Saturday Night Live packs in a strange season with Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, and Boyz II Men
TV Reviews Recap
“I loved that one part.”
Watching these last three episodes of Saturday Night Live is, like so many things these days, an exercise in taking your pleasures where you can and waiting for the real thing to return. With Season 45 coming to a premature end with this 18th episode—assuming Colin Jost’s Update “we think” aside doesn’t result in a surprise “Let’s put on a show!” return in the next month—there’s a feeling of incompleteness about the whole enterprise. For one thing, this isn’t Saturday Night Live.
If you’ll all indulge. Back when Dick Ebersol took over from a departed Lorne Michaels as producer, his NBC executive sensibilities saw the whole “live” part of the show as a costly liability, and tried, essentially, to choke it out. Relying more and more on filmed pieces featuring whatever performers and characters were hottest at the time, Ebersol—while nominally a co-creator of Saturday Night Live—steered the show hard into the sort of pre-taped revue that his cost-conscious programming brain saw as more sustainable, easier to produce, and a whole lot tidier. And while those five season under Ebersol produced some fine comedy (a guy named Eddie didn’t hurt), his final year was hardly recognizable as SNL as it was and would be again. Ultimately, a Steinbrenner-esque team of free agent all-stars (Martin Short, Christopher Guest, the returning Harry Shearer, Billy Crystal) gobbled up almost all the airtime, largely through meticulously produced filmed showcases for themselves and their favorite characters. It’s tough to imagine these days, but SNL was nearly cancelled many times in its first decade (and occasionally thereafter), with the show’s unprecedented live budget the primary target of NBC bean counters right from the first episode.
Well, I don’t know how much an episode of SNL At Home (as the show has rebranded itself the last three installments) costs to produce, but it’s a whole lot less than usual. The ring lights reflecting in eyes, glasses, and background shiny things all testify to how this all-video, all-prerecorded SNL is allowed to coast on elements the infamously meticulous Michaels has long banished from his show. Sketches about Zoom calls are pieced together from grainy, sometimes blurry Zoom calls, the cast’s unadorned living rooms permitted to stand in for expensively mounted sets, and the luxury of retakes and post-production editing smoothing out the inevitable choppiness of the live version. High-profile A-lister guests teleconference in rather than spending the week in New York on NBC’s dime, their reluctance to submit themselves to the show’s grueling and risky weeklong trial by fire overcome by an experience consisting of a series of emailed jokes and maybe a scruffy wig. SNL At Home is basically Dick Ebersol’s dream of Saturday Night Live, updated for the YouTube generation. Cost effective comedy, easily controlled.
But it’s not Saturday Night Live, not really. So, again, you take your laughs and wait for the show—and, you know, the world—to return to its former shape. SNL has leaned into its own version of the Ebersol playbook over the years, with YouTube and NBC.com views no doubt figuring heavily into whatever algorithm Lorne’s head runs in order to choose the week’s sketches, so it’s tempting to say that this forced new iteration of the show is merely an amplification. But one thing that’s become clear from watching (and reviewing) these three all-clips shows is that there is a huge difference in watchability between a 90-minute live sketch show and 90 minutes of YouTube comedy sketches in isolation. It feels long, and more disposable, the loss of the show’s high-wire live element sapping the show’s entire reason to exist in the first place even as the individual sketches themselves are pretty funny. Basically, this is me telling NBC not to get any big ideas—Saturday Night Live without the live is dead.
Not helping this time out is the return of Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump for the cold open. After Brad Pitt’s Dr. Anthony Fauci played hilarious straight man to clips of the actual Trump’s murderous idiocy last week, the elbow-in-the-ribs clownery of Baldwin’s impression crashes back down, hard. These sketches could overcome a mediocre Trump with some sharp writing, but that’s never been the case, the sketches instead keying on Baldwin’s mugging, toothless Trump for a low-hanging round of spot-the-reference that in no way conveys any sense of the true, queasy horror of reality. Here, as the eighth choice commencement speaker of a high school’s online graduation ceremony, Baldwin’s Trump chugs some bleach, jokes about doing his own makeup thanks to a Liza Minnelli video tutorial, and states that his plan is to “let the virus run wild” with all the satirical punch of a Tonight Show skit. (Fallon, Leno, or Carson edition.) The cliché that real life under a Donald Trump presidency is ludicrous beyond satire is itself ridiculous. It just takes much more effort than this. What laughs there were came from the cast, with Kate McKinnon’s principal threatening to key Heidi Gardner’s lone MAGA Trump fan’s car (again), and Aidy Bryant’s University of Phoenix-bound student exclaiming confidently, “The future’s in wires!” Plus, I’m a sucker for off-camera heckling jokes. They just work.
Since we’re on the topic of SNL legends finding themselves a whole lot more amusing than I did, Martin Short phoned in his half of an obnoxious couple (Heidi Gardner being his other half), crashing a catchup video call with friends horrified to learn that they’ve just returned from a pandemic-tourist trip to coronavirus epicenter Italy. Of course, Martin Short never phones anything in so much as megaphones it in, with his obliviously showy character taking huge, Jerry Lewis-style bites of faux-Italian words like “quarantina” as he and Gardner relate how they boorishly violated an old man’s personal social distancing space in search of local color and wound up on a Somali pirate barge filled with smuggled medical gear. Now, I don’t object to Martin Short in principle—SCTV alone earns him a lifetime comedy pass. But so often his schtick cannonballs obtrusively into the flow of good shows (off the top of my head: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Big Mouth, Arrested Development), and, here, the prevailing wisdom of just turning Short loose and letting him do his thing is once again shown to be almost immediately tiring. The only laugh was, unsurprisingly, from Kenan’s underplaying, cutting off the couple’s pretentious bragging with a curt, “You will not call it ‘quarantina.’ Not while my ears can hear.”
