JZL

Vulture looks back at SNL's early New Orleans episode.

Being dissed by an Uproxx music critic is one of the most ringing endorsements one can imagine. Retrieved today . . . Pop away, Uproxx, ya big trailblazers, ya. It's a good thing you have interns who can drive to the local CVS and load up on bubble gum for the staff.

SHAME!

"Pale Impala" that's hysterical.

Seriously, check out the older stuff if you haven't. They are one of my favorites bands ever, and for me it's the old case of "I knew 'em back when . . . " I think I may've said this is another example of SNL being waaay behind the curve on MG's. Fallon had them on in 2011 and he and Conan both had them on in 2015.

For anyone interested in Tame Impala, do yourself a favor and check out the older albums, Innerspeaker and Lonerism and/or the Youtube vids for "Solitude is Bliss," "Expectation," "Enders Toi," "Nangs,"and the Conan live version of "Let it Happen." And check out the band Pond, which I like more lately. (Several of the same people-- Parker produces) I think the first song was "Patience" and the second was "Borderline," both from the impending album. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming . . . CO: Wow that was lousy. I think they had the premise, set, make-up, and costumes all done then wrote the actual sketch 10 minutes before airtime. That might also explain the horrorshow of De Niro exclusively reading cue cards when his character is supposed to be reading from a piece of paper that he is actually holding in his hands. What the fuck!? If reading glasses were needed I'm sure the real Mueller uses them too. Good for Sandra Oh! Some of the writing was uneven but she was great. The Kenan "Electric Shoes" sketch was barely funny the first time he broke back in, then it was annoying. I rarely FF through sketches, but did for that. Sometimes the mere repetition becomes funny, but this didn't work for me.

Barry, season two, begins tonight on Home Box Office.

Aidy Bryant has a new Hulu show -- Shrill. I include this link as it also deals with Julia Sweeney, who is also in the cast. Aidy's on a recent WTF w/ Marc Maron partly to pimp her new show. IMHO, apart from that, it's a pretty standard SNL castmember Marc Maron interview. She knew Vanessa beforehand from Improv Olympics, auditioned the same time as Cecily, and was buddies with Tim Robinson at the time they both got the nod.

Wow-- 15 years since Sideways. Paul Giamatti had hair, ffs.

This reminded me of the short-lived Chris Gethard show Big Lake that aired for just a season back in 2010. Parnell co-starred along with Horatio Sanz and a young Dylan Blue. They were all great. Was I the only one who ever saw this?

Er, maybe only 90% 🤪 I enjoyed reading your post, though, and agree with a lot of it. It's nice to see someone who has the same low opinion of Will Ferrell as me. I may go down as one of the last Che defenders. Partly this is because people forget how bad Seth Myers* was for soooo long, how week after week his smirkily-delivered "jokes" would far-too-often pancake to silence. If Che would tweak just a couple things, he would be fine. First, he needs to stop laughing at his own jokes. Similarly, he needs to stop trying so hard to be cool. There's nothing more un-cool than someone trying hard to be cool. *He's much better at his current jerb.

Finally some Tame Impala! They should have been on 7-8 years ago. I vaguely recall when SNL was cutting edge musically. Kevin Parker is hinting that the new album might be soon. Surely not this week? Pleeeeeeease. [/whine] I don't get the Oh/Impala/Twitter comment. Could you enlighten the tweet-impaired among us? Oh, and the episode = yawn, except maybe the CO. Idris Elba wasn't really very funny, though I'd like to see him make another attempt.

I think this will go down as a classic and here's why: The CO was solid and you knew Hader was there with his head down and something was going to happen, and it did when people started rebounding their time to him. And the Cohen, "Yur motha" quip was a nice twist. That was one cool set the way it arrayed most of the cast as congresspeople. What's That Name? It just caught me at the right time in the right way, but when asked why, Hader answered "Chaos!" I laughed harder than for any other line or sketch in years. The last time I laughed that hard was at the starship chicken sketch with the microwave. (Yes, I'm one of those). Hader was almost pre-breaking at that one. Toilet Death Ejector. This one just wasn't fair, a shining example of repetition itself being funny if done correctly. Watching this one, I (and likely most people) winced at first, but by the time old bodies were careening off backboards I was laughing my ass off. Cousin's Wedding. A one-off, but at least they tried. Kudos to all the dancers, including Mulaney. WU. Were the meat ladies funny because Kate is a vegan in rl and was nearly gagging at all that raw meat? Bodega Bathroom. Again, the set-- Emmy-worthy. This was a solid sketch in its own right and then they slathered it with awesomeness. Cinema Classics. It would have been hard to mess up McKinnon and Mulaney as Bogart and Becall plus whistling. And a side note-- after all these years Keenan is the alpha?

https://www.amazon.com/Slaves-to-an-Accordion/dp/B007Z525V0

OMG the [air-quote] National Emergency [/air quote] was a knuckleball wafted right down the middle of the plate and SNL whiffed it by three feet. That was the most not funny CO in years. The Baldwin-Trump thing used to be funny but it's not 2016 anymore. It's simply been done way too many times at this point. They just need to get someone else with a fresh take on Trump if that's possible. But beyond that they just flat blew it. It's unclear what else they could have done, perhaps tripled-down on the whole national emergency concept where going forward Trump declares a national emergency for everything up to and including the Mueller investigation. Or they might have keyed off Ann Coulter's quip about the only national emergency is that Trump is an idiot. [shrugs] The freshman news and cake sketches were great; something different with real laughs. Poor Kyle and poor Sean!

My DVR didn't record it but it got the "Vintage" episode earlier. Hrmm. I blame Putin.

The Women of Congress sketch was funnier the second time around, esp. Halsey's bitch bomb at the end.

Yeah, I do this a lot, too, what with these limited 8-10 ep seasons that are nearly a year apart. And because we CAN!

The SNL-pats-itself-on-the-back-for-Black-History-Month sketch was a little eyebrow raiser since it hasn't been that long ago it was getting trashed for its lack of women of color and the black guys refused to play drag any longer. Halsey has the joie de vivre to pull off hosting. I wouldn't mind seeing her again. I had to laugh at her monologue line about singing the music you tell your daughter to turn down. Oooh kay-- keep tellin' yourself that, I guess. I generally liked the sketches but WU stunk up the joint. The Instagram couple bit was at the Garth & Kat level of prolonged non-comedic agony. Maybe Heidi needs to move away from the Millennial Valley Girl persona for a while.

Conan has a new podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. He's had Adam Sandler and also Dana Carvey. I don't care for and didn't bother with Sandler. The Dana Carvey ep is interesting and funny.

I have to confess I also initially thought "Roger Stone" was De Niro.

I loved the CO but the rest was pretty average (too many many one-offs?). In the New Orleans sketch I couldn't tell if McAvoy broke because he muffed the Jumbo/Gumbo line or because Heidi was waiving her hands in his face (or both?). He recovered well. I felt a little sorry for Melissa who was mostly just window-dressing. My thought on the Bennett-Mooney boys sketch was, "They had to set up that garden hose onstage so they just as well use it again." The leaf blower was a nice touch. I agree it went too dark for no real pay-off. Wow-- they went from urns to goat peen in only one week. Gosh, what a shocking twist at the end. : