“Live [if you call that living] from New York, it’s Saturday Night.”
2023-10-15
Cranking out about 60 minutes worth of content every week can’t be easy. But Saturday Night Live has 22 writers, three “head writers,” three “writing supervisors,” and a “senior writer.” That does not include Weekend Update, which has its own head writer and four writers who must only work on that segment, since they are not included in the list of 22 just plain “writers” in the show’s credits.
That makes one wonder how stupid and bad all those writers are. I mean, I regularly laugh at “Last Week Tonight,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” so it’s not as though I have no sense of humor. I am a fan of comedy. And those shows are genuinely funny.
Is the problem some format straitjacket that constricts the process too much? Is it Lorne Michaels’s iron-clad authority and jaded, calcified inability to know what’s funny any more, rejecting everything but the lighter-than-air premise-free sketch excuses without punchlines that kill time between commercials? Has it been so long since Lorne (who is still credited as a writer) actually sat at a keyboard and banged out a sketch with a premise, characters, a beginning, middle and end that he’s forgotten how to do that? Is it like that
The show was created as a reaction to what it saw as the predictable, format-constricted, formulaic work of things like “The Carol Burnett Show.” It has become the thing it hated and wanted to replace, only without even the professionalism and creativity of the TV comedy it wanted to replace....like, well, “The Carol Burnett Show,” or “The Simpsons Smile-Time Variety Hour.”
I hoped one of the few upsides of the WGA strike would be that the enforced five months off would mean a hiatus during which some rethinking or realignment of recalibration would occur.
Didn’t happen.
Some of the material seemed like it had been left on desks in writers’ offices in May, sat there through the strike, and was immediately put into production once everybody returned to work.
1. Cold Open: Pete Davidson direct address to camera talking about the fighting and attacks in Israel and Gaza and relating it to losing his father on 9/11. The only option, really, given the week’s news. Straightforward and sincere.
2. Monologue: Actually funny; a couple of solid jokes that were well-written and elicited laughs they deserved. Hope flares briefly even though Pete Davidson is the host, and can only ever play Pete Davidson. Apparently, really an excerpt from his stand-up routine. Still, funnier than anything that followed it.
3. Fox NFL Sunday: Light, slight, with a tiny premise -- Taylor Swift possibly dating a football player -- that went nowhere. And by this time, well past its best-before date, having been chewed over relentlessly everywhere for the preceding week. “Uh, sure, let’s put that meat-pile she’s supposedly dating, Travis Kelce, at the end as a ‘surprise,’ but for God’s sake, don’t give him a line. He proved he can’t deliver one when he hosted last season.”
4. I’m Just Pete: This long after the opening and theatrical run of Barbie, parodying Ken’s number felt stale, while also being petulant, self-indulgent and not funny enough. Likely written some time in late July.
5. Wired Autocomplete Interview: A one-poop-joke sketch that goes on and on and on and on and beats the single joke into an unrecognizable pulp. Typically SNL.
6. ’60s Law Firm: “Uh, like a Mad Men thing, but, like, in a law firm, I guess?”
“Uh-huh, and how is it funny?”
“Oh, it’s not funny. There aren’t any jokes. It’s, uh, Heidi’s secretary character finishing other characters’ sentences and then smashing a breakaway desk for no reason without any connection to anything in the script.”
7. Please Don’t Destroy: Ugh, these unfortunate nepo meatballs are still around. At least now they’re warning the audience we’ll have to endure another little bolus of their dreary comedic antimatter right up front in the opening credits. Oh, being Caucasians in a traditionally African-American context? How many times have they gone back to this premise now? I’ve lost count. Did it work this time? Nope, still not funny; oh-for-however many times this hasn’t worked. And this time they’re children. Did that help? Nope. Please destroy.
8. Ice Spice (musical guest): “Hello. I have two partial verses. Oh, and a voluminous ass. Did you look at my ass? Are you sure you looked at my ass? Here is my ass again. Look at it. I command you.” Thirty seconds of ringtone distraction (and ass) stretched over two minutes and 12 seconds.
9. Weekend Update: Lame jokes that didn’t land, with every set-up and punchline handled better by the late-night shows through the week. Don’t you guys watch those shows and figure, “Okay, they did that joke we were gonna do. We have to write something different.”? Columbus desk piece limped along with no point. Deion Sanders desk piece: a joke would’ve been nice -- even just one. Sorry.
10. USS Asperon: “. . . and we’ll have Bowen Yang say ‘I used to work here’ every 17 seconds.”
“Will that be funny?”
“Will it be what?”
