Tag: rachel dratch
I strongly discourage you from disparaging the good name of Ron Swanson
Happy 50th, ‘Saturday Night Live’!
Warner Bros. Discovery has somehow managed to find even more shows to kill
Maya Rudolph will never escape ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and that’s just fine.
Saturday Night Live
Maya Rudolph & Jack Harlow
March 27, 2021
Saturday Night Live has been on hiatus for a month (a well-earned break, honestly) and I was a little worried the gears would be a little rusty when they returned this week. It was a fear that wasn’t entirely unfounded: the cold open was off, the monologue was off, the sketch that was clearly supposed to be the cold open but was so stiff and unfunny that they buried it mid-episode was waaay off. However, the show was helmed by a consummate professional, former cast member, and sketch legend, Maya Rudolph, who saved a number of bits and tried her very damnedest to salvage a few otherwise unsalvagable others (specifically those mentioned above).
That said, I don’t want to come off too harsh. Despite some weak spots, this episode was fairly solid and had bright spots that did not rely on a vet to prop them up. Notably, Bowen Yang’s heartfelt plea to stop anti-Asian hate, and a music video that reminds us that Boomers will always shove their way to the front of the line were bits that did not depend on Rudolph and I think were moments that we will remember long after this season ends. All in all, the positive outweighed the negative in this episode; a mixed bag if you will, which honestly is the best you can hope for in a variety show that is made up of 12-14 individual sketches an episode. Good job, kids.
Continue reading “Maya Rudolph will never escape ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and that’s just fine.”
Daniel Craig hosts a ‘Saturday Night Live’ obsessed with Coronavirus
Saturday Night Live
Daniel Craig & The Weeknd
March 7, 2020
Apparently, Daniel Craig hosted Saturday Night Live some eight years ago — and apparently, I wrote about it for Tubular, but I have to be honest with you, I have no memory of this whatsoever. LOOK. A LOT HAS HAPPENED SINCE 2012 AND A LOT OF ALCOHOL HAS BEEN CONSUMED AND HONESTLY CAN YOU BLAME ME? My point is, Daniel Craig, he’s fine as a host. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he exceeded my expectations as a host, but that was only because my expectations were non-existent.
As for the episode itself, it was remarkable in that the cold open was by far the highlight with a delightful cameo by Elizabeth Warren. Otherwise, the episode was completely consumed with Coronavirus, devoting some 4 sketches — a full one-third of the episode — to the pandemic. And just to show that the more things change the more they stay exactly the same: back in 2012 when Daniel Craig hosted last time? I made note that then new cast member Kate McKinnon had completely taken over the show as its breakout star, and Big Bird made a guest appearance … cracking jokes about the SARS epidemic.
Continue reading “Daniel Craig hosts a ‘Saturday Night Live’ obsessed with Coronavirus”
RuPaul serves sketch comedy genius on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Saturday Night Live
RuPaul & Justin Bieber
February 8, 2019
I’m just going to be honest: there are some people who host Saturday Night Live who I am just completely incapable of grading fairly because I love them so much. RuPaul Charles, Mama Ru, the Queen of Drag, is one of those people. RuPaul is unquestionably the world’s most famous drag queen, having managed to break into straight pop culture awareness back in 1993 with his single “Supermodel” and then bringing the universe of drag into all of our homes with RuPaul’s Drag Race, his drag competition series that started out as a spoof of Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model, but which has become so much more. RuPaul, more than anyone else, is responsible for making drag culture part of the popular lexicon. But more than that, RuPaul helped create a more understanding, and accepting culture, giving drag queens and transwomen agency over their identities instead of just being the butt of jokes.
One of my few pop culture bragging rights is that I saw RuPaul in a small teen club in Houston, Texas in 1986. A 6’4″ black man in platform boots, what appears to be football shoulder pads covered in streamers and little else, flanked by two shirtless men in tight pants and brandishing toy guns, all singing “Starbooty, Starbooty, Starbooty, yeaaaaaaaah! Starbooty, Starbooty, Starbooty, awwwwww!” in falsetto — it left quite the impression on a 13-year-old me. It was wild and funny and unlike anything I had ever seen before, and in a small way it shaped me. The performance begins at the 1:20 mark in the video below.
And this is going a long way to basically say, no matter how Mama Ru did on Saturday Night Live, no matter what garbage they gave her to work with, she was going to come away with a high grade from yours truly.
Continue reading “RuPaul serves sketch comedy genius on ‘Saturday Night Live’”
Relive Eddie Murphy’s almost-perfect ‘Saturday Night Live’
Saturday Night Live
Eddie Murphy & Lizzo
December 22, 2019
I’m going to try to avoid overthinking this episode because comedy never benefits from thinking about it too hard. (It’s one of the reasons I never recap comedies.) But, Eddie Murphy returning to Saturday Night Live for the first time in 35 years is not just a historically notable TV event, it’s one that required a little contemplation on both our part and the writers’.
Here’s the thing: Eddie Murphy blazed into superstardom on Saturday Night Live in 1980 when he was only 19 years old with characters like Mr. Robinson and Buckwheat — characters that made fun of racist stereotypes in a way that was so close to the chest that some viewers may not have understood they were supposed to be laughing with Murphy, not at him. Murphy was never putting on a minstrel show, he was pointing out how racist the minstrel show was. The problem is some viewers, particularly white ones, might have missed that nuance. (Honestly, maybe the greatest SNL sketch of all time is the one in which he went undercover as a white man — genuinely brilliant and tackling race in a way that remains as stinging and poignant 40 years later.)
So because a great deal has changed in the past 40 years, it was always going to be a delicate dance bringing some of these characters back to the show in a way that not only would be relevant but culturally palatable. But God damn, if they didn’t pull it off. Murphy’s 80s characters found themselves up against 21st-century issues like gentrification and the #MeToo movement — and that tension is where the comedy blossomed.
Then when you add to all of that the fact that Eddie Murphy waited long enough to come back to the show so that there were no more hard feelings, that he had shed enough of his movie star ego and aloofness that he could really enjoy himself on that stage in an uninhibited, genuine way … well, it made for the best episode of the year, certainly, and one of the best episodes of Saturday Night Live I’ve ever seen.
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Be thankful: Will Ferrell and a slew of other stars deliver an excellent ‘Saturday Night Live’
Saturday Night Live
Will Ferrell & King Princess
November 23, 2019
When it comes to judging hosts, it’s unfair to compare regular actors, sports figures, musicians or even other comedians to former cast members. For former hosts, this was their job for years — they understand how to play to the audience; they aren’t afraid of a live performance; they, better than probably most actors, understand comic timing. This is how they became household names. And among those who have been invited back to host Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell might be one of the funniest and most talented cast members of all time. So to compare him as a host to a Harry Styles or a Kristen Stewart, it’s just not fair. They aren’t on the same playing field.
Will Ferrell returned to Saturday Night Live for his fifth time hosting and delivered easily one of the funniest — if not the funniest — episodes of the season. Ferrell’s big golden retriever energy makes every sketch just that much funnier, even sketches that by all rights should have just been mediocre. And while I can’t be certain, it certainly felt like the writers held back on the last couple of episodes so that they could give Will Ferrell the choicest material. And honestly? I don’t blame them in the least. He knocked it out of the park.