Some of SNL’s other go-to sketch templates work better than others in this sort-of bland new world. Celebrity impression comedy is a staple, and the whole Masterclass conceit continues to let Chloe Fineman, finally, get a turn to show the skills she was theoretically hired for. This time, we got her very solid Phoebe Waller-Bridge, shooting the lens and cocking her eyebrow to make cheeky asides about her saucy at-home journal-writing exercises. (PWB’s two diaries alternate between “violent female rage” and “naughty little secrets.”) Doing Britney Spears at this point would seem like piling on if the former(?) pop star weren’t making current internet buzz by, among other things, burning down her home gym and so forth. (The chyron, “We paid her too much for this” vies with anything in Fineman’s able impression for what laughs there are.) And while she’s down five-to-one in these sketches, at least Melissa Villaseñor got to do her amusingly emphatic John Mulaney, too.
These shows have relied almost exclusively on the cast and writers’ current cabin fever and the reasons behind it for inspiration, which is understandable. And the old “nobody knows how to work Zoom” premise is going to be a thing as long as this virus is, so the church sketch did just that. Once more (and not for the last time), it’s Kenan who makes this work as well as it does, with his patient preacher vainly trying to get his enthusiastic online congregation to mute their side of the video gathering. That’s the only real joke involved, but Kenan sells the hell out of it for the mercifully short running time.
Oh, there was a host of sorts again this week, with Kristen Wiig pretending to be caught in bed unawares for duty before getting to do the bare minimum required of a host in this format. (To be fair, she did get one actual sketch, unlike Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt, although the hair vlogging sketch relied almost entirely on her self-promoting YouTube personality wobbling her long, unruly locks into the computer camera, again and again.)
In her monologue (as I guess its positioning forces me to call it), Wiig goofed around amiably enough. The cheesy, splashy credits/silly dancing bit seemed stolen wholesale from Lady Dynamite, but nothing counts these days. Belting out a big, brassy lullaby (supposedly her mother’s bedtime favorite) after building the song up to be her getting-sincere moment was the best touch (“I got down on the floor because I wanted to get serious.”)
The show’s first nod to the fact that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, SNL then really went for the heartstrings with the musical guest, Boyz II Men (with an unannounced Babyface on acoustic guitar), singing the almost too-heartfelt paean to moms everywhere, “A Song For Mama.” Unlike the previous two rough-and-ready at-home musical performances, this was produced to within an inch of its life, but dammit if it didn’t get to me (and everyone else, by the look of the comments). Maybe it was Michael Che’s uncharacteristically sincere introduction, in which he obliquely referenced his grandmother Martha who died a few weeks back from this fucking virus. Maybe it was the montage of SNL performers with their own moms, ending with a snapshot of Martha and her grandbaby. Or that the show made the choice not to label each performer’s picture for maximum “Aww”s, leaving the impression that each mother-and-child picture was just for the moms. It was just lovely. Call your mom.
Pete Davidson’s housemate/mom got her own time in the spotlight in Davidson’s contribution, his latest homemade music video, this time a rap collaboration with Chris Redd extolling the IMDb-swelling greatness of character actor and all-around swell human Danny Trejo. (Trejo showed up to remind everybody that he’s also a restauranteur and—although he doesn’t mention it—kickass coronavirus philanthropist.) Not as killer fun as some of Davidson’s previous lockdown jams, but, as he and Redd note, Danny Trejo makes everything just a little bit better.
Better all around, though was what’s likely to be the episode’s breakout clip, an all-cast music video about coping with quarantine stress that leads to the inevitable and reasonable conclusion that it’s time to let your kids knock a few back before bedtime. “Song For The Kids” finds just the right note of jokey outrageousness in watching a roster of cast children drinking all manner of alcoholic beverages while their parents belt out in unison that getting your kids sloshed before bedtime is going to solve a whole lot of issues around the house. The kicker is the inclusion of Frozen star Josh Gad, roped into singing a supposedly Disney-approved verse while his animated snowman Olaf obediently lip-synchs along. Beck Bennett steers things right into his own garden shed with his plea for dads to be similarly allowed to drink while locked away pretending to take a phone call, but it’s mainly about the kids. Won’t somebody think of the kids?
Continuing the themes of inappropriate quarantine childcare and getting your kids some screen time, Mikey Day’s short about son Brandon making his life hell with fave-courting YouTube pranks kept getting me to laugh in spite of myself. There’s just the one joke—little Brandon’s a monster—but it’s presented so confidently that I kept laughing every time the just-pranked Day’s face flashes on screen along with the legend “BITCH.” Day is always willing to take a fall for a laugh and does some fine jump-scare and head-smash acting while little Brandon proves unnervingly comfortable embodying the next generation of braying internet influencers.
Then there’s Kate McKinnon in a huge, horrible beard as an insane lighthouse keeper giving self-isolation tips. What part of that sentence makes you think I didn’t laugh? No part is the answer, although, as yet one more of the episode’s disconnected jumble of comic setpieces, I was left pretty punch-drunk by that point. Remember, don’t give your money to a clam. They don’t need it. (Also, who’s up for a remake of The Lighthouse starring Kate and Aidy? Just me? Fine.)
Update picked up a little of the slack left over from the limp cold open, although Jost and Che have been sharper. Che’s takes are usually the more pointed of the two, and his current bit of gradually revealing the tumbler of booze he’s swilling to get through this cavalcade of bullshit continues to be a funny, suitably potent idea. Overtly mentioning his grandmother’s death in addressing just how terrible everything is, Che characteristically turned things back on his co-anchor, noting how Jost has also suffered a huge loss in not being able to go to J. Crew. (“I’m not ready to joke about J. Crew yet,” Jost stated, somberly.)
