Sunday, November 13, 2011
I THOUGHT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET SEXY STUFF: I don't know why SNL saves its best stuff for after Update. If you didn't see it yet, Bridal Shower Gifts is pretty much perfect in every way; Technology Hump is exactly what belongs just before the end credits; and Les Jeunes de Paris and the Adele skit are, sadly, not on Hulu (presumably, music rights issues).
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Les Jeunes is, for the moment, on YouTube:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/v/ZwlnSX8xD1k" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140
My freinds agree that whether you are an actor, newscaster, or sports figure, when you host SNL, you must be game for anything. Emma Stone is game. Now I want to see her with Timberlake.
ReplyDeleteStone and Timberlake have a very brief, very profane, and quite funny scene together in Friends With Benefits (she plays his girlfriend at the start of the film).
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteI was going to do a post about how this show demonstrated everything that is wrong with SNL. Aside from the digital short and the music, everything for the first hour and fifteen minutes was a retread. Republican debate with several recurring characters, done several times. Secret word, done several times. Local news with Bill Hader as the old guy, done several times. Digital short, new. Coldplay, new. Weekend Update with guest appearances by the unprepared singers (done several times) and the devil (done several times). Les Jeunes, done once. First new sketch idea: Bridal Shower Gifts, and it was the first laugh of the show. 55% of the non-musical portion of the show was basically a rerun.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't realized the Les Jeunes de Paris sketch was something they'd done before. I loved watching that Saturday. It was really inventive. It seems odd that more often than not over the last several episodes, the best skits have come in the second half of the show. I remember when I used to think it was safe to turn off the TV after Weekend Update.
ReplyDeleteSo are you, on principle, against recurring characters? It's often been one of the show's strengths.
ReplyDeleteChrist am I tired of Wiig and Armisen (together or separately). Time to go, you two. Get out.
ReplyDeleteI was watching with a friend and she made the claim that the bridal shower skit may have been written with the Wiig and Stone roles switched.
ReplyDeleteAs Russ pointed out, reenacting something is not satire.
I am, and it's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of practice. In principle it is possible to have recurring characters continue to be funny (by testing them against different scenarios). Stephon continues to be funny (though much less so than originally) because he can still surprise with what he says. Just about every other recurring character is a single-joke character, though. So in practice SNL employs the laziest possible writing to just recycle skits with only superficial changes. If somebody tells you a joke that's funny once, it doesn't mean that if they tell it to you every week for the next three or four weeks it will continue to seem funny. At some point you just have to tell a different joke.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't believe that the use of recurring characters has been one of the show's strengths, exactly. It has never been one of the show's strengths comedically; it has been commercially.
That's what I said to Spacewoman -- they were just reading the transcript.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question -- which recurring characters have expanded over time and continued to be interesting? You know I'm a fan of What's Up With That?; I do not think the Lawrence Welk stuff or 90% of what Kristin Wiig does have similar durability and mutability.
ReplyDeleteI don't know--a fair amount of the Palin stuff in '08 (though not all of it) was taken pretty directly from the material. It's partially because they don't have a really good angle on any of the GOP candidates (nor have they really developed one on Obama).
ReplyDeleteI disagree, I think they've had a lot of strong characters over the years (who didn't have the commercial success of movies), from the Samurai to Matt Foley to Buckwheat to the Church Lady. And as for recurring bits, that's always been the hallmark of Weekend Update (start with Fransisco Franco--it's the same joke every week, and Garrett Morris for the Hearing Impaired to the Aykroyd/Curtin debates).
ReplyDeleteYou and I may be the only people on the planet who do not find Kristen Wiig hi-larious fun. I am sick of her face, I am sick of her weird acting, I do not laugh. No wonder I rarely watch SNL except when Emma Stone is on it. Wiig is bloody everywhere, being bizarre and unfunny.
ReplyDelete(I am not overly thrilled with Arneson either, but I have to give him props for making fun of hippies on Portlandia, at least.)
Me, three....except I loved Bridesmaids. And she does an ok Bachmann.
ReplyDeleteI agree - but Tina Fey was so spot on that it was funny. These guys are horrible. Although Of Mice and Men part was kind of funny.
ReplyDeleteMe four, and I didn't love Bridesmaids (fully expected to, since I did like Wiig in Whip It, but she played that straight without bizarre character bits - Bridesmaids was just way too much typical Wiig for me).
ReplyDeleteThat was me. And I watch SNL, I just hit the ff button for anything Wiig is in.
ReplyDeleteThe Of Mice and Men part caught me completely by surprise, and I cracked up - doesn't happen often with SNL.
ReplyDeleteMe five regarding the Wiig dislike. I liked her in Whip It but saw enough of her in the Bridesmaids previews to kill any desire to see the movie.
ReplyDeleteCan't stand Armisen either. There's something so smug about him that just annoys me.
I hate "Secret Word", but I laughed out loud when Emma Stone started making out with the dummy. The rest of that sketch wrote itself, but that one moment was great.
ReplyDeleteThere's a difference. I think Belushi's samurai (and his bee-man, which he said crushed his soul every time he had to put on that costume) and Matt Foley and the Church Lady were funny exactly once (if that). Buckwheat was different because they did different things with him. Church Lady saying "isn't that special" and then doing the pointy dance was the same again and again and again, but there was a world of comedy between Buckwheat's Greatest Hits and Buckwheat as the central character in a parody of the Reagan shooting ("Hey, Mr. Wheat!"). But, I mean, Church Lady and Fernando and Mango and Hans and Franz and Pat and Matt Foley, what did they do the second time that surprised you or made you laugh? They just said the same things with different straight men. They were the sketch comedy equivalent of Jay Leno -- they aimed for applause lines, not laugh lines. Comfort food.
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ReplyDeleteMe six! Can't stand to watch anything Wiig is in. I feel like she's always trying to compensate/apologize for being pretty.
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