Hearing an imitation of him puking out gibberish is so tired, it needs a break. It’s just boring now.
I agree with that too.
Yeah it’s a great impression on a technical scale, but I just never want to hear that voice or see that combover or have to think that bloated orange loser ever again.
Yeah, it’s unfortunate—Lorne discovered an excellent Trump impressionist after we were all sick of Trump impressions. It’d be like if they’d brought in Tina Fey to play Sarah Palin in 2017.
Exactly. I’d ungrey you if I could, but I think I made Perkins mad for telling him that he needs to separate his personal politics from reviews of a comedy show. It’s like he’s never been to a real comedy club and thinks that Chuck Lorre sitcoms are the bestest. They whole point is to be funny, regardless of context. It gets lost in these reviews and the responses of most of the people commenting on here. I have no problem with political comedy as a whole, but if it sucks, it sucks. Doing Trump impressions suck now.
I would agree, although I do think this was much funnier and better written than pretty much anything they did with Trump in the last 5 years.
It was never a very funny joke, regardless of who tried it.
Trump is simply too ridiculous to parody. Nobody can out-Trump Trump.
Trust me, raging alcoholics never throw up.
They do when they stop drinking, which actually works for my metaphor in explaining why some are so reticent to let the bit go, even though it’s not really enjoyable anymore.
Honestly, if they had just thrown in a line about Ivanka’s legs somewhere in there, it might have taken it up a level.
I thought it was a pretty close match to Trump’s blathering, which seems clever to him yet is disconnected from reality. Saying he’s good friends with Mario and that Toads came out to vote for him isn’t really showing him as engaged. I think Alec Baldwin played Trump as dumber, but the writing itself was often very confused, occasionally trying to portray him as a voice of reason or as sympathetic.
I haven’t watched that much of Baldwin’s Trump, so I just went back and Youtubed it. I found one where a journalist calls him on the watersports thing, and Baldwin’s Trump responds with a solid minute of urine puns. Donald Trump, making puns. It’s your typical “Gee, this successful billionaire businessman sometimes says something uncouth – what a rogue!” version of Trump, and it’s a terrible take on the character. JAJ nails the Trump I see—-just an idiot babbling stream-of-consciousness.
They repeatedly had him doing and saying things that were just lazy attempts at comedy that made zero sense, and also weren’t funny. I think the one that really made me cringe was when he called Jared Kushner a “twink.”
I guess this is the impression all those people criticizing Baldwin’s Trump for years wanted? It sure is … precise. Johnson nails his baffling, circuitous way of speaking. For me, Baldwin’s Trump worked fine because it came across as dumb, mannered, and on its best days, putrid. There was ick factor, intentional or not. That said, I’d prefer to never see Trump on the show again.
I love JAJ’s take on Trump, love the impression, love the sensibility, but I think SNL kind of blew it last night for exactly the reason you state: the whole point of the character as envisioned by JAJ is that he’s incoherent. He’s babbling about nothing. That ticker on the side ruins the bit. If he’s capable of pre-selecting five topics and talking about them in a prepared order, where’s the joke?
The joke is that they are unrelated topics, and his yarn doesn’t really tie them together at all, except in his status conscious mind.
Well maybe Baldwin shouldn’t have shot and murdered someone.
I think it’s funny as heck — and it’s the only impression I’ve seen that shows the truth about Trump: he doesn’t give a crap about what he’s talking about.He doesn’t think through any of his pronouncements, whether they’re about the election, bleach, diversity or Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (all real things he’s blathered about). Whatever he’s talking about, it’s all about getting attention and sounding like he’s right. Everything is a riff.
I think showing that – he couldn’t care less about the reality of politics, policy or the country – works far better at neutering and demystifying Trump than Baldwin’s bitter “Gyna” mugging or Hammond’s fond send up.