Going on to talk about the non-virus, non-Trump horrible news of the week, Che brought up the caught-on-camera murder of black man Ahmaud Arbery by a couple of white Georgians (plus those goddamn murder hornets), and speculated about the not-insignificant odds of him not surviving SNL’s summer hiatus. Still—and this is an old and tired complaint, I realize—Update should be SNL’s standard-bearer when it comes to political comedy, and each week it’s seeming more and more like Jost and Che can’t wait to hurry on to the more frivolous stuff. (That said, their hyped charity joke swap paid off nicely. Che’s would-be uncomfortable joke from a viewer was just a bad joke, but Che’s for Jost was another in the pair’s long line of jokes at the expense of Jost’s terminal whiteness, and it worked. Again.)
Anytime Cecily Strong wants to bring back Fox News propaganda bullhorn and cautionary tale about substance abuse jeanine Pirro is okay with me, although Strong’s is one characterization really harmed by the loss of a live audience. Looking appropriately rough, Strong’s Pirro claimed she did her own makeup while looking into a spoon, chugged hastily mocked-up box wine, and inexplicably managed to toss one of her cocktails in the far-distant Jost’s face at the end of the bit. Funny as ever, even if the show’s mockery of Fox News and its coterie of racist, authoritarian-enabling blowhards should, again, be a lot more substantive than mere personality attacks.
The other Update guest (and guest star highlight) was former Update anchor Tina Fey, who delivered an unsurprisingly well-written and naturalistic report on how she’s coping (not well) with 24/7 family lock-in, and how it’s okay to lose it in front of your kids every once in a while. With advice like, “If you’re baking cookies and you don’t have any flour, you can just go to bed,” Fey’s gift for a carefully constructed turn-of-joke was intact, even as she told Che how she’s just making up gibberish and telling her involuntarily homeschooled kids it’s Latin. She and Che had a nice back-and-forth, in a pairing I could stand to see more of. (Upon Fey urging a motherhood positivity call-and-response, Che notes, “My children have, hopefully, all been prevented.”) Anyone who’s seen Fey’s previous Update work (or read Bossypants) recognizes Fey as the ideal advice columnist, whose utterly sincere advice to everyone to do a little self-care comes right before she finds the perfect little twist at the end.
Game shows make sense in this context, and Kenan Thompson can anchor a quiz panel full of ding-dongs like nobody since Bill Hader. Bringing back What’s Wrong With This Picture? is, like every single game show sketch ever, one joke, repeated until the end, but Kenan makes it work. So do Aidy Bryant, Ego Nwodim, and Melissa Villaseñor as the all-moms Mother’s Day contestants, who nail the delivery on some truly inspired weirdness. Aidy urging haste because her unsupervised son is “Twelve, but he’s a bad kind of twelve,” vies with Melissa’s correction that she’s a grandmother but not a mother, leaving Kenan’s Elliott Pants (eh, we could all use a funny name around now) to deadpan his way through the dumbness with perfectly pitched exhaustion. A picture of a mom, two kids, and the wrong number of cartoned eggs elicits Ego’s protest that, “The husbands are too short—they should stack to make one big guy,” and Aidy’s that “Everyone in the photo is white, that just doesn’t fly these days. One of them needs to be weird.” Weird is good when it comes to hauling from the old game show well.
Sticking with weird, my two favorite late-show sketches had Kyle Mooney’s fingerprints all over them. His continuing experiment with split screening himself and doing funny voices as everyone in a shared-quarantine situation saw the most normal of the Kyles being consoled over his breakup (with an undisguised other Kyle named Sara) by his two housemates, in the form of cornhole, beer-drinking, and a little light bank robbery. Punctuated with quick-hit jokes around the margins (another intruding Kyle who keeps crashing through windows when discovered, offscreen footsteps, a makeover montage), it’s another testament to how handing a few minutes over to Mooney every episode provides some much needed tonal variety. Especially since he’s only going to get stranger the more he’s left to his own devices.
Then there’s Aidy Bryant’s kids show showcase Eleanor’s House, where lonely birthday girl Aidy’s attempt to conjure up a perfect imaginary birthday with her anthropomorphic animal pals goes awry with the unwanted intrusion of Mooney’s Richard Carson and his wife Colleen (Heidi Gardner). Portrayed in Eleanor’s mind in the sort of Taiwanese animation style that really puts the “uncanny” in the Uncanny Valley, the Carsons (and their Michigan ATV friends) crash the wholesome event with the white trash seediness that apparently lurks somewhere within Eleanor’s nightmares, leading one of the cops sent in to taser Richard, “Ma’am, you need to get your life together.” While the actual last sketch of the season went for the sentimental, this and Mooney’s were just made for the ten-to-one spot.
That said, the actual ten-to-one sketch at least tucked some surreal touches in its all-cast goodbye. As Cecily Strong drifts off to sleep wishing for a return to life in New York’s teeming out-of-doors, each performer gets a turn to show the similarly singular fantasies their lockdown loneliness have morphed into. Melissa has a happy, laughing dinner out in a restaurant—with herself. Aidy steals a puppy from the dog park. Bowen Yang weeps while gratefully watching a drag show, while Chris Redd smiles blissfully as he’s booed offstage doing standup. My favorite was Kenan giving an approving head nod to the passing Dorothy Michaels, and Ego shuddering in her sleep that she’s somehow slipped into a Woody Allen movie. In the end, it’s a lushly silly farewell to a season that wasn’t, and a complexly, uniquely bizarre city—and life—we’re all itching to have back.
