Did the Controversial Host Shane Gillis Succeed on SNL?

Shane Gillis was fired five years ago from SNL before he was able to appear on a single episode of the show. I don’t like or dislike him, but I’ve watched with intense fascination at the internet chatter since he was first announced to host the February 24th show.

His presence is the perfect geopolitical chokepoint upon which cancel culture, political correctness, and capitalism comes into play.

When analyzing this episode, there are two things at play.

One is where he first in the whole culture wars narratives. Was it a backwards or offensive move? The second is along the lines of whether he was talented enough to merit a spot on the show and whether he delivered on that end.

Most of those entertainment journalists who have covered the shane Gillis controversy have a lifetime of advocating from an extremely social justice warrior based perspective. The writing staffs at sites like Indiewire, Rogerebert, The A.V. Club, Slate, and Vox (which did a particularly scathing piece on him) are full of people who have spent their writing careers as a platform to boost and protect the margianalized, so they will come at it from a certain angle.

As I’ve said before, SNL is an institution because it has maintained credibility as an institution. Part of that institutional practice (AKA whatever goes on in Lorne Michael’s head) is that the show includes voices from every side of the aisle. The show would completely lose its edge if it didn’t, and comedy has to push the envelope. The same boundary-pushing attitude that allowed them to hire queer comedians like Terry Sweeney, Kate McKinnon, Punkie Johnson, and Bowie Yang, or body-positive comedians like Aidy Bryant, is the same kind of ethos that would allow for the invitations for people like Dave Chapelle and Gillis to host.

Some might call this an annoying habit of courting controversy, as Judy Berman writes for Time. This is not an illegitimate claim: Art and commerce can’t be divorced from each other, either. One can also make the case that when SNL makes bookings outside the realm of entertainment voices, it can negatively affect the world like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. However, people like Gillis simply are people who present ideas. Audiences shouldn’t be afraid of those ideas being voiced out loud on TV. The kinds of people who don’t like whatever they think Shane Gillis represents (more on that later) have plenty of avenues to voice that, and many powerful allies in the media who will pick up that baton.

As for what Shane Gillis represents, he is very likely a democrat (or at the very least apolitical), even if his defining moment in the public sphere to audiences who aren’t comedy nerds was as an example of cancel culture.

The idea that Shane Gillis has grown as a person and reconciled is one reason that he has become more palatable.

While one can always judge the sincerity of the apologies or the growth of Shane Gillis, there’s a habit of hashtag warriors to judge apologies as insincere no matter what. So I’m inclined to give Gillis the benefit of the doubt. As any couples therapist or workplace conflict mediator can tell you, it’s never a helpful to try to measure the sincerity of apologizes and assume what’s in the person’s head when they make it. It’s very much an act of projection with celebrity culture that today’s followers of celebrity feel they can act out these complicated mental states through their celebrity scapegoat of the week.

In recent interviews, Gillis has mentioned attempts to detach himself as a poster boy for Conservative fans, friendships with figures such as Andrew Yang, and that he’s trying hard to not use offensive language (the thing that first got him in trouble).

To a zoomer, this seems laughable. They likely have been raised in places with zero policies towards offensive language and have been trained to villainize minor slights as hate speech. Again, this is not so much an indication that Shane Gillis is horrible, but that generational differences can train us to not recognize the growth in another person if they’re so far behind us on (our own self-defined) bell curves.

It’s helpful to recognize that Shane Gillis’s attempts to be a decent person will still be judged by anyone on the internet who think he’s a good enough ally. We are free to judge him as bigoted, but that might not be the most accurate view of who he is if we’re not careful with context. On the contrary, there has been audience pressure for him over the last five years to lean into stereotypes and offensiveness. Many comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari, and especially Louis C.K. have gone harsher into attack mode at woke audiences after they’ve been cancelled. For his part, Gillis at least deserves credit for sticking to his funny bone.

As for whether the episode was a failure, there were sketches that might have been seen as problematic. There was a sketch with misguided employees who didn’t understand sexual harrassment in a meeting with H.R.

It played off the image that Gillis was politically backwards. At the same time, Gillis didn’t play the only character in the sketch with questionable morals. The sketch never condoned anyone’s wrong-headed views, and it’s target squared with the voices of reason in the HR characters (Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman). The main comic premise was how frustrating sexual harrassment seminars must be for the presenters. It’s a fairly soft space in which to make edgy jokes since the audience is clearly on the right side of the moral equation.

The sketches varied in terms of offense. One sketch premise involved Jamaican accents and some might have found the cultural appropriation aspect unfunny when Shane Gillis couldn’t stop himself from speaking in a Jamaican accent. However, if that criticism is widespread (I haven’t seen anything in the reviews so far), I’d maintain that it comes from criticizing comedy without context. Here, the comic premise wasn’t about how a Jamaican patois sounds funny. Instead, it’s about the awkwardness of a White man in a Jamaican Church.

This school of criticism of judging comedy without context has been pretty prevalent since around 2015. As someone who’s not a fan of people overusing “cultural appropriation” or “white savior” criticisms, it’s extremely refreshing for Shane Gillis to be on the show skirting the line of political correctness.