The problem with Johnson’s Trump is the same problem with a cover song that’s too close to the original. It was just too accurate, and didn’t accentuate any of the many absurdities of the real Trump, instead just listing them.That said, that was THE most accurate Trump impression I’ve ever heard. I closed my eyes and listened a few times and he really nailed the sound and the cadence.
I still think Anthony Atamanuik’s Trump impression was the best. He didn’t nail the physicality or voice exactly, but he created a very consistent character of Trump as a deeply selfish, emotionally and intelectually stunted manchild who exists in his own world, is incredibly pathetic and sad yet never actually sympathetic. That’s what I feel about the actual Trump – it was a supercharged interpretation, but it IMO nailed the core of what makes him so disgusting and perplexing.
I was laughing through the whole thing, so I’m not sure it was objectively not funny.It wasn’t the content that got me, it was the accuracy of the impression, bouncing from topic to topic and back to previous topic with the proper mispronunciations and tics in almost perfect Trump style.
^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^
I saw WAY less “smart and engaged” from that T***p impersonation than you did; if anything, I was amused by the hopefully new tack they take with him to show him as a completely batshit, demented old fart with a horrific case of diarrhea of the mouth and brain. The real test will be–does it get under his skin like Baldwin’s impersonation did enough to trigger angry press releases (not tweets)? Because when he’s whining, I’m happy.
The highest I give most modern SNL episodes is a B+ – I think the one A or A- would be John Mulaney’s season 44 episode or Adam Driver’s season 45 episode. This one is another B+, which isn’t a bad thing – it’s mostly the Aaron Rodgers tedium, that car piece, and how thin Update was overall which hurt my score a bit. I thought just about all of it worked and gave us the most consistent episode this season. I think the writing in the live sketches has improved markedly (now I have jinxed it), and with many of the longtime veterans stepping back (to a point), the newer people take every opportunity they can get (tonight, Punkie and Andrew for getting laughs out of those great one-liners [“the sea took them,” “I’m high as hell,” etc.] instead of letting them go to waste). This has helped the energy of the show. The new hosts also help, because they have no greatest hits or overfamiliarity to bring back with them. One of the SNL fan sites that has some ties to the show said the show was apparently unsure about Kieran and this led them to rewrite some sketches, but even with his obvious nerves in the monologue, I thought he did a very good job in everything, serving as a good straight man and as very funny when given the opportunity. I also liked that he was able to show the long history of SNL, but without the toxic baggage or suffocating meta that you tend to get when thinking about the history of SNL.As wonderful as JAJ was (and as much as I appreciate him going for an actual impression, whether it gets big audience response or not, instead of a mugfest – the contrast is so huge that for once I almost want to parrot the “this person is too good for SNL” fans), I have to give some praise for Heidi Gardner in that cold open, and how she gave some life to what felt pretty moribund up to that point. Just the way she dismissed Great Gatsby for “too much jazz,” the way she said the words, made me laugh. Sarah was also in the Please Don’t Destroy pre-tape. I have seen complaints about how samey these are, which I can understand (and on top of Lonely Island and Beck and Kyle, we’ve seen just about every shade of the adorkable young white straight comedy humor in pre-tape form), but there’s something I appreciate about them just staying in that one room and the world coming to them. It makes their quirks feel a bit more unique to them. Tracy was not originally in the ending of the bathroom sketch, which is one of the reasons it feels off. The Youtube version cuts out not long after his arrival, sparing viewers the awkward dancing around. I hope they write more everyday sketches like this (and the very funny cable sketch – that one I enjoyed for many reasons, but Cecily’s ridiculous recorded responses were the best). This episode reminded me what I enjoy most about Bowen, in that his energy and vibrancy really just pop on the screen even when he doesn’t have to be tied to very arch camp.I had to watch Cecily’s Update piece a few times, because the first time, the screwups with the horn and the microphone were so noticeable that they overshadowed the content. I am glad the show let her do such a brave piece, clearly from the heart, but it didn’t entirely come together for me. I didn’t really want to see the Dionne Warwick Talk Show again, as it lived out a perfectly natural lifespan last season, but I was delighted at seeing Dionne. She would have been a wonderful musical guest in the ‘70s or ‘80s, but was never likely hip enough. It’s funny how thanks to social media she is probably hipper than SNL these days. Once upon a time SNL might have felt they needed Ego and Dionne to growl “hussy” at each other, but I’m glad what we got instead was sweet and respectful. I only hope they now retire the sketch. Anyway, this was cut from Weekend Update, but if you are a Kyle fan it’s worth watching – there’s some fun audience participation too.