Stray observations
- Fey advises letting your kids see you “open-mouth chew cold spaghetti while you scream words like “Moron!” and “Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, look it up! He definitely has it!,” whenever someone specific appears on the TV.
- Fey also wistfully remembers when we all cared about Harry and Meghan, noting that now she can’t remember what they look like. “I think they both had eyes?,” she ventures.
- Jost calls his summation of the current Axl Rose-Steve Mnuchin Twitter feud “the dumbest sentence to ever count as news.” Let’s see what tomorrow brings, big guy.
- Che, noting that baseball-starved Americans will soon be treated to televised South Korean baseball games, gave a shout-out to America’s new hero, expat slugger Preston Tucker. Go, Kia Tigers!
- “All of our guests today are moms, because being a mom is the most important hobby in the world!”
- “Oh no, you don’t want this. This is dream pizza.”
- And that’s it for this shortened oddball of an SNL season, and the A.V. Club’s reviews thereof. Stay safe and play it smart, everybody, so we can do this all again come September.
148 Comments
My favorite part of Beer Money was the random guy parked next to Kyle. It must be odd to have your ATM run make national TV.
Did he witness Kyle changing in his car to play the different characters? Or did Kyle drive back and forth multiple times? Hmmm…
No, these aren’t really Saturday Night Live as we know it, but I have been grateful for them anyway. All three have brought enough funny to justify their existence, and windows into each cast member’s life that we get I have found to be interesting and comforting. I wish they would consider doing them every couple of weeks all summer.Do you think all the kids in the sing along sketch belonged to cast members? A lot of them looked a little too polished and child actory.
I don’t believe all the cast members are parents.
I don’t believe all the cast members are parents.
and yet that all regularly birth stinkers.
Yeah, the past three episodes cheered me with all their “let’s put in a show!” vibe. They didn’t have to do them and but they did and I thank them for doing it. The last skit, the video of them dreaming about being back in a normal world was wonderful
I have never really been a fan of live improv (give me all the over-produced stuff). I thought this was a very good night.
There were definitely kids of various writers and crew members in there. In fact, I think only two cast members actually have kids (Kenan and Mikey Day).
I think Alex does as well but I don’t think they’ve ever been on the show.
Guessing they asked both cast and crew to film their kids and chose the best ones for the sketch.
I agree. I need these shows and our lack of new programing is going to get worse through the summer.
I was actually trying to figure out who the Asian kids belonged to.
I get it, it’s in his name for crying out loud but what everyday magic is Babyface practicing to look like that. He has not aged a day in 30 years.
black don’t crack
Thought it really picked up nicely in terms of energy and effort from Update on. I’m glad the lazy Trump cold open didn’t set the tone for the entire show (although I loved Gardner’s MAGA kid).
I felt the same way. As soon as I saw him, even though I figured he’d show up, I just felt deflated. Other than the Masterclass sketch much of the episode was sluggish until Update, which didn’t help. Fortunately everything from then on was much more entertaining.
All we need for Trump is something orange and Villasenor’s voice doing an impression. Baldwin seems as bored as we are with his impression. Having said that, watching the graduates end one by one – leaving little blanks – was hilarious.
Note that you mention it, I’d like to see Villasenor work on a Trump impression.
In SNL’s defense, they didn’t want Alec Baldwin to come back, but he parked in their spot and threatened them to “come and take it”.The only Badwin I want on the show is Paul Baldwin (later, Linda Richman).
Nice “Badwin” Freudian slip.I did get a twinge of excitement at the end of the cold open because of the way Baldwin said “last time”. It made me think that he was referring to the character. But he probably just meant the season.
Did anyone else think that this is Kate McKinnon’s last show? Her goodbye at the end from the rooftop (a la Beatles) had me think that. I’m probably way off though.
Should we spend time on Kate McKinnon’s part of the Dreams sequence? She was the only one who pointedly waved “goodbye” to the camera, and her remaining on the show often comes up for speculation.
Ady, Kennan, and Cecily did too.
it was also, y’know, the season finale
Che and Jost should do some Weekend Updates here and there until the fall. Go all in and pull no punches on the political end.
Kate, Cecily and Aidy all joined the cast in 2012. If this was their last show, I will be very, very sad that they didn’t get the send-off they all deserve.
Just saying but the last three people to appear in that last video were Aidy, Kenan, and Cecily who all sort of waved goodbye. Don’t know if that meant anything but….
Didn’t Kenan say he was staying a couple of months ago? I seem to remember some rumblings about him finally leaving because he had other projects to work on but maybe said he was sticking with SNL along with his other projects. Maybe that was just for this season though
Didn’t Kenan say he was staying a couple of months ago? I seem to remember some rumblings about him finally leaving because he had other projects to work on but maybe said he was sticking with SNL along with his other projects. Maybe that was just for this season though
Kenan’s show is allegedly coming in the 20/21 season, but who knows when production will start…
Kenan and Aidy deserve the bigger world, roles and – yeah $$. I don’t know how they’ll be replaced.
Being an election year and all I assume they all stay until at least November. There’s some precedent for that in SNL history.
Normally, I’d agree, but unless Biden picks Elizabeth Warren as VP, there’s no political reason for any of the three of them to stay. They STILL don’t have someone to regularly play Biden (might it have been Taran Killiam?). I personally think all three of them are invaluable (with a soft spot for the never-Emmy-nominated Cecily), but if Kristen can be serenaded off by Mick Jagger, all three of these women need a proper goodbye.
I love Jason Sudeikis as Biden but asking him to play him all through the election… and please God beyond election day… would be a big ask, I would think, unless he lives in NYC. So who does that lead to play Biden from the regular cast?
The VP is likely going to be Harris, Klobuchar, or Witmer, so I wonder who in the regular would play each one?