However, it should be noted that all of this is moot because SNL is never written by the host of the week. Everything said in sketches was heavily scripted by a writing room that's heavily staffed with female and queer writers. In the last decade, female writers Sudi Green, Allison Gates, Anna Drezen, and Sarah Schneider have all held head writer positions on the show and the non-binary writer Celeste Yim got promoted to writing supervisor. Three of this season’s new hires — KC Shornima, Asha Ward, and Auguste White — are women of color as well.

Last season, this Try Guys sketch was heavily criticized for brushing off the power dynamics in a buzzworthy internet conflict (a semi-famous content creator being fired from one of YouTube’s big channels for cheating on his wife). It later came out that one of the writers of the sketch (Will Stephen) went to college with the content creator in question. What the media didn’t focus on as much was that the sketch was also written by Celeste Yim and Bowen Yang as well. It’s easy to pass the show’s more offensive moments onto the least margianalized writer (Stephen is White) but SNL has always been a group effort.

The only think that Shane really did as Shane was his monologue. In my opinion, this was underwhelming, which seems to echo much of the internet reaction. In that sense, he might have “bombed” but that is different than being deliberately offensive in an Andrew Dice Clay kind of way.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for all the hooplah around the episode and preceding hype, I found the experience of Shane Gillis highly cathartic. Rather than witness the divisive impulses of cancel culture, I watched a guy clean up his reputation, be accepted by his peers and have them make art together. I believe the generation below me thrives on criticism, but collaboration and happy endings warms my heart more.

How to Write Family Members Who Hate Wes Anderson

Disclosure: This isn’t an exact facsimile of what I wrote to my family. It’s been enhanced in certain places to make it more palatable to a general audience. This article is also on my Patreon and my Medium.

Dear my entire extended family. When I mentioned that my favorite film of the year was Asteroid City (although, to be fair, I greatly enjoyed Tetris, Killers of the Flower Moon, Holdovers, Fool’s Paradise, and Oppenheim), I’m flattered that you all took it as a recommendation but I would have told you he has a very stylized way of making films.

Asteroid City is by Wes Anderson who has a very stylized way of making films. He started out in the 1990s with low budget movies (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore) and just a few characters. These were probably not that out of step with regular movies and would have been more palatable to you. Martin Scorsese and James L Brooks were very strong early champions of his work.

Royal Tenenbaums is probably his most effective piece emotionally. It involves a dying elderly man (Gene Hackman) trying to connect with his wife (Anjelica Huston) and adult kids before he goes. The kids are all accomplished geniuses in their field, but they are beset by loneliness and intimacy and are even romantically entangled.

Ed Norton was asked why his favorite director was Wes Anderson and he said that it spoke to people’s need to belong. That’s why he’s maybe my favorite director as well. The characters might be enemies in the middle of or whatever, but they ultimately recognize each other’s humanity at the end. I would also say that for unmarried people, Wes Anderson provides a comfort because he leans so heavily on found family tropes, and not the belief that happy endings are based on romantic ones.

From there, his works have gotten more idiosyncratic with more bloated casts. This, I suspect, might be the turn off to regular moviegoers. If there are 40 speaking roles, it’s harder to form a coherent story.

It’s probably this kind of stuff that has made him fodder for humor. Amy Poehler once joked at the Golden Globes that he rode to the ceremony on a bicycle made from tuba parts. SNL did a skit on him. So if you want to just laugh at him, check this video out:

In fact, there's a whole cottage industry of Wes Anderson parodies on YouTube:

But isn’t this normal for all our favorite directors? Don’t you lean into the stuff that hits for you and your fans?

What I’m essentially saying is sometimes you have to grow up with a director. Can you appreciate John Ford’s The Searchers (a film where he humanizes the Indians) without seeing films where he painted Indians as flat characters.

I also like Asteroid City because he had worked with such bloated casts and he corrected the problem. His worst example of this was the previous film, The French Dispatch. In this film, he has a ton of actors as well, BUT the key to appreciating the film, is that only five characters matter. The Tom Hanks character, the Jason Schwartzman character, Scarlett Johannson, and the two respective children of J.S. and Scar-Jo (Technically, Schwartzman’s character has more than one kid, but the others aren’t really important, and Wes Anderson smartly doesn’t give them many lines so they’re not a distraction). The three adults have different ways of living and dealing with loss, and the two children are the hope that the future could be unencumbered by that loss. Everyone else in the movie is just window dressing: They’re just flashes of color and texture that Wes Anderson uses really well.

Then there’s the play behind the story (the part with Bryan Cranston, Willem DaFoe, Ed Norton, and Adrien Brody fall into this). Some might call it extra and unnecessary, and some might see it an extra layer of genius. I’ll even give you all that point: It’s excessive, EXCEPT for one thing. It lends credence to the visual artificiality. TV Tropes (A favorite site of mine, here is their entry) mentions that the geography of the town doesn’t make sense. It’s mostly an excuse to use the stock desert interstate. There are a lot of easter eggs like that. It’s a way of more clearly illustrating that the film maker is a product of his influences (Tennessee Williams, Rod Sterling, and Elia Kazan are influences for the play behind the play).