I think when the subject of a sketch actually makes a cameo in the sketch is when you know it’s run its course and is probably the right time to retire that bit.
I agree. In the past SNL has ignored this and kept on even as the sketches have obviously reached their end (Joe Pesci, Judge Judy – I think Miley Cyrus too).
And yet “What Up With Dat?” returned several times after Lindsay Buckingham made his cameo, so they broke that rule.
“Want premium cable at basic cable prices? Not gonna happen. We’d lose a ton of money.”“Have any questions about your bill? Ask your husband to explain it to you.”
Cecily Strong’s “commercial announcer” voice is a potent secret weapon for the show. In sketch comedy you almost always have to live with “reminds you of the thing,” but Cecily Strong IS the thing.
that Kyle piece isn’t super different from the first (or so) Kyle piece of the stand up comic who is not-so-secretly depressed?
Have you all lost your fucking minds?? This episode was f*cking HORRIBLE. The worst one yet. There wasnt ONE funny skit. usually even the worst episodes have 1 or 2 funny skits.
I’m pretty sure your opinion is an outlier on this one.
Macauley is semi-retired you say? Man, he was one of the main leads on the latest seasons of American Horror Story that just aired. Right before the pandemic hit he was on Dollface and a feature film. He’s also been making appearances on a bunch of web shows like Red Letter Media. I think a couple years back the “semi-retired” title would fit but it’s really weird to say right now if you were up to date.
So we finally got the Donald Trump impression you were looking for, and it was basically Donald Trump. Not a funnier or more heightened or more absurd Trump, just Trump. Pretty much the same one all his fans fell in love with, except mildly less misshapen and mildly more lucid.I mean, the real Trump is just as funny as Sherri Ann Cabot or Trevor Beckwith or your personal favorite Christopher Guest creation. Just watch this shit (you need about a minute of his advisor presenting to get the full context, I have it cued up for you): There’s no way SNL is going to top that. JAJ is doing Trump as Trump. Really, it reads as MAGA fan service. I had more than enough of the real thing, thanks, don’t need more of it.edit: I meant Buck Laughlin. Trevor Beckwith was the British guy / straight man. Also funny, but not in Trump’s league for batshit hilarity.
I had the same reaction. There’s no take or point of view, it’s just an accurate Trump. Which, why? Please just let this shit die.
It’s like this, this new guy excels at vocally accurate impersonation, but he’s weak as an impressionist comic (from what ive seen so far). When Alec did his hammy trump, it really hurt and humiliated DJT. He was so wounded by that impression that he immediately tried to LITERALLY cancel SNL while a sitting president!Trump probably loved this new guy’s take, bc it makes him seem competent and “alpha”.
I think it’s funny — and it’s the only impression I’ve seen that shows the truth about Trump: he doesn’t give a crap about *anything* he’s talking about.He doesn’t think through *any* of his pronouncements, whether they’re about the election, bleach, diversity, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (all real things he’s blathered about) or Scooby Doo, Eternals and Mario (all real things JAJ’s Trump has blathered about).Whatever Trump’s talking about, it’s all about getting attention and sounding like he’s right. Everything is a riff.