I would guess given the uncertainly in the world/industry/etc, that they will probably at least start next season, and maybe leave at the Christmas episode if things have settled out into some sort of normal, even though I’m guessing that before pandemic they were all certain they were leaving. Just for the stability (and to get to have proper goodbyes).
Christ, I just realized there might not be either a live or a live studio audience come September.
I did think the episode had a weird sort of “Cecily’s last episode vibe” But only for her. Didn’t feel that way about anyone else.
Oh man, the amount of sketches I had to fast forward through. I guess it’s nice they threw Melissa Villasenor a bone. A little one.
That was a great Mulaney impression.
Brilliant Mulaney impression, and I’m a bit miffed that Perkins mostly no-sold it in his review.
Mulaney is really easy to imitate because of his distinctive delivery. I didn’t think Melissa’s impression brought anything beyond that and it wasn’t funny
I agree. Some cast members are so under used I feel for them
My biggest issue over the years has been that the cast has been to big and unwieldy so that people who are really good, especially new cast members, are underutilized. I also feel like it gives each cast member less chance to find their niche. I wish they did it back in the old days where the had a much smaller cast and had them in most of the skits.
Yeah, the size of the cast is an underappreciated problem. It was really bad during the Wiig years because she monopolized the good women’s roles and a lot of potentially great SNL talent was wasted; it’s been a bit more of a problem yesterday because they’ve been relying on a lot of celebrity and ex-cast cameos lately.
Even in the best of times, it has been hard for the show to properly use most of their cast (this led to a lot of struggles for wonderful cast members like Laraine Newman). I do think there is an issue at present because of some longrunning cast members who do not leave and never give anyone the chance to inherit roles that make you connect more with viewers. For instance, Kenan tends to play most of the game show host roles that, say, Alex Moffat might excel in. Kate and Cecily, until the At Home episodes, did most of the main impressions that weren’t done by cameos. If some of this was dealt with than even with a larger cast size more people would be used (and I think other than Alex and Melissa most of the cast got a decent rotation this season). I think we’ll get a lot of cast change after this season, between likely budget cuts and people wanting to move on, so hopefully if the cast is smaller they will put them to better use.
#1. Is phrasing dead? #2/ Yes, Melissa killer the Mulaney part, and I thought the Brittney improv was better than the other one. It seems Melissa and Ego are doomed to 2nd tier status no matter how funny they prove they are.
I kind of take umbrage with Ego being 2nd tier, as she’s been in a LOT of sketches this season. Still, I do agree that she tends to be ignored in discussions of the show.
You’re right, but she usually gets sucked into other’s sketches where she fills in for ‘generic black woman’. She’s much funnier than that. I mean, there really isn’t a bad female member of the cast, but the top 3 get most of the attention (and for reasons), but everyone else scrambles for the crumbs.
Tina Fey:“…thank you doormen!”WTFAlso, OT, one of my neighbors won’t stop screaming at his family.
why wtf?
I know that Kyle Mooney is kind of a hero of weird alt comedy types, but his sketch tonight…woof. That was rough. I appreciate that comedy is an intensely subjective thing, and I get there are people who love that brand of comedy, so I won’t begrudge them that, but this sort of “See, it’s weird and awkward and purposefully not funny, and the fact that it’s purposefully not funny means it’s really funny” shtick really really doesn’t work for me.
I see him as an inspiration, in a way. He taught us that if you make something weird enough, you can have a long career in comedy without having to write any jokes.
I thought Tim and Eric taught us that
I’ll give them credit for the restaurant in their movie, which served only bread and featured a stand-up comedian doing exclusively bread-themed humor.
He’s definitely gotta be the laziest guy in comedy.
In one of his bits, you can see that Kyle has a giant framed poster of the awful Robin Williams film Jack in his home, which is completely on-brand.
I’m actually on the other end of the spectrum with Mooney these days. I’ve never been a big fan of his but as this season has gone on, something with his humor and style finally clicked with me. Having said that, I’ve also liked Pete Davidson since nearly his first appearance, so take what I say with a raised eyebrow and a “hmmmm”.
I was watching this one going “This is stupid. This is stupid and so bad. Man, this is rough. Wait, why am I laughing?”. A lot of his bits are like that. He’ll just keep repeating the weird and absurd until it finally breaks you
My wife is convinced he’s blackmailing Lorne to stay on the show.
Kyle has a very unique brand and following that has mostly stayed with him even after 7 years. It’s not enough to take to the bank, but it helps get the show social media attention. Even now I still see comments like “Mikey Day’s son gets more airtime than Kyle” or “It’s not Kyle if it’s not cut for time,” when he had a pretty decent amount of airtime this season. You don’t hear that about, say, Alex Moffat (somebody I think could be so great for the show if given the chance), even though he was shut out of a lot of the season.
As I trend older than most, I do have a feeling Kyle’s humor is a bit more geared to the younger folks than to me. On the other hand, there’s a fine line between stupid/funny and stupid/stupid and I think he’s definitely stupid/stupid
I’m 47 and I love it
Kyle’s comedy started out in the mid/late ‘00s so I’m not sure how young his audience is. Generally I am not a fan of “annoying to be annoying” comedy, and not every piece is a winner, but there’s something about Kyle I tend to enjoy, especially when he’s with Beck. It helps that there is a sentimentality and wistfulness alongside empty lampooning of bro platitudes.
He seems to work best when there’s more than like 1 other person in his sketch, but whenever he’s on his own I find it usually terrible. Feels too much like a type of humor that goads you to hate it.
I’m always happy to see another Kyle Mooney sketch, even if I’ll concede they aren’t all winners. I need them to balance out the game shows and quick-hit celebrity impressions.
