JZL

That sure looked like a nuclear sun-hot-plasma mushroom cloud to me. Unless that planet has some really powerful volcanoes, that was a bomb.

There are a couple things about this episode that are disturbing. One is the speed at which Mars has gone to shit in a sand-bucket. This plot-piece is not very believable. Mars was an elitist superpower only months before. I understand the influx of former military people can be a major upheaval, but this is too much too soon. Another is that they're turning Avasarala into one-dimensional shrew.

I'm free right now-- because I AM THAT GUY! 🙃

From last week's Vintage airing, the Alec Baldwin Christmas show from 1998 . . . This did indeed have the Jimmy Fallon ghost-of-SNL-future bit, as someone mentioned above. Fallon ostensibly had become a big star and had returned to host the Christmas sketch on "December 12, 2011." Fallon, of course, did become huge. He did host the Christmas show in 2011 (albeit on the 17th). [/mind-blown]

Reminds me of the time they showed a stock photo of a three-story office building then the characters talked about being on the fifth floor. The mind latches onto the weirdest stuff.

I think Colin is hotter than either of them. Rawr.

I agree to some extent, but are we just channeling the ghost of Kristen Wiig? I thought this was a good episode with added creativity. There was some meta stuff in the backstage monologue portion (references to Pete's absences and the Mikey/Alex duology) There was a fair dose of political cynicism. E.g., I liked how they twisted the CO theme at the end about how meaningless family political squabbles are unless you're one of a few thousand people in an electoral college swing state. And then later Max-the-dog asking the humans to name a dem candidate they were excited about, etc. Props to Max for sitting there with the contraption on his head-- maybe he was on doggie Quaaludes. The Macy's sketch was great. I thought Chris Redd was great at the end of the Hallmark sketch. [Sidenote-- our VCR is jampacked with SWMBO's* Hallmark xmas shows] *She Who Must Be Obeyed. IIRC, it's from the ole BBC comedy, Rumpole of the Bailey.

I didn't notice any switch in video framing. I'll have to double-check. The sound bugged me a little, like it did with BSG (it was still there when they put it up on Prime). The conversations are at 10 dB and the pew-pews and music are at 130. IIRC, the movie The Big Short also had that. On a side note, I think I might watch on Mondays and give myself a lil something to look forward to post-weekend. Lastly, I recall Burn Gorman from what I watched of TURN.

Johansson was pretty good last time. Didn't they have some alien dog sketch that was hilarious? OMG another One Direction guy. A quick sampling on Youtube leads me to think he should give 3/4 of his money to the Arctic Monkeys, but maybe it's just the accent.

Don't feel bad, it totally sucked-- hardly worth watching . . .

The last two seasons were 13 eps. None of those in s4 are particularly long like you sometimes get on streamers.

It's here! Either it's a day early or it's an international dateline thing! Only 10 eps. p00p. Better than ZERO!

A fair chunk o' this thread is about J-Lo's physical appearance. I could just tell she is beautiful on the inside. Except for that narcissistic monologue, perhaps.

Eh? So Tarantino can't do Inglorious Basterds because he's not a Jew? Oh wait, that was waaay back in 2009 before civilization started.

I got the firm impression that the debate was supposed to be the CO but they pushed it farther back and came up with the POS that actually was the CO a half an hour before airtime. That was the lamest CO I can remember. That might also explain why WU was ~ 15 minutes late. King Princess was pleasantly surprising-- she can sing and can actually play a musical instrument. I'm no Will Ferrell fan but this show was OK. The Vaseline bit at the end was a riot.

Wow. I'm surprised at the negativity. Like Helena, I thought it was overall pretty good except for the Baby Kate sketch, and even then we got to see Cecily cartwheel. They totally botched the camera work for the CO. No one seemed to know when Heidi was about fake-feint. I was actually shocked at Harry Stiles' comedic ability. I was also shocked that the funeral sketch turned out to be hilarious. Props also to Kyle Mooney's dairy dude. I actually had to go back and replay the spit take at Che in slo-mo. It may be the funniest thing he's ever done on the show. Kate is barely there any more, which is too bad. She does her now over-used political caricatures and some window dressing (airliner sketch) and that's about it.

Thirty years ago, this would be heresy-- today, no great loss.

It was interesting to me that she commented about how the weekly schedule was based on the cocaine use of the 70's but still persisted. Harry Shearer has also been critical of the production schedule, especially when compared to America's other iconic live sketch-comedy show, Your Show of Shows. (They committed to ideas much earlier in the week which were written with plenty of time to rehearse, revise, and polish.) Tina would be the most natural heir apparent to Lorne but I got the impression she thought the show was too taxing and she was glad to have moved on. Of course, if she was in charge maybe she could change that.

Yeah, but don't all those cool Belter vac-suits and Martian body armor count as costumes?

Tina Fey is on a recent episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast.

I've been a defender of Che's with some reservations, but now I'm growing tired of him, too. It isn't that he can be controversial. That is sometimes a part of comedy. I didn't care about his Kaitlyn Jenner joke because I'd seen her on the Alec Baldwin roast where she was scorched by some of the best in the business by far worse, and she took it all in stride. A big part of it is he laughs at his own jokes and comments on them. Thus he makes it about himself and not the joke or material. At least he stopped putting his goddamned tennis shoe up on the desk at the end. I hated that. For maybe the first time, as I sat watching I began to wonder who might be a good pairing for Jost. Leslie Jones perhaps? I also wondered about Heidi and Melissa. Heidi is probably out because she does so many characters for WU. Melissa, who is more an impressionist, does surprisingly few of these bits. Then I wondered about Kyle Mooney, mostly because he doesn't do much anyway. Then came Kate, for whom a stint as WU anchor may be a way for her to prolong her tenure, like a DH in baseball.

It took them 45 years but they finally came up with sketches about house-paint and constellation pr0n. I was a little disappointed by Stewart. I agree with whoever said she needs some theater time (and maybe some therapy-- she just seems sad). I too enjoyed the first Coldplay song but later had to wince at the obligatory half-octave ballad. Harry Styles next? [Scratching head again] What demographic are they after with that? Do grown-ups like teeny-bopper pop now and I just missed it?

Looks like she's pimpin' Charlies Angels* and a smaller project called Seberg. Not being a Twilight person, my favorite movie of hers is the Joan Jett one, The Runaways, also with Dakota Fanning an Michael Shannon. She's no comedic powerhouse, but she seems to do well on SNL, so this might be good. I blow hot and cold on Coldplay. [insert my standard A1A bitch about SNL musical guest selection here] I like that SNL has taken a break from hip hop and bubble-gum, but Coldplay? Really!? Can't we have someone like Jay Som or The Tracks? * Jeest, a Charlie's Angels reboot-- what's next, Josie and the Pussycats?