I think showing that – he couldn’t care less about any topic he’s talking about other than himself – works far better at neutering and demystifying Trump than Baldwin’s bitter “Gyna” mugging or Hammond’s fond yet timid send up.This is the first SNL impression that isn’t afraid of Trump in some way.
No, this is the first SNL trump impression that irl Trump would actually approve of.
Oh, and I really couldn’t get into that Please Don’t Destroy bit. It’s so rooted in early-20s self-absorption that I’m just way too old to relate. The joke was how the guy (and his buddies) for some reason just couldn’t help being totally self destructive, screwing up something he actually wanted, getting back with his ex. In a vacuum, that’s a funny premise. But only if you focus exclusively on what the guy is doing to himself and ignore that they spent the whole sketch berating his ex on the other end of the line.
Please Don’t Destroy: For if you thought that the guys from The Lonely Island had a little too much testosterone.
I did enjoy how she showed up at the end and started giving him (maybe all of them?) the beating he/they so richly deserved.
Omg, that poor imaginary woman!*clutches pearls tightly
JAJ did a truly uncanny impression of Trump’s vocal mannerisms, but I do wish he had material that popped more. There ought to be a middle ground between Baldwin-style lobs to the cheap seats and this.
Please Don’t Destroy is what the church elders refer to as White Collar Comedy, old chap.
So. Only white performers in the top tier. One of them only in one sketch. Special shout out to the white woman not on the show. All black performers in the 2nd tier. Not surprising from the guy who always wants more Melissa Villasenor comedy in the show.
Maybe they’re basing roles on humor and not if you like their skin colour?
*rolls eyes* There’s always that one guy who can make anything racist if he digs deep enough, not realizing that it’s he who has inserted the racism into the discussion. You’re coming off more triggered than the guy who wanted to cancel his Spectrum cable.
Always fair to call out racial bias… if it’s actually present. I’m usually pretty attuned to that stuff and have never had the impression that the SNL recappers here favor the white castmembers – have you? And while Villaseñor did get caught deleting some stupid racist Tweets a few years ago, she herself is Mexican-American, so I don’t know if wanting more of her (current, non-problematic) comedic style reflects poorly on Dennis Perkins.
Go back to The Root with that racist horseshit
Did Melissa Villaseñor turn white when I wasn’t looking?
If anything I thought the review undersold the obvious. If you didn’t think this was a slam dunk for Cecily you weren’t paying attention.
I thought the Jockey sketch was funny. Overall probably the best episode this season. I do wonder if “Please do not destroy” are getting their weekly sketch aa a test bed for them getting their own “Kids in the Hall” style sketch show. It’s feels like a five minute YouTube clip of another show put into SNL. Even when you sometimes get cast or guest carry over. Also another week, another second cameo. Can none of these hosts carry the show alone. At least Dionne seemed happy to be there and a good sport about it. I read a few years back she didn’t fault any of the comedians doing jokes about her psychic friends network back in the 90s because they were her “friends” because they signed the checks.
When the season started there were leaks that the Please Don’t Destroy guys were meant to be cast members. Then that didn’t happen. I wonder if this is some sort of compromise, with a promotion to cast next season, or if they decided they wanted to just be writers, occasionally on-camera, and then, as you said, get a show of their own. I wish the show would play up that disconnectedness more oncamera – how in their own world they are. I thought both of the cameos this week were pretty short and still allowed the host to shine, but it’s too bad the Tracy cameo kind of trampled over a strong sketch.
Tracy’s just seemed out of place in the sketch, like why didn’t they give him a silly inner monologue too. It’s better then having Kardash-mom show up in multiple sketches for sure
Tracy was originally not in the sketch – they added him after dress rehearsal because the sketch he was in (a black version of Succession) was cut. I wish they’d just used the original sketch.
Black succession skit?! What a missed opportunity.
Them Roys
The Spectrum sketch wasn’t funny because as a customer, I thought it played like a documentary.