Did anybody else pause the show to work out exactly where Kyle was filming the outdoors bank robbing bit? Just me? (It was the Chase Bank on Colorado Blvd. in Eagle Rock, just down the road from Tommy’s hamburgers.)
I saw that too! I live down the street from there. Had to do a double-take when I noticed the One Down Dog yoga studio in the background.
Mooney is, hands down, one of the absolute worst cast members in SNL history. I like awkward comedy, but his stuff pushes through to the other side of awkward and just becomes painful to watch. He’s done the exact same schtick his entire tenure and someone keeps giving him notes that it’s funny, but I have a sneaking suspicion that person passing notes is him wearing a bad wig… which seems exactly like the sort of skit he would write. He thinks he’s Andy Kaufman, but he’s more of third rate John Mulaney… in a bad wig.
This is incorrect. He’s funny and good
An opinion which I respect and will fight for your right to have, but do not support :-p
Mooney is at least better at it than the endless iterations of it on Adult Swim, but better in this case means I stayed with thw bit 10 seconds longer before tuning out.
It was good and weird and funny
i find him to be more of a poor mans=tim & eric. now, they’re the heroes of the weird alt comedy types, having influenced comedy in the last ten years.
hey, if you think that anti-comedy is anti-funny, you’re anti-wrong.
Have you seen Brigsby Bear? It’s a movie he stars in (and I believe wrote). It is such a good, weird, sweet, uplifting story. Highly recommend it!
For my money, the recent years of SNL of been some of the most enjoyable in several years.YouTube lets me watch the skits I want and skip the ads. I don’t have to endure that last half hour of skit-5 ads-musical number-5 ads-skit.They’ve moved away from showcasing the most popular characters in boring, repetitive skits. I don’t have to worry that there’ll be five minutes of the Church Lady or Ed Grimley doing the same thing he did last week.Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, and Kenan Thompson are amazing, and some of the newer cast members show tons of potential. Che and Jost aren’t always on point, but they’re light years ahead of some of the previous Weekend Update anchors.
YouTube has definitely increased my watching of SNL. No commercials, and added bonus is watching the good stuff that I laughed at, and then watch it again and keep laughing. On the negative side, I grew up watching SNL during the age of Church Lady, and teenaged Rogue loved seeing recurring bits during that age of…recurring bits every week. Just like you, I’m glad they are kinda moving away from it, and only doing Jeopardy! maybe once a year, if that anymore. Whenever there is more than one recurring character/skit in an episode, it tells me the writers were drawing blanks and couldn’t come up with something fresh. Final thought: I’m still amazed Keenan is still around (I’m sure he is too), but that anything he is in is always part of the funniest bits now says a lot about how he has honed his skill and comedic timing. I’m willing to bet that half of what gets on air is just him riffing off the cuff. I also can’t believe he’s been with SNL since, what, before it was even a show? I know he’s not 45, but I swear he was in a Blues Brothers scene back in 1978.Also: Aidy is awesome. If she and Keenan don’t retire from the show together in like, 2040, there will be hell to pay.
The thing is: The show won’t survive if it just goes to YouTube. There’s just no money in it, and so no one will want to pay to produce it. TV is the stuff they put between the Ads, not the other way around. Monetizing a video might be great stuff for OffTheShelfReviews or ComicTropes. It ain’t shit for a production like SNL. I’d love the show to be a little more free with how it picks skits…but it would be far more miss than hit, I bet.Kenan Thompson has been saving this show for years. I think the guy draws a decent cheque, doesn’t have to stray far from home, and is so comfortable and familiar with his job that he can coast thru it. He doesn’t have to sweat thru The Slaughter because he elevates everythng he’s in, so no one’s gonna cut him. I can’t think of a sketch (‘ceptin’ maybe What’s Up Wit’ Dat), that have his writing fingerprints on it. In my opinion, Thompson has hit on the perfect formula and is perfectly happy where he is.
McKinnon and Bryant have the best chemistry since Fey and Poehler. They are there with Belushi/Akroyd and Sanz/Fallon (I know, that last one is not popular, and Fallon is nowhere near as funny by himself. I loved their Bin Laden/Sadaam bits).
you know how they keep saying a lot of our favourite business and other establishments might not come back after corona?
Damn, but I wanted to see Britney Spears doing herky jerky yoga moves atop her boy-toy boyfriend. Her Stepford Life seems to have finally devolved into dumb-shit Kardashian (surprisingly) high stakes Reality Entertainment since he showed up.Also: Thank You for not slide-showing this.
how would they have slide-showed a tv review?
Let me see…. Oh yeah, each sketch gets its own page! It’ll happen.
Damn, is Kyle’s home amazing. I would look at it and think it belonged to a much bigger name.
His house is probably outside Cleveland.
There are palm trees and mountains in Cleveland? By the looks of it it was the Hollywood Hills.
he’s got big ‘depressed son of a hedge fund manager’ energy.
He’s got that sweet Zoolander 2 money.
Jezus, these countless Hair/makeup youtube vloggers… This is how I know that Life on Earth is TRULY the hell that many of us worry comes later.Ladies, this shit is why people (including women) respect women even LESS than the pre- ERA movement. Your hunger for the perfect balayage is why ya’ll are still cleaning up every one’s messes and getting nothing for it.I think this is some pretty good SNL fare
Something tells me you look for any reason to not respect women. This is just your latest excuse.
wat are you talking about
The Masterclass sketch was the best of the night. These At Home episodes have really given Chloe Fineman and Melissa Villasenor more time to shine than they got in standard episodes and both are better for it. Fineman especially comes out looking like a potential breakout star. For years the show has relied on McKinnon as the go to celebrity impersonator but Fineman has the chops to take on that role.The Eleanor’s House sketch was straight out of the 2am slot on Adult Swim and I’m down for that. It’s not something I want SNL to push towards as a whole but going for something like that once every couple of shows is something they should strive for.The McDonald sign joke Che had Jost read for “a sick kid” was great. Seems like nothing makes Che happier than making Jost tip toe that comedy line
I agree. At the beginning of the season, Bowen Yang was the breakout, but Fineman has found her element in these last three. Nwodim is great, but too many of the parts written for her seem somewhat generic. I really want all three to come back next season – they are all solid.
what’s wrong with this picture sketch had me cackling out loud, I could have watched a half hour of that.
I thought that Villaseñor’s Mulaney was funny, but something about her delivery, the register, less clear voice, something made it seem more like a John Wayne impression.
I feel like it was easy for her to get Mulaney’s tone and cadence, but his comedy style is much harder to pin down.
“What’s Wrong With This Picture?” Hey, I got the frozen swimming pool right!That egg one was tricky tho, haha! (I’m high).
I thought it was that the egg carton had no cover, not that there were 14 eggs. I mean, we can get cartons of 18 eggs, why not 14? Is the mold for egg cartons only in multiples of 6? I’m thinking too hard about this…
You’re right. It had no cover! lol.
Looks like all the female cast members stayed in their nyc apartments while the guys fled to the suburbs. Weak.
Many of them are not even in New York, like Kenan in Florida and Fineman/Mooney in (looks like) LA.
unbelievably grim. wow
I hope next season, we go a LOT of episodes before we see yet another fucking Pete Davidson/Chris Redd music video.
and good Lord, what a terrible fucking take on Martin Short.
On the topic of cancelling SNL, the seasons where cancellation were close are what people claim to be their favorites. Which I think is more of people liking the later projects of the stars of the time and then saying “oh yeah they were great on SNL”.Also NBC execs used to care (unnecessarily) about SNL. I’m also reminded of the time Don Ohlymeyer ended his own career by firing Norm.
Here are the cut sketches from the episode. The Ego piece is great (she’s really found her voice in these solo bits); the Kate and Aidy is one of their most enjoyable for me (moreso than several that aired this season); the Chris/Ego/Kenan song is a blast and much more fun to listen to than Pete’s rap; I’m glad they got the Michael Jordan doc sketch as it’s flat and much as I like Bowen, the Kim Jong Un stuff just feels lazy and cheap.
Wow, they have a good chunk of another show here.
Some good stuff and as usual better than a lot of stuff that ended up in the episode
Here’s one with Beck and Kyle.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CABjhz4HpcL/
Point of order: Danny Trejo does not have a handlebar moustache; he has a horseshoe moustache.
“Imagine there’s no SNL, it’s easy if you try…”
“Back when Dick Ebersol took over from a departed Lorne Michaels as producer”Didn’t Ebersol take over from Jean Doumanian?
Yep.
lol he doesn’t even know the history of the show he hates to review
I think I can sum up these reviews by pointing out all the verbage given to Chloe’s Brittney and Phoebe and one line for Melissa Villaseñor’s Mulaney. These review fixate. The better stuff is just mentioned offhandedly in passing if at all. I can get why they show never gets a great review, you just don’t enjoy the show.
THANK YOU. I’m not joking when I say that I think Perkins hates humor–and IIRC he’s on the record for not liking impressions. But Villasenor’s Mulaney was the strongest impression in age, the best bit in a pretty good episode.
It was an accurate impression but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was funny
Agreed. Doing Mulaney is one thing. Doing Mulaney being funny is another. If you can do Walken, but do it where he’s just buying a pack of gum at a store, it’s just a impression, not a joke.
There isn’t a ton to go on with Mulaney, especially as Melissa doesn’t really add layers to her impressions. I thought it worked as a quick bit though.
good thing it was?
i have resisted this sentiment for a while, but once i read his Martin Short tirade here, i give up. he just hates to laugh. his Simpsons reviews are just as insufferable.
Chloe’s Brittney had those pink shorts pulled up so tight, I’m surprised they didn’t have to blur it.
It was perfect, I laughed and laughed at it.
Not to worry. I’m sure the show’s writers remain hard at work on “the true, queasy horror of reality” Perkins prefers, rather than comedy sketches, in order to better court his opinion next season.
I hated the Masterclass sketch. Hated, hated, hated it. Thought the impressions were second rate, low hanging fruit “if you only have a passing familiarity with this person’s face shape you’ll love this” dross. Also: Villasenor should have been made to learn a Windsor knot if only to prove that she doesn’t suck at everything. So sick of the Jedi mind trick where just because she’s slim and loud she’s somehow funny. She’s not. I keep being told she’s talented, but like Lena Dunham, I’m not seeing it.
Whoa. Strong reaction to not liking a three minute comedy sketch shot during a worldwide pandemic!
Still hated it. That hasn’t changed. If they can’t deliver quality, they shouldn’t deliver at all.
That’s odd, because she’s a successful comedian and you’re not.
Well, she’s a marginally known comedian with a racism controversy in her past, but thank you for playing… let’s see what you won? That’s right: nothing as always!
She seems to be doing alright. You on the other hand… yikes.
Seriously? I’m somehow out of bounds for having the opinion that I don’t have to accept lazy crap—and constant lauding of the mediocre— just because there’s a pandemic?
Sure
i always think it’s funny when peoples criticism is ‘they don’t have talent’. like, bud, c’mon.
I am not impressed with most of the cast, but she in particular is constantly hailed as being a special genius. I just don’t get it. I felt the same thing about Lena Dunham.