This movie might not be an easy, breezy watch. However, it is a film that leaves you thinking (provided you watch it to the end).

For example, what’s the reality of the scene when Jason Schwartzman’s character burns his hand? Both he and Scar-Jo react not as characters but as actors who are taken out of the moment because something went wrong on set. Is this commentary on the film’s artifice or part of a deeper meaning? Perhaps, it reflects how a parent might have to be performative to help their kids cope with loss? It's the kind of thing that a think piece like this can be written about.

Even if you didn’t love it, I’m proud of my recommendation because it’s a lesson that films don’t all come in the same form and they entertain in different ways. Sometimes, if you expand yourselves out of your comfort zone, you will be rewarded with a richer experience.

Saturday Night Live 91-92 Season Review

In preparation of my probably upcoming interview with Siobhan Fallon Hogan (please attend), I recently binged the 1991 to 1992 season: 

There's a telling scene in an episode with Susan Dey where Mike Meyers and Phil Hartman play two opposing lawyers trying to convince a jury about the feasibility of a man's penis size. Why they're doing this isn't as important as the fact that the jury isn't played by extras. Well, one is, but 11 of the 12 jurors are cast members. Not just any cast members but some of the biggest names in comedic history -- Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Tim Meadows-- all adding to the sketch in unique ways without saying a word. They're just all looking at a naked man and reacting to his anatomy in uniquely different comic ways.

That's the season in a nutshell.

This was a season loaded with stars and not a lot of screen time to go around. Although Rob Smigel (best known today for making lewd poop jokes at celebrities with a cartoon dog puppet on his hand) appeared in the opening credits for a handful of episodes, this was mostly a 16-member cast. That's slightly above average but the show has weathered casts that size before. Particularly since 2016.

However, the thing is that few of the current SNL crop are stars that command center stage. Beck Bennett is the current epitome for a cast member: He had a few character roles, but he also was great at playing a background part when needed. Even Pete Davidson, despite the insufferable publicity that engulfed the rest of the show during his tenure, was fully capable of supporting a sketch when he wasn't the lead. In this SNL sketch, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcziw7helVg, Pete Davidson does excellent work with his "huzzahs" in a supporting role while Alex Moffatt (who suffered slightly from not having enough star power) took the lead. 

There have been a few examples of SNL characters who don't work so well in supporting roles like Leslie Jones or possibly Sarah Sherman, but for the most part, it's a far cry from this era where Chris Rock, David Spade, and Adam Sandler have such strong comic personas that it seems tragic to watch them on the sidelines of a sketch. The only people from this cast that I see on the true character actor end of the spectrum were Kevin Nealon and Julia Sweeney. 

SNL works on seniority as most people know so Nealon, the second-longest-tenured cast member at the time, gobbled up more screen time than what was ideal. The other three big stars here were Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, and Phil Hartman. Both Carvey and Hartman are on their last legs and you can tell they were running out of energy by this point. Thus, it's hard to argue that anyone other than Mike Meyers was the season's MVP.

And that's the second thing I learned here. In retrospect, it's incredibly easy to forget how talented some of these people are. Myers is best known for having a couple franchises that he stuck to, and then followed them up with some projects where he recycled his own shtick. But, my God, he was a versatile ball of energy who bought something new every week and performed the hell out of it. 

Similarly, I only remember Rob Schneider as the guy with overwrought parts in Adam Sandler's movies and a man with a thin ego who often takes out ads in trade magazines to attack his enemies. 

Imagine my surprise to see that Schneider might have arguably been the most capable of the young guns on the show. Many of his featured sketches showed a lot of originality (there's one where he's a naked guy with a highly positive body image even if it makes others extremely uncomfortable; in another, he plays a dignified street musician who's subconsciously communicating through his music that he's really desperate) and he threw himself into the background parts. 

I don't know if I saw this firsthand before, but I vaguely remember him through clip shows as the "Making Copies" guy, but that's the other way SNL history flattens our memory. Schneider was far more than the Making Copies guy. Similarly, Adam Sandler might best be known as opera man or canteen boy, but I really liked a bit he did called Cajun Man which benefitted from an iambic simplicity. 

 A lot of the literature I consulted about this period characterized the early 90s as an all-boys club and blamed Farley and Sandler for making this a bro-centric atmosphere. Some people like Year of Flops author Nathan Rabin (who I'm not a fan of for his faux woke grandstanding) even called Sandler and Farley's last season littered with misogyny, but in that article Rabin provided zero supporting evidence for his claim. We can debate the merits of certain sketches, but I think the idea that the writing room was flowing with misogyny as a direct result of Farley/Sandler/Spade/Wolf (one of their two writers) is pretty baseless. Fellow cast members, male and female, are full of kind words for those people. However, these criticisms surfaced mostly during the 94-95 season which was undoubtedly influenced by two unhappy campers (Janeane Garofalo and Chris Elliott) complaining to the press, and that's a whole other story. 

In this particular season, the female cast was trapped in a pretty horrific holding pattern. No strong females emerged in this era to make up for the obvious holes of Nora Dunn and Hooks. 

As far as I can gather, It had nothing to do with their talent, but by the logistics of what they chose to do with their female cast members. 

