Technically “live,” but clearly in some kind of medically induced coma from New York, it’s Saturday Night

2022-10-15

1. Cold Open: January 6 Committee. A ten-minute slog through poor approximations of stuff we watched on TV three days ago (how about trying to at least approximate a kind of impression of the politicians involved? Can’t be bothered? Okay.) for a poop non-joke. (Combined host and musical guest seldom works out well in either category.)

2. Monologue: dire. You are a poorly animated cartoon, Morgoon Thee Stallone. Please shut up. A joke? No. Why would we do that, like it’s a comedy show or something?

3. Hot Girl Hospital. Not anything at all of any temperature.

4. We Got Brought. You shouldn’t have gone. We shouldn’t have been dragged along.

5. Deer. Drear. And right in the middle, bars and tone from Global for no reason. Thanks, “Mittens” in Global master control. Idiot. (SNL: You need a premise, execution and a punchline or button to end a sketch. Is this concept unknown to this year’s writers?)

6. Girl Talk. See also “The Heys Of The Week,” SCTV. Snore.

7. Please Don’t Destroy. No need. You’re destroying yourselves by being some kind of simulated humor substitute that isn’t even a little bit funny. Please die and/or disappear.

8. Musical guest: Megan Theeeeeeee Stallone. Sub-par generic hip-hop substitute for the tone-deaf and illiterate. I know it’s selling. Doesn’t mean it’s “good.”

9. Weekend Update. Fine. But desk pieces featuring new cast members are lazy, especially when the cast members aren’t in sketches.

10. Fat Ass. Blown camera cues kill joke at the start. See also George Carlin: “There are three kinds of asses — fat, regular and no ass at all.” Fifty years ago. And way better than whatever you hoped this might be.

11. Musical Guest II (Still Megack Thy Scallion, unfortunately): Boring. Shut up, Megan Theeeeeee Stallone. Enough of your tedious nonsense, already.

12. Hallelujah Sweatshirt. Inexcusable. No joke, no point.

13. Ms. Fink. Not a bad premise, but so terribly executed that the premise fails. Also, a joke would’ve helped.

short-fingered vulgarian, third wife skulk babbling from White House

2021.01.07

waltz dizzily

2019.07.01

Seal eats octopus

2019.04.19

Walking along the seawall around Stanley Park, we came upon a seal eating an octopus. Looks like it was chewy. I added the library music. You can supply your own Rex Allen/Disney wildlife documentary voiceover. (“Well, sir, ol’ Stephanie found that while that octopus might’ve been delicious, it was a whole lot chewier than expected...”)

Sorkin jumps shark

2014.12.15

Once upon a time -- long, long ago -- Aaron Sorkin was a respected writer. First there was “A Few Good Men,” (play, then a movie) and television series -- “Sports Night, “The West Wing” and a lot of other excellent work. There were stumbles -- “Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip” was supposed to be Sorkin’s imagined version of what it was like behind the scenes at “Saturday Night Live,” which limped through a single season that included a hiatus of almost three months. (Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” debuted the same year with the same basis -- a sketch comedy show and its staff -- and survived, with the added bonus of being funny. “30 Rock” even got Sorkin to do a guest cameo as himself in the episode “Plan B” in 2011.)

Then came “The Newsroom.” If Sorkin had done any research or spent half an hour in a TV newsroom, it didn’t show up in his work. To make things worse, “The Newsroom,” was predicated on 18-month-old news and Sorkin’s total ignorance of how television news is made. It seemed like Sorkin felt TV news had not done its work correctly, and he wanted to use the series to demonstrate how the major stories from a year-and-a-half earlier should have been handled. A lot of the plots had stories magically dropping into the laps of the newsroom personnel, a nightly newscast that somehow wrote and produced itself without any people being involved and live shots and packages that were only a few seconds long.

It was so bad the Washington Post called it “the worst prestige show on television.” The memory of it was bad enough for The Guardian begged that it not be revived when Sorkin threatened to do just that in 2019.