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December 6, 2009
SATURDAY NIGHT NOT-ALIVE
Last night's Saturday Night Live was unusually funny - that's a back-handed compliment for a comedy show. Comedy shows should be funny, and SNL hasn't been. Its Obama imitations grasp none of the nuances of the character to exploit for humor, so what we're left with is a caricature with no comedic potential. Fred Armisen does a fine imitation, impressive really, but it isn't funny. The digital shorts have been lame, and lack the energy of the live format. Its best performers - Forte, Sudeikis, Hader - have been underutilized so that the more manic, slapstick personalities like Wiig and Thompson can take the stage and shout, scream, dance, and make wacky voices. (Also, Andy Samberg has his moments, and he's clearly the breakout star, but his Swedish Chef was waaaay off; he didn't even attempt to do the accent!)
But last night, perhaps because the guest lacked the talent to carry any of the sketches, Sudeikis, Hader, and Forte were showcased. Also Bobby Moynihan, who is clearly pretty gifted, and the two newcomers who I can't tell apart. The best skit was the last one featuring Forte and Sudeikis - a glorious piece with layers and layers of absurdity and allusion about a man inexplicably dressed as Colonel Sanders applying for a job as an Astronaut who steals a potato chip. At its best moments (before it devolves into gross-out humor), this skits recalls MR. SHOW with its singularly driven vision and attitude of "I don't care if you think its funny, this is what we're doing." I also find it hilarious that they keep referring to the purloined snack as a "Potato Chip."
These three guys have proven their comedic skills off the SNL stage - Sudeikis in 30 ROCK, Forte in FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS and some Bob Oedenkirk projects, and Hader in SUPERBAD and ADVENTURELAND (Hader needs one more solid supporting role in a hit movie to start thinking about being that Will Ferrell type, but it looks like that mantle will be assumed by Samberg, who is not nearly as gifted or funny). Along with Armisen, they need to be the ones carrying the show. Forte's clueless sports announcer is a perfect showcase for his quirky and inventive talents; a few years ago, they had him playing G.W. Bush, which shows how wrong the show tends to get it.
But sadly, there seems to be some strange ultimatum about promoting the hell out of Kenan Thompson. Since I've had DVR, and don't have to watch it live, I've watched SNL for the last four years - it's been mostly unrewarding, but I have grown to love Hader and sometimes fast forward to his bits. Thompson often dresses in drag and always hams it up. The results are unrewarding: he's a professional but he's rarely funny. Most of the time he plays a hysterical black person who dominates the scene. It's rarely funny, and it's sometimes vaguely racist - particularly because he's the only black actor on the show. So they often play him against someone who is not black, but is pretending to be.
It is the failure of the show to cast some other funny people of diverse ethnicities. They have got to be out there, but when the show peaked, they always had a Tim Meadows or Chris Rock or Garrett Morris or (best case scenario) Eddie Murphy. When Maya Rudolph has to guest star as Oprah, that's a problem, and when the only vaguely Hispanic-looking Armisen has to play Obama . . . another problem. But SNL continues to round out their cast with white hipsters who are good at playing white hipsters. And to remedy this, they rely on the not-so-talented Thompson. This myopic casting vision has haunted SNL since Tim Meadows left, and I find caricatures like the one where Thompson plays a large black woman who tries to trade sex for a dress repulsive. It plays on the worst stereotypes, doesn't comment ironically on them, and ultimately is grotesque and offensive.
Even after the millennium, SNL continues to be a star-making factory: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are both doing great work; Will Ferrell is still a mega-star even after a few box-office flops; Samberg has clearly broken out and Hader and Wiig are about to. But the show needs to dedicate itself to something it only rarely does: being a venue for people other than funny white people (Murphy and Rock being the obvious exceptions). When the only black actor they have is mainly a vehicle for making fun of black people, that's a problem.
I don't know what to make of Seth Meyers. When he was a full-time cast member, he was awful: terrible at imitations and bad at anything else other than playing a straight man (when he would occasionally lapse into laughter, unlike Sudeikis who nails the above scene). It would be reductive and fallacious to blame him for the bad scenes and others for the good; for all I know, but someone had to green-light the "disgusting, imbecilic black woman shopping" sketch, and I can't think Meyers was surprised to see it. Someone is deciding to showcase Thompson and Wiig over the three guys I've mentioned; and they dropped Casey Wilson, who was (in my opinion) funnier than Wiig because she didn't mug so much.
Why do I keep watching? Because it's easy and I can fast forward through the commercials. Often I've stopped watching before Weekend Update. But the show should develop into the new millennium, because I think it's lost its hipster audience, and needs to acknowledge that.
(Maybe I'm too hard on Wiig, but all of her characters seem to be a thirty second joke stretched out into five minutes. It's obvious she's a talented comedienne, but most of what she does relies on mugging, shouting, and portraying only slightly divergent versions of menopausal women. She's got potential)
| By Andytown | 1:28 PM