There were six women on cast. Ellen Cleghorne occupied her own space as a Black actor, so she was safe. She actually had a nice guerilla recurring sketch (a la Borat though likely more scripted) as a fake studio page (think Kenneth from 30 Rock) who bothered the hosts as they left the studio. When I say star who commands center stage, Cleghorne fit that category as far as I'm concerned. 

Julia Sweeney had exactly one star character, but was mostly relegated to the background where she found a semi-comfortable space. Victoria Jackson had worked fairly well with a ditzy persona. If that's a derogatory term, don't shoot the messenger: Victoria called herself that on air. 

Inexplicably, Melanie Hutsell mined the same territory as Victoria with imitations of Tori Spelling and Jan Brady. On top of that, Beth Cahill and Siobhan Fallon had a recurring sketch with Melanie as ditzy sorority girls. The better way to have distinguished all these actors would have been to give them different character types. 

In the same mold, that Rob Schneider will be remembered as the "Making Copies" guy, Siobhan and Beth will be grouped with Melanie as the sorority girls. Fortunately, they made a few other strong impressions in other sketches. 

 Because I'm (likely) interviewing Siobhan this week, I'm watching these episodes as a soccer mom who lights up when Siobhan does something well on screen, like she's my daughter. 

And she's been impressive, even though she's been underserved. And Beth? I never heard of before my binge, and I kind of thought I knew everyone from 1986 onwards. She might be the only one I've never heard of. And she was actually really solid for a noob. Like Siobhan she didn't get bought back and she was reported semi-retired from the industry in 2013. 

Again, what could have been?

Kyle Mooney's Saturday Morning All-Star Hits (Netflix) Review

It's hard to find a better word (or rather compound word) to describe this then Kyle Mooneyesque. The SNL comedian has cultivated a very specific brand of nostalgia-based parody from the late 80s and early 90s and it's extra meaningful if you grew up on TGIF or Fox's Saturday morning block.

Each of the eight episodes follows a series of cartoons. There's one following the heroics of two professional athletes who live in the shadows of their more famous brother (Robin Lopez or Jarron Collins must finally be seen!) and are unusually violent that has shades of the 90s X-Men cartoons. Another has a dinosaur (based on Denver the Last Dinosaur) who gets suicidally depressed in the first episode.

The show is framed by two twin brothers cosplaying as Saved by the Bell extras who talk like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and even make up their own words like "zwaaz" (likely, a play on the turtles adding "cowabunga" in the vernacular). There are also public service announcements that highlight, well-- the ineffectiveness of 90s public service announcements (think DARE) if nothing else, previews of live action films (extremely softball plugs) and promotional tie-ins that are hilariously obvious but not too different from today's corporate synergy.

Then the show begins to get more serialized in a way that Kyle Mooney's SNL sketches never have the capacity to be. This is why this show exists.

One of the less overtly funny shows (based off Thundercats and He-Man) starts to get a better gimmick when one of the twins, Skip, gets a one-line cameo. Similar to how Jaleel White famously wreaked havoc on the rest of the cast's air time on "Modern Family" through accidentally hitting upon the show's catch phrase "Did I Do That?", Skip instantly gets catapulted as the face of the show and spearheads a live action film. Meanwhile, his brother gets left in the dust. On top of that there's a casually played out murder behind the scenes.

It would be all very dark and complex if it wasn't filtered through the "cowabunga" air-guitar-shredding cheeriness of 90s TV.

As opposed to broad and aggressive (Mike Meyers), random (Lonely Island), or exploring the "what if"s and meandering on tangents (Seth MacFarland), Kyle Mooney's style of parody is an intricately-constructed recreation with glaring holes. It's the juxtaposition that's the joke and while many reviews say he might not be for everyone, there's a lot to appreciate.

The Highly Subjective 11 Best Sketches of the 2020-2021 SNL Season

Despite a bloated cast--can we officially declare that the show's vets have zero exit strategy?--this has been a surprisingly successful season of SNL that was a much-needed respite through the ups and downs of Covid and political upheaval.

Here are eleven of the best sketches:
Wario on Trial (Elon Musk): This sketch reminds me of the College Humor sketches that crossed a newer media concept with an older genre (a few alumni from the YouTube sketch channel have crossed over to SNL so it’s no surprise). The way the sketch stays consistent with the lame Italian pronunciations is a nice touch as comedy needs to get the fine details of its world-building squared off before it can launch to the humor.

The sketch already had me sold about halfway through which meant that everything that followed was icing on the cake, and boy was it a lot of icing. Chloe Fineman played Princess Peach like a Barbie Doll partially come to life with the same stilted Italian accent and the inability to move her arms that one can imagine is an 8-bit programming limitation. And then, whammo! The smoking gun: Raunchy text messages exposed between Peach and Luigi about a secret affair and I’m doubling over.