11. Ice Spice II: “I’m Tater-Tot Swiffer. Once again, Ass Spass — Uh, I mean Ass Space. No, wait — Ass Spice?”
“Hello again. In case you forgot what it looked like, here is my ass. Again. Please don’t let the Nigerian warbler distract you from my ass. We’re at two minutes? Great. Shut it down.”
(Nice touch, Global, running an SNL promo for the episode you’re airing in the middle of the episode it’s promoting. I guess that was intended as some kind of self-referential promo department “Inception” in-joke or something. Or rank scheduling incompetence. You make the call.)
12. Bean Farm: “Okay, people at the beach. Pete’s character finds out he’s inherited a bean farm, then almost immediately learns it’s been destroyed and Andrew Dismukes is buried up to his neck in sand. What is the premise here?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Bold choice. How much time will it kill?”
“Enough -- probably about five minutes”
“Terrific.”
13. Glamgina. “It’s dreary, hateful, misogynistic, idiotic and unimaginative, granted. But how can we make it worse?”
“Put the word ‘butthole’ at the end?”
“That’s just the kind of lazy, sweaty garbage we pay you mouth-breathing organ banks for.”
14. Roadhouse. Have two characters say different numbers at Kenan Thompson. Yes, innumerate arithmetic, the comedic gambit that ALWAYS works. Why, just think of . . . okay, so there are zero examples. Hey, zero is a number -- comedy gold, I tell you.
“Strike’s over. Let’s have one of our weakest former cast members host our first show back.”
“Ass, in case you hadn’t noticed. Also, ass.”
“Generic introduction to musical guest.”
Vital signs absent from New York, it’s Saturday Night
2022-12-04
1. Herschel Walker Cold Open. It’s tough to find the jokes when you’ve got a self-sabotaging buffoon, but the Trump years have sharpened the sensibilities necessary to go oblique. Solid and very tight.
2. Keke Palmer monologue. Charming, funny and pregnancy revelation/confirmation.
3. Forceington’s Ridge. Failed. Blocking and camera angles gave away the premise at the jump. Bill Murray and Buck Henry already used this premise on SNL -- and darker and funnier -- in 1977 with the “Stunt Baby” sketch.
4. Big Boys. No matter what people say about the unacceptability of “fat shaming,” there are still apparently plenty of ways to make jokes about fat people.
5. United Tingz of Aubrey. Say, Aubrey Fake Graham, wondering if you’ve jumped the shark? I’d say if you’re a punch line, that’d be your notice. And it was funny, unlike everything you’ve ever done.
6. Hello Kitty Training. Stiff Records say, “When you kill time, you murder success.” No premise, so a swirling miasma of not all that much.
7. Kenan & Kelly. Okay, but too long.
8. Arby’s. A joyless march through an overextended premise, complete with blown video playback cue. Could’ve done this with a counter person and no playback, or with Thompson as Rhames manning counter; fewer technical challenges, and could’ve been tighter.
9. Musical Guest: SZA. Her part in the “Big Boys” pretape was better than this meandering nothingburger of melody-free pointlessness. Fast-forward skip after 45 seconds.
10. Weekend Update. Reliably funny. Longfellow divorce desk piece: good. Peppa Pig Silverman desk piece: good twist. Weekend Update is like that hacky joke, “Why don’t they just make the whole plane out of whatever the black box is made out of?” It’s reliably funny, and often a humor oasis in the middle of a desert of sub-par sketch attempts.
11. Twins Ultrasound. Labored and sweaty; all set-up, no payoff.
12. Choir Practice. Went nowhere. And the audio tech was apparently applying reverb at random.
13. SZA II: “If you get near a song, sing it.”
—Crow T. Robot.
Fast forward II: tedium-avoidance boogaloo.
14. Hawaii Flight. “Mittens” in Global master control decided we didn’t need to see the return bumper out of commercial or the beginning of the sketch. (You’re fired, Mittens.) Without a premise, the unattached jokes have no place to go, and don’t work.
15. Goodnights. Top and bottom clipped. Thanks again, Mittens.
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
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.
Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven (Special Edit)
1988.08.27
WNBC (“Sixty-six, double-you ENN bee cee!”) switched format and call letters in October 1988. In its waning days as a music station, it was the Time Machine, running a “faux forty” throwback format recreating what WABC had done in the 1960s and 1970s (it had flipped to right-wing talk in 1982). Overnights were the province of Jay “Big Jay” Sorensen and his “Record Pig” music trivia feature. At some point, he’d remade The Righteous Brothers’ 1974 hit with a block and a blade and a mess of old records.
