Saturday Night Live: Season 342343414

Apparently, the Lobster sketch, along with the Switcheroo TV show, were co-written by Mulaney back when he was still working at SNL, but they never made the cut back then.

Donald Glover nailed it last weekend, giving me more hope that Solo will be decent enough. Great talent.

The opener was excellent also though I’m worried that constantly making fun of what Trump is doing will just make it somehow more acceptable to anyone trying to justify their vote for him.

You really think the type of person who voted for Trump watches SNL, or cares what SNL does?

What type of comedy do they watch then, do you think? Or do they not watch comedy?

Re-runs of the Bill Cosby Show.

Whether or not they watch it (and I assume a decent chunk still might), certain bits will keep showing up on social media & even the news, possibly minimizing the actual real damage the administration is causing. Good old lovable Trump, taking it to the Dems! I just assume there’ll be a push back, in the “Us vs Them” vein, since Trump’s done a great job at convincing a good chunk of the poor to lower middle class population in Red states that he’s somehow one of them.

Roseanne

Some sort of SNL marathon on Twitch.

So many dead guys. FeelsBadMan.

Watching the old SNL, from the 70’s and such.

The new SNL … really isn’t that great…

I think that the writing is just not there right now. Things are so safe right now. Things used to be so zany! There are so many game show and talk show sketches now…

That lobster sketch was the best thing in a while, and it was an old Mulaney sketch that never got run until now.

I think much of the problem is simply that there are only so many variations of the same skit that you can do, and the show has been around a long time now. I also think the guest host can make a huge difference week to week. I have no idea how much input they have but it sure seems some are willing to do more than others.

New season starts tonight. I hope they’ve got their comedy chops ready to go.

Well, this happened:

Yeah, I’m sorry, if the two numbers from last night’s show are at all representative of his ouevre, I officially don’t get Kanye West. Maybe I need to listen to some earlier stuff. He just rubs me the wrong way, and not just because he’s pro-Trump.

BTW, the Career Day bit was effing genius, as was the fake coffee shop one.

Am waiting for Kanye to get casually used and then discarded by his friends the Trumpsters…

I didn’t watch the '17-'18 season, but the writing last night seemed like a steep drop from the '16-'17 season I watched every episode of. What is happening?

I would agree, last season, and this season so far have really focused on the performance and not the writing. If you look at the types of sketches being written on SNL now, the majority end up being pretty predictable premises. The career day sketch was fun, but it was basically “let Adam Driver say some crazy stuff” and it worked because he is an exceptional performer. The same can be said for the coffee shop/product placement sketch. Pretty basic, and funny because Cecily Strong and Adam Driver were so great.

The best written sketch on SNL in the last 2 years was the one written by John Mulaney, who is not a writer for SNL anymore.

This was perfect, becuase it married a unique presence (why is lobster on this crappy diner’s menu) with the over the top and well excuted performances of the stellar cast.

The cast is better than the show right now, and save for a few sketches a season, things have been largely forgettable. Basically, here is one joke for the premise, and these great performers riffing on that premise. Sometimes that is enough, but most of the time the sketch is forgettable.

I continue to love the Kyle Mooney pre-taped segments, where he dates leslie jones or in this week attempts to ape Pete Davidson’s style. It got pretty over the top in the roman style battle to the “death” which was a great way to raise stakes to a funny level. Including shooting Adam Driver with an arrow, as he “didn’t belong here”.

Also, the Kanye shit was just insane. The guy is a straight up living 4chan troll now. He used to get attention because his music was provocative and good, now he is just getting attention for being provocative. Bizarre set and short version of a song with lil pump clearly not self-censoring himself, having a singer do a track cut from an album, lip synching badly with a see-through top, and then kicking everyone offstage to perform with Kid Cudi, and weirdly calling people back on when it was too late wearing a MAGA hat. I guess that is the consequence of marrying a reality show star. He is just doing it for attention now.

I do like “Ghost Town” but that is probably more Kid Cudi than Kanye.

Try We Major. That’s the track that earned my respect.

I think it’s very rare that SNL – in any era – has written sketches in a complete way with a really satisfying ending. It’s probably very hard to do given the schedule and the format constraints and all the rest of it. Almost invariably there is an idea (sometimes good, sometimes not) and then it just sort of peters out.

I think Monty Python had an advantage in that if they didn’t know how to end a sketch they would just link to a Terry Gilliam cartoon and keep the momentum flowing along, or avail themselves of stock links/gags like the knight with the chicken, the Colonel, random cutaways to Vox Pops, etc. A live onstage format doesn’t allow that, although the pre-produced short films show how much tighter things can get when you have time to edit/massage etc.

For sure. Python (and Mr. Show) had the transtioning format, which is probably the smartest way to do sketch comedy, as it allows for sketches without endings to flow together. You always have an “out”

And the weekly format basically makes it impossible to write amazing sketches, which becomes more impossible with the addition of a weekly guest you need to write around, but it isn’t just the endings that are bad, it is the premises that are lazy. The show is coasting on a sea of goodwill right now, as they are working with some incredibly talented comedic actors and stand-up comedians, and some incredibly easy-target political stuff going on right now.

I can’t put my finger on quite what they need to be doing differently, but what they are doing now feels a lot like filler. The show feels like it has another gear to it we haven’t seen yet.