Lastly, this was good gruntwork by Heidi who often is cast in ditzy roles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrTXBFcvoMQ 

Lesbian Period Drama (Carey Mulligan): This is a great sketch in that it gets so many details of what a slow-moving period drama is. The path to affection is so sluggish that Heidi Gardner’s character starts out as an iceberg. She prefers rocks to her eventual lover and it’s hard to tell if she’s ever into her (which seems to be part of the joke).  Kate McKinnon’s appearance is an ex-lover with a deadpan charm represents one of my favorite tropes: Anachronism stew wherein character is clearly not from the time period. Her lines --“The sex was so bad, we broke up even though there’s not another lesbian for 5 other countries” and “It’s 1840, I don’t think that’s been invented yet” – are pretty big barn burners.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgaLlP0xmqE 

The War in Words-Bertie and Mary (Carey Mulligan): I’m generally of the school of thought that SNL’s recurring sketches are condoned laziness and are a vestige of when the show didn’t put all of its clips online. Because you couldn’t see Spaceman Astronaut Jones or Mary Catherine Gallagher whenever you wanted, there was an ephemeral joy of seeing a wholly unoriginal sketch at 12:15 a.m. because who knew when you would see it again and these bits are often funny enough to hold up on repeat viewing. Nowadays, I suspect unoriginal yet funny recurring sketches primarily work for the in-studio audience. It would have the same effect as when a top 40 artist does a concert and the audience gets more fired up when they do their hit single. But that’s just me: If most people like seeing “What’s Up with That?” for the 15thtime with a new guest being talked over and everything else constant, then maybe I’m not the target audience.

On the other hand, Mikey Day’s recurring sketch-- about a soldier in either World War I or World War II having an increasingly frustrating correspondence with a daft wife -- is one that holds up well because a lot of elements are changed each time. In this version with Carey Mulligan, we’re introduced to cocaine. Hey, I haven’t seen that before! And the confusion about fallen comrade Stephen: Oy vey!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBL9l4aDxqM 

A Teacher Parody (Kristen Wiig)-Chris Redd is often my pick for SNL MVP, and Ego and Punkie have promising careers. Maybe if they give plus-size Lauren Holt some screen time, I could fall in love with her too and Bowen has added some different flavors. As a result, I can appreciate the diversification of the cast beyond a token black guy. However, it’s been a little tragic that I’ve felt like most of the white guys who don’t immediately stick out like Jon Rudnitsky and Brooks Whelan recently are kind of doomed. This came to a screeching halt with the mysterious case of Luke Null who was on so little that I could have filed a missing report with the NYPD for him at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday and I doubt they would have found him.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, I found Andrew Dismukes’s survival of the first season pretty improbable when I saw how little he was used in the first few episodes. But with “A Teacher”, I not only felt sure that he was going to make it, but that he really could be the future of the show.

This sketch’s interplay between Ego and Andrew is so strong that I completely forgot who the host was (Kristen Wiig) and whether she appears in this sketch at all. Ego is a great scene partner to Andrew here putting an emphatic stop to his reality and adding some decisive jabs at every turn. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOYYwV33Ijo

Adele on The Bachelor (Adele)-The Bachelor parodies makes for good ensemble play among the ladies of SNL, but it rarely makes room for interaction between contestants. In this version, the contestants are bonded through a mutual fear of Adele’s wrath which takes the form of song in this twisted jukebox musical. This makes for a bit more of a narrative arc and what’s especially effective here is the way that host Adele (who many people are seeing do anything but sing for the first time) slips into and out of crazy jealous mode on a dime. The sketch ends with Adele breaking the fourth wall and stepping out into the audience which harkened back to the first few years where SNL was an unpredictable variety show where anything could happen.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_mj1CuXrPE 

Salt Bae (Dan Kaluuya)-This parody of a ----wait, what is this a parody of? One thing to love about this sketch is that a server at a restaurant who puts on a vaguely sexual show with salt and meat and charges you exorbitant prices doesn’t really exist. Or if it does, I’m blissfully unaware and all the better. Maybe it’s a half-parody of hibachi? I have no idea but the escalating frustration in Dan Kaluuya who serves as our audience surrogate here is priceless. It also contrasts well with Mikey Day as his double date partner that slowly succumbs to salt bae’s spell. Also, what the hell is the word “Bae”? Part of the mystery, I guess.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93ByJ2dZEE4&t=140s

Post-Pandemic Super Bowl Party (AKA Super Bowl Pod) (Dan Levy) and Madame Vivelda, Fortune Teller (Adele)-Two sketches that succeed because they are so spot-on relatable to our current experience, that they’ll leave young viewers puzzled 15 years from now. Post-pandemic superbowl party has a set-up that’s a little basic but each of the characters has a specific color of stupidity with regard to pandemic caution that each vignette adds up to the sum of its parts.

Madame Vivelda sets Kate McKinnon free to do the type of crazy-eyed character she excels in and that’s always a treat. The things like coloring books and vacations to Kentucky might not be relatable to each of us but you can see them being relatable to each character. I do have to object by what I view as an politicized shot at JK Rowling (whatever I think of her actions, I don’t view her as someone we should all agree to hate, so SNL is sort of leading the audience on what to think there). Still, I give it a passing grade.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8p0iDjAiwE 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hoynDj4WI&t=238s 

Pandemic Game Night Turns into an FBI Bust (Jon Krasinski)-Take note that I’ve renamed the sketches from what they’re labelled with on YouTube. I’ve never  liked the vagueness of the official sketch titles. The official name, “Pandemic Game Night” could just as easily describe the above-mentioned sketch from the Dan Levy episode.