“Im so sorry to hear that Mr. Cyrils”
“Sometimes you laugh so you don’t cry”What if I agree politically, but didn’t laugh?
Best overall episode in ages. Dionne was a nice surprise. The horse rider spmg was cute (could have been a Phineas & Ferb joont!) and wildly big on the production value. Johnston I guess is being primed for the SNL MVP whether the world wants to or not…that Trump impression was EERIE.
A lot of people in the comments here on AVC were upset with JAJ coming on because it meant Trump would return to sketches, but c’mon, there was no way SNL would ever let go of Trump. At least now we get JAJ’s superb impression.
I’m hoping they will stick to just a few appearances a season. They could get some comedy out of that and James can then be used elsewhere.
I laughed and was impressed by Johnson’s Trump, but my immediate thought was, “Oh shit, so we’re basically normalizing this shit again in preparation for 2024.” It’s a dead on impression, but I find absolutely nothing amusing about Trump or the prospect of him being involved in national politics.
And it went on way too long. His first stream of consciousness was mildly amusing but I had to fast forward thru the rest of the skit
Yep, I see this having diminishing returns unless (god forbid) Trump becomes newsworthy again. I kept thinking, okay so what if they found someone who did an amazing Hitler – why do it just for the sake of showcasing someone’s impression? Trump is a very shitty person who would gladly take this country down the road of fascism if it kept him in power. You have to deal with that if you’re going to have someone impersonating him.
And while the now middle-aged former child starHas life expectancy in the US really dropped that much? Middle-aged?!
Hes 39 and male life expectancy in US is 78.8, hes quiet literally middle aged.
Okay, to be fair, I thought he was a little younger. Still, although it may be mathematically correct, I feel like “middle-aged” has taken on a different non-numerical colloquial meaning. It just seems really odd to call someone in their 30s “middle-aged.”
Oh yea for sure. I was half kidding, not sure why he was called middle aged. He does look younger and most people generally think of middle aged at like 45-55.
Middle age to me has always been 45-65, but now that I’m less than a year from 30, I’ve started to realize it comes a little sooner than that which scares the shit out of me since I still feel like I don’t know what I want to do with my life.
Once you realize that the life expectancy accounts for accidental deaths, infant mortality, and all kinds of stuff…. Thinking middle aged is around 45 makes more sense, so dont worry about it. You will either live very long and bring it up.. or die tomorrow and bring it down. May the odds forever be in your favor!Also I am 32 and just got everything on track and everything is going great dont worry about it, lets not compare ourselves to past generations that were married and had a house and kids by 19
Aww, that 30 yo “what do i do with my life?” crisis. Take it from a guy pushing his 40s…that stress of expectation with be gone soon, and you’ll settle down into your ways and circumstances like every other one b4 you. Hang in there!
The men’s room sketch fumbles at the goal line when, seemingly, everybody blows the closing cue (perhaps thrown off by surprise guest Tracy Morgan’s ever-loose relationship with live TV pacing).
That ending was so weird. Morgan comes out of the bathroom and says his line but I don’t think anyone heard it because he didn’t wait long enough for the crowd cheers to die down. Then everyone is just standing around awkwardly, Morgan says something else, more awkwardness, and then they all start dancing around. I have no idea what was suppose to happen but I like to think there’s an SNL directive that if there’s a blown spot, everyone should just dance.
I have mixed feeling on the Please Don’t Destroy guys.On the one hand they’re great. Give them a showcase.On the other hand you have a cast of 21 people many of which are underused. The LAST thing you should be doing is giving a sketch over to three guys who aren’t on that cast.
On the third hand, I’m not interested in ever seeing anything written by the sons of Jimmy Fallon’s sidekick and the guy who wrote Little Nicky.
Are they? I read Higgins and Herlihy and wondered.Also, Higgins is and always has been great. The Higgins Boys and Gruber were terrific back in the day. And Little Nicky is underrated.