Like it or not, completely live or not, the 1984-85 season was one of the best seasons in the show’s history. Even without the pre-taped bits, Billy Crystal, Martin Short (yes, that terrible performer) and Chris Guest had some of the funniest sketches ever making carryover members like Jim Belushi, Mary Gross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus up their game and if you don’t like “Jackie Rodgers Jr.’s $100,000 Jackpot Wad”, Lord help you, sir.It’s crystal clear that the current cast has no breakout stars (can you imagine any of these guys turning into future box office champs or even HBO stars?) and when a sketch catches fire, they then proceed to keep doing it until all the blood is sucked out of the goddamn thing. I know that Lorne has to make sure to keep the teen demographic is pacified (especially the musical acts who have to wait until their singles or albums are breakout hits to be invited to perform-bye bye newcomers like Teenage Fanclub in 1991) but some of these current sketches wouldn’t make it at all 15 years ago. Every move they make is too safe.P.S. I never thought I would be saying that Jim Belushi upped his game during the 1984-85 season but there it is.
I want to see the math that 84-85 had substantially more pre-taped bits than earlier seasons; short films were always part of the show’s repertoire. (I’d guess Jean Doumanian’s season would be the one most reliant on taped pieces.) It was a brilliant season, and I think they needed to bring in ringers to keep the ship sailing after Murphy left. But it never felt like anything except SNL.
I think Heidi, Mikey, and Alex have star potential, especially when they’re in skits together. They seem like they could form the natural core of the cast when Kate decides to move on.
if you include Kate McKinnon as part of the cast then Kate McKinnon would otherwise no . these guys are “the not quite ready for being a supporting character in a quickly cancelled sitcom players.”
Aidy Bryant is already the lead in a successful sitcom.
They could never do the Jackie Rogers Jr.’s $100,000 Jackpot Wad sketch now with Christopher Guest as Rajiv Vindaloo and Billy Crystal as Sammy Davis Jr.
Chocolate babies?
Thank you doormen!!
Boyz-II-Men: Happy Mothers’ Day, and yeah, we’ve got a LOT of gold records.
Oh Pete, you’re no Lonely Island. Two songs about being bored at home, and one about Danny Trejo being an actor and business person; it was no ‘Santana DVX’, that’s for sure.
Thanks for your reviews, and I hope you stay safe. I tend to agree with you, as I’m sure many at the show would as well, that Saturday Night Live without the “live” will never be the same. There are also some performers, like Cecily and Bowen, who seemed to thrive in a live format in a way they don’t quite manage in a complete pre-tape atmosphere. Still, I think there are a lot of positive lessons to take from these three shows – for me they excelled when they had shorter sketches, giving each individual cast member a chance to shine. Longer, bloated sketches make me zone out. It’s a shame that sketches like Ego as the struggling mother were cut as they’re what this format should be all about, and it’s great to see Ego, who has a lot of ups and downs live, shining. The only other cast member who has benefited more is probably Heidi, who has consistently been showcased as a leading lady after being misused and sidelined most of the last two seasons. I’m curious as to what the pecking order will be next season, as, between likely budget cuts, and so many longtime cast members surely wanting to go, we will be getting a lot of change. I just wish they’d use Alex Moffat instead of consistently wasting him.The Dreams sketch was, aside from the unfortunate choice to use someone’s Sonic fan art without permission, absolutely perfect and gorgeous. Seeing such a beautifully melancholy piece close out the season gave this a resonance that most finales tend to not have, and reminded me of a piece that was much more at home for the show in the ‘70s or ‘80s. I always miss that SNL, which was more willing to let us breathe or think. Even if I’m sorry at what happened to get that back, I will appreciate the moment. I will never have any interest in Trump material on this show, but sadly this drain will continue to be circled. As for Dick Ebersol, while he did move more to pre-tape as time passed, he did try to keep the show’s live roots going for much of his run on the show. He had many comedy legends host and used them to further the atmosphere of live sketch comedy. If you ever get a chance, try to find the episode Don Rickles hosted. It is one of the funnest episodes SNL has ever done – pure chaos and pure entertainment with a master. And not a bit of his material was pre-taped.
Thank god the “Murder Hornets” showed up, the “omg toilet paper” jokes were allllllllllmost getting a bit stale
but seriously, professional joke writers, you guys collectively all use ONE go-to joke topic, and you all go for the most obvious gag every time. AND YET YOU ARE PAID.
I really do not understand how people find Kristen Wiig humorous.
“Basically, this is me telling NBC not to get any big ideas—Saturday Night Live without the live is dead.” Yup. I’m sure NBC is listening to ya big guy! “We were gonna keep this not live rendition of the show going, but The Perk-olator said it was a no-go gang, soooorry!”. In addition to the errors of research on Perkin’s part, does he not get this was never MEANT to be the normal SNL, nor was it ever trying to be? He even mentions the “rebranding” of the show as SNL From Home or whatever, but somehow fails to realize it’s temporary (unless directed otherwise). And look, I’m not saying any of these shows have been GREAT, but not unlike regular SNL, there were two or three gems and a bunch of meh from each episode. Par for the course.And you’re really gonna shit on Weekend Update for not being political enough right now? Mmkay. Turns out, even sketch comedians might want some goddamn levity and escape from attempting to turn a shit show nightmare of a political landscape into whatever you have deemed the pantheon of satirical edge. To quote Wayne Campbell “Get the net!”.Full discretion too, not even a big fan of SNL anymore! It’s really not that great and I watch it mainly as a form of escapism that connects me to one of my favorite pop culture outlets from my youth. Yet here I am, defending a show I don’t really like anymore, on a site I used to love but now only rarely visit out of some weird sense memory as well. But, I know this will never make it outta the gray comments, seeing as I was banished there the last time I shit on garbage writing on this site. It’s almost like critics can’t take criticism…
was it me or did it really not look like “trump” had watched a liza video on make-up application? he really looked almost normal.