However, considering that this sketch’s punchline is based on a ginormous twist (that one of the neighborhood gang was involved with the January 6th insurrection), this might be appropriate. And the twists never really stop piling on top of each other which is always admirable for a sketch that lasts just 4 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSTu1I5t700&t=6s 

Universal Studios Tour Guide (Dan Levy)-Dan Levy has been mostly known for one thing so SNL was a humongous test for him to see if he can break out of one character type. For the most part, he passed with flying colors. If you don’t count the monologue, this was Levy’s first sketch of the night so a lot was riding on his ability to play this character who is significantly different from David Rose in that he’s excitable and wet behind the ears. The sketch veers to so many TMI sex jokes (except the line about cocaine) that it gets a little predictable but the sheer outrageous and fodder for great reaction lines by Mikey Day as the tourguide and Kenan Thompson and Andrew Dismukes as passengers are great.

Strangely enough, Mikey Day did this character once previously in Adam Driver’s Medieval Times sketch, but it’s hard to know whether to define this a recurring sketch. It must be interesting to know how they came up with using half a duo from a recurring sketch and making it a hit.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSTu1I5t700&t=6s

The Iceberg (Carey Mulligan)-How much pop culture has been made about the Titanic over the years? SNL has mined the Titanic for laughs (I know there’s a Zach Galifianakis sketch) as has Family Guy and I’m guessing dozens more. Yet, no one has thought to tell the Titanic from the ice berg’s point of view.

Pretty much every line of this Weekend Update segment hits from the ice berg consistently getting the death toll wrong to his wanting to promote his EDM album. While Bowen Yang played the iceberg and co-wrote the sketch, the MVP goes to whoever did his snazzy costume here. Just the site of Bowen decked in a white blazer with diamond studs and an iceberg on his head is enough to have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP5bu9hLH9E 

70s Recording Artist Fliona (Regina King)-In this sketch, musical superstar Fliona (or is she?) is on tour and has a set of expectations that collides with reality in a pretty hilarious way. She asks Maurice if has a list of 12 pre-concert snacks in her rider and Maurice says “of course” before they go through a check list and Maurice says no to every one. The only thing the venue provided was a dried salad with no dressing. She smacks him as if this is a pretty common thing between the pair.

At first, it’s the juxtaposition between expectations and reality that’s the source of the comedy. Then it’s the repetition. This sequence repeats with the stylist (Aidy Bryant) and her list of beauty products, the band (Andrew Dismukes and Kenan Thompson) if they know her songs, the band again over what instruments they have, and the booking manager (Kyle Mooney) over who’s in the audience. And the wordplay in each sequence is glorious. And more slapping. Who doesn’t love that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBnRjFoS8hs

30 Best Post-SNL Careers

 

 

Please chime in with your own picks or tell me where I've gone wrong.
Four rules:
-Rob Downey Jr is eliminated unless you count Tropic Thunder and Al Franken and Dennis Miller who did more politics than comedy are eliminated
-Anyone who's only been gone from SNL 3 or 4 years doesn't count yet (Taran Killam) but also the ppl who died young like Belushi, Farley and Hartman. A lot of those 3 legends would be conjecture
-Not just acting, but producing, hosting, directing, stand-up, podcasting, etc
-What's being judged is after you left SNL