As a Rhode Islander, the “Wake Up Rhode Island” sketch misses the mark for one reason: there’s not even one reporter with an Italian surname. Ma dai! It’s like no one from SNL has ever been to RI!
I’ve had that cable experience with Xfinity (Comcast) recently. I moved from Georgia to Virginia a few months ago. Since I was moving from one of Comcast’s “regions” to another, they had to create a new account for me in Virginia. Of course, they required me to get a landline in the package even though I will never hook a telephone to it. To leave it off would have put me into a different package and would have cost me more than just getting it and never using it.But here’s the real kicker—they continued to charge me for service at my old (unoccupied) house for two months after it was supposed to be disconnected. It took about three hours on the phone over a couple of days to finally get to someone who fixed the problem. Even then, they didn’t actually close the old account, they simply made it inactive. It’s like trying to cancel a magazine subscription.
People complain that streaming services are just the 21st century equivalent of cable, but canceling a streaming service takes all of 30 seconds.
SO true!And you’re still dependent on the cable companies even if you “cut the cord,” because in many markets they are the only providers who can provide enough bandwidth to stream content. I now live outside of Washington in Northern Virginia and am still have to use Xfinity for Internet. The closest competition that services my neighborhood can oly provide DSL, which is just barely a step up from dial-up.
Yeah, I’ve been using AT&T for internet for years. (Years ago I tried to use a local provider, but it turned out they were just leasing part of the AT&T network at much slower speeds. I have to deal with them so infrequently that I don’t really think about their customer service, but that’s a reflection of the fact that I don’t have to move for work anymore.
The big problem I see is that these companies effectively have a monopoly in each market because they have colluded with local governments and each other to ensure consumers have a limited choice as to what provider they can use.
I feel ya. The only way to make a clean easy cable cancelation, is to move into a residence where they dont provide service too…that or kiss a shotgun barrel.
Seriously, fuck Spectrum.I was moving. I had notified them of my move date. I told them that they could not be my ‘next provider’ because they were not the providers in the area that I was moving to. I spoke to retention because they wouldn’t let me cancel otherwise. I spoke to a manager.I got billed for the next three cycles for a property I no longer lived at anyway. When I pointed out that I was being billed for a service that I was not using at a location I was not at, I was semi-politely informed that I should have notified them of this in advance and wouldn’t it just be better if I switched to them anyway?I eventually got the three months removed. I’m in a Spectrum area now, and there’s a very big reason I’m not a customer.
JAJ’s Trump is technically very good, and obviously leagues better than Baldwin’s take… but for me, Anthony Atamanuik still reigns supreme for his Trump, which he was able to turn into a fully realized character that was different enough from the real person to offer a more engaging point of view.
Is 39 middle aged?
Is 39 now middle aged?
When the average American man lives to age 78, yes it is.
Being “middle aged” never referred to the literal halfway point in a person’s life.
Most men die in 80s…so yes, indeed
That men’s room sketch was pretty much the most relatable thing I’ve ever seen on SNL. The standing next to your boss, and how it really changes the weird power dynamic. And the “how long can I stand here not peeing before it gets weird” thing is a nightmare, especially when you have trouble peeing in front of other people.
I know the musical acts always change outfits between their songs, but i find it kind of weird that Ed Sheeran decided to change from a solid-colored sweater and Jordans to a different solid-color sweater and a different pair of Jordans.
Hello SNL Fans!I’ve seen a few classic sketches over the years (Super Bass-o-matic ‘76! Cow Bells) and, now they’ve started showing SNL over here in the UK, I’ve recently caught a few minutes here and there.They’ve sucked but I want to give it a fair shot. Do you need to watch several episodes before you get it? It kind of seemed that the jokes relied on you knowing the characters of the performers or at least knowing the format of the bit. I think dipping in expecting to see a stand alone sketch was the wrong approach. Maybe I just timed it badly.Are there (recent) full episodes you’d recommend to a noob? Or should I pick it up where it is just now and give it a few full eps?cheers!