In parenthesis is the last year they were in the cast

1. Will Ferrell (2002)-Ferrell stood out for his intensity and machismo out of the gate on SNL but he has shown a wide range that has translated well to a wide variety of movies including dramedies like Stranger than Fiction and Elf; and he has been very successful at the box office. He also has his own production company as the co-founder of Funny or Die and has found a directorial partner in Adam McKay. 
2. Adam Sandler (1995)-Love him or hate him, he is a tremendously dependable force at the box office, and has creative control with Happy Madison productions, in addition to projects with James L Brooks, Judd Apatow, Safdie Brothers, Paul T Anderson that have allowed him to shine
3. Bill Murray (1980)-He's been in many iconic films, and has been a commercial success for a long time, his brand of comedy has aged well as has his perosnality, has a highly respected status in the era stretching from Lost in Translation to Broken Blossoms to Life Aquatic,
4. Eddie Murphy (1984)-His heyday was mostly in the 80s, but he has a great and groundbreaking following in films and stand-up. Comebacks in Dreamgirls and his latest stand-up special in his SNL hosting, his 2019 stand-up specials and Dolemite is My Name show there's a large iconic status to him
5. Tina Fey (2006)-Her status is more on the writing end than the performing end for her 3 mega-successful TV shows that led to an updating of comedy and her film Mean Girls. She also has had a sizable presence as a movie lead
6. Ben Stiller (1989)-His movies might be on the safe side and less game-changing than say Christopher Guest or Mike Meyers, he's been successful as a film maker, writer, and actor and has created many films worthy of sequels and been part of cult films like Mystery Men, Zoolander, and more. Night at the Museum and Meet the Parents both led to sequels.
7. Chris Rock (1993)-It can be fairly easily argued that he is the most successful stand-up performer to emerge from the show. Even if you count Top 5 as a successful personal statement (though not commercially successful), he never translated it into moviedom
8. Mike Myers (1995)-If you sound the RIP to his film career around 2008 with Love Guru, that's still a 14 year run of being at or near the top with film franchises Wayne's World and Austin Powers as well as Cat in the Hat, Shrek, etc
9. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (1985)-Two mega-successful sitcoms bookended by the semi-successful (and Emmy winning) New Adventures of Old Christine
10. Martin Short (1985)-One of the most daring and iconic comedians in all varieties
11. Sara Silverman (1994)-She's hosting talk shows, her voice acting career is stellar, she's acted, she's had her eponymous sitcom, but she's also a big brand as a stand-up
12. Kristen Wiig (2012)-Her acting filmography has been both prolific and impressive. She's worked alongside Anette Benning, Cate Blanchett, Dianne Keaton, Matt Damon, and Robert DeNiro and has done plenty of indie films like The Skeleton Twins and Girl Most Likely in addition to bigger works like Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Downsizing, Wonder Woman and the Martian.
13. Amy Poehler (2008)-As an actor, she created an iconic figure in Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope and has been moderately successful in some of her movies like Sisters and The House, but there's so much more including her work for the UCB theater (Founding the NYC branch was pre-SNL) which fostered so much talent, and how she produced Broad City, Russian Doll and Duncanville.
14. Billy Crystal (1985)-Though his Borscht belt humor isn't for everyone, he's been able to make his passion projects like City Slickers, Mr Saturday Night, and Analyze This with creative control. He's also hosted the Oscars probably more than anyone. He's less prolific from 2002 onwards.
15. Christopher Guest (1985)-Though he's a little less well-known as an actor outside of Princess Bride, but he took This is Spinal Tap and created an entire brand of comedy with four more mockumentary movies. He also does the occasional acting gig like Night at the Museum and Mrs Henderson Presents.
16. Seth Meyers (2014)-In my opinion he's become the voice of a generation since Jon Stewart stepped down and Stephen Colbert became a regular talk show. He's also produced Documentary Now and AP Bio as well as his own animated show The Awesomes (admittedly middling)
17. Chevy Chase (1976)-The show's first alumnus, he was active in a number of hits in the 70s and 80s. Other than Community, of which he didn't do particularly well on, he's faded quite a bit.
18. Fred Armisen (2013)-Highly prolific as a guest star and makes tons of movie appearances. He has co-created three TV shows to date-Los Espookeys, Documentary Now, Portlandia-and had recurring guest roles in Looney Tunes and Difficult People
19. David Spade (1996)-Isn't really a movie headliner (his big hits were alongside Chris Farley or Adam Snadler) but has been successful as a stand-up, TV host, and most importantly, he has had supporting roles in Just Shoot Me, 8 Simple Rules and Rules of Engagement that made those shows infinitely better.
20. Andy Samberg (2012)-His brand of humor has done well for this era as he has headlined Brooklyn Nine Nine, headlined projects with Lonely Island (a comedy music career if you will), and ventured into more serious stuff like Celeste and Jesse Forever and a mental patient in Brigsby Bear (Kyle Mooney's project was comic but Samberg's role was serious)
21. Bill Hader (2013)-Been extremely active as an actor in many projects, having prominent roles in Inside Out and the Skeleton Twins and popping up everywhere else. Barry has been extremely successful.
22. Maya Rudolph (2008)-As strong an actress as Poehler and Wiig, she's mostly just been acting rather than doing more but she's shown a wide range.
23. Laurie Metcalf (1981)-She only lasted one episode on the cast of the show though it was meant to be more before the writer's strike of 1981 took hole. She has an Oscar nomination, a prolific actress with two Tonys and she has won Emmys for Roseanne
24. Dan Aykroyd (1979)-He's been a durable supporting player more than anything else but he's done well for himself by those means.
25. Joan Cusack (1986)-She's earned two Oscar nominations, iconic in supporting roles like School of Rock, and been in some rather off-the-beaten path comedies like Friends with Money, Perks of Being a Wallflower, High Fidelity, Mars Needs Moms, etc
26. Jimmy Fallon (2004)-I'm not a fan but he does have the Tonight Show and will be the gateway to pop culture for the foreseeable future
27. Rob Riggle (2005)-He's been a daily show correspondent, a reliable guest actor, and has a brand. He's known for his manic energy
28. Damon Wayans (1986)-In Living Color was humongous and he's been steadily on two sitcoms. Plus he headlined a Spike Lee movie
29. Molly Shannon (2001)-It's not entirely her fault. She didn't have the network of Fey-Poehler-Dratch-Rudolph-Wiig alongside her when she graduated that would have given her better female parts. She's done quite well and even had her own NBC sitcom for a season (Kath and Kim).
30. Jason Sudeikis (2013)-He's been the lead or co-lead of movies (We're the Millers, Colossal, Horrible Bosses) and is a reliable masculine lead (think Sam Malone in Cheers) for many parts

Nine Observations from SNL's First Season

I have to confess, despite watching a lot of SNL and having heard and read second-hand about much of the whole history, I’ve never seen a full episode from the Aykroyd-Belushi-Radner-Chase era….until this week and damn, mind blown!

Some urgent thoughts I have to get out:

1. So first, things first, I wasn’t expecting to like it

I’ve never been majorly impressed with these people or their later careers. I admire Ghostbusters which was written by someone from the first class (Aykroyd), but I didn’t ever think Dan Aykroyd was a must-see as an actor. I saw various sketches in isolation but out of context, they don’t give a picture of the full experience. Instead, I’ve always (perhaps wrongly) felt people were overly worshipping of these guys who were there first but not necessarily the funniest. I also feel like so many other casts (particularly the 1980 cast) suffered from having critics say “It’s not like it used to be” so I had that bias against it….

However, I should not have judged a book by its cover because…

2. This season was wild and certainly eventful

The sketches are not as fully-formed as today’s SNL and sketch comedy world and some of them don’t qualify as comedy but I can imagine turning on the TV in 1975 and 1976 when comedy on TV was in a very stale place and just being thoroughly shocked. Not that it was risque but it was just so bizarre and you never knew what you were going to get with each passing minute. There was Andy Kaufman acting like a nervous foreigner on stage, there was a brilliant comic named Valri Bromfeld acting like a disciplinarian school teacher in a monologue late in the first show, there was something with puppets called the Muppets even though they were different characters, there was a dance trope in one episode, there were Andy Samberg-like camera tricks, there were field segments, there were sketches that maybe lasted 45 seconds long and was just one joke, there was stuff that wasn’t really framed as comedy.

On top of that every stunt I’ve ever heard about like offering money to unite the Beatles, actually reuniting Simon and Garfunkel, pesrsonally going to the White House to film Gerald Ford, having voters decide if Andy Kaufman was funny happened in the first season.

Today’s SNL has had its highs and lows, but its format is rigid and predictable. Wayyyyy too many of its sketches are framed as game shows or talk shows. This cast was truly awful at celebrity impressions but at least they didn’t overmilk them like today’s cast does.

3. There were not seven original cast members?!

I have seen my fair share of pictures of the original cast and it always shows seven people.

As a pretty avid SNL buff (despite this embarrassing hole), I always assumed there were seven original cast members, but there were nine….and then some! There was an older broadway vet named Michael Coe and this shady fellow (he had a beard and sunglasses) guy named Michael O’Donoghue who was just nutty, who were there too and their names appeared in the opening credits. O’Danoghue’s did this bit where he says, “Here’s an impression of _______, oh and by the way, in the impression they’re getting their eyes gouged w/needles and then he sheiks in pain.” Some of the other stuff he did later in the season (that I haven’t seen but read about on Grantland) is even darker.

He seemed to behind the scenes be torturous enough in 1981 that he scared Catherine O’Hara from appearing on the show and wrote “danger” on the wall”, so he must have been pretty insane. I wonder if he was erased from history and the other cast members denied he was that prominent in later interviews?

4. I always assumed Belushi was a fast, slovenly type

Decisively less chaotic was John Belushi who I assumed was like this slovenly out-of-control fat guy and I always felt that was a turn-off so I never had much interest in his life. Comedians who are slovenly, fat guys and that’s their whole schtick, I never am drawn to. Maybe in later seasons he becomes obese, but he’s basically a regular joe sketch player who’s only heavy by comparisons to his co-stars who are generally skinny and tall (both Chase and Aykroyd are ridiculously lanky, Garrett Morris to an extent), so he looks heavy by comparison. I this other picture of him I googled, he’s not really that much heavier than the people in the shot.

5. Damn, Chevy Chase loved tripping

I have this feeling Chevy Chase never actually watched Gerald Ford do anything, but he just loved tripping. He tripped in the SNL audition. That’s pretty much the whole Gerald Ford shtick. Darrell Hammond sure would’ve been embarrassed.

6. Weekend Update’s hit to miss comparison is actually pretty good

Despite not being entirely aware of the news on any given week in 1975, I laughed quite a bit. The most traditionally comedic efforts clearly went into Weekend Update with solid jokes. Nothing particularly subversive or out of the ordinary about it. I really loved a bit where Chevy Chase did a field segment cutting to a reporter in Angola and getting the time zone wrong so she wasn’t there or cutting to her roomate

7. I don’t get the Blues Brothers

It’s just two guys singing the blues. I don’t even see it vaguely qualifying as comedic. A 1975 sketch didn’t necessarily require a punchline or an invitation to the audience to view a sketch as comedic but this was just two guys blowing off steam

8. I don’t specifically feel like these guys were bad boys or rebels

Michael O’Donoghue was bizarre but not cool, and the three main male leads (the show was really trying harder to market the personalities of the guys than the ladies) didn’t particularly strike me as cool or rebellious. As far as I can gather, it was heavily publicized that he press quite often that backstage it was a non-stop party of drugs, screwing and anti-authority attitudes as they thumbed their nose to the network and made things up as they went.

9. Garrett Morris might have been the best player on the cast

He seemed to have the strongest personality (outside of Michael O’Donoghue) and acted. Too bad he wasn’t marketed as highly as Chevy Chase.