The average SNL episode has one or two good, not great, bits and a lot of meh. Occasionally there will be a gem. I say this as someone who watches every episode.
I’m in the UK too, and I’ve been downloading episodes illegally (literally for 15 years) before Sky started showing them regularly a couple of years ago.One of the issues with SNL generally is the patchiness. Sometimes you get weeks and weeks of shows that click, and sometimes it feels like a drag. Part of being a fan of it is kind of riding out these waves, getting what you can from the performances of your favourite cast members.I would just start watching. It’s actually on a fairly good roll right now – the last three (Rami Malek, Jason Sudeikis and Keiran Culkin). Not every sketch is going to kill, and some references won’t hit (loads of the sports stuff I just don’t get) but if you watch an hour and don’t laugh once then it’s probably not the show for you.
I’ll give those three a blast and see how I fare. I remain a fan of The Simpsons and Star Wars so I reckon I can handle a little bit of patchiness 🙂
Macauley Culkin’s done a number of appearances on Red Letter Media — he shows up so often that I half-wonder why they don’t just hire him as a regular (except then he’d have to move to Milwaukee!).
“except then he’d have to move to Milwaukee!”
That’s probably why. The only thing standing in the way of Maculkin and Rich Evans being best friends is the former’s reticence about gaining the extra 30lbs of fat required for Wisconsin citizenship.
Well, if Mac Culkin would just give in the allure of Pork & Sauerkraut Soup with Potatoes, that wouldn’t be an issue….Given I’m at least half-German (or maybe Polish — the borders were a bit iffy when my Great-Grandfather moved over here), I have a weakness for Pork & Sauerkraut, Bratwurst, Jagerschnitzel, Eisbein, Potatoes, Black Forest — and non-alcoholic dark beer.
I also haven’t been to the gym since the lockdown started, b/c I have enough trouble breathing while working out w/out a face mask on!
But “nice” isn’t very exciting, is all I’m saying. Counterpoint: I loved it. That shit was gold. “I’m not perfect – I’m just very, VERY good.”The women killed it this week.
This was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable start to finish episodes of SNL in awhile (note: we skipped the musical performances and thought the horse sketch was a dud, even if Kiernan was extremely period accurate). This season on the whole has been pretty solid other than the Kardashian episode which is surprising because I thought the losses of Kate and Aidy were going to be massive. Turns out, it has given others time to shine.
“Peach has had it hard, but Peach is so great.”
How the hell did this episode get above a C or a D? There wasnt one laugh in it.
Cecily Strong is dumb as fuck. This show is so tired it needs to be taken out back of 30 Rock and shot.
Loved the Superego shout out!
I found seven errors in this article:ballon animal —> balloon animalmore palatable!,” exclaimed Strong’s Goober —> more palatable!” exclaimed Strong’s GooberDoja Cat. (Singer, not a Pokémon.) —> Doja Cat (singer, not a Pokémon).Macauley —> Macaulay (x3)sure, (check out Superego’s Rockstone Investments sketch for an all-around better example) —> sure (check out Superego’s Rockstone Investments sketch for an all-around better example),
I recently DID cancel my Spectrum TV, keeping the internet, and was shocked and amazed that the Spectrum ppl did not argue with me, offer me lower rates, or do anything other than ask why I was cutting their TV (Hulu). It was a pretty easy experience. I did have to speak with a real person — could not do online via chat.
I laughed very, very hard at The Jockey, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time playing Tony Hawk and listening to the skate punk songs therein.
Just popped in to say thank you for being the only competent SNL recapper among many, MANY recaps I’ve came across lately.
I can’t believe that they didn’t riff on 45**’s complete inability to do even the most mundane (but still offensive) thing properly. Instead of bringing the hand down with the elbow steady, clumsy 45** simply pushed his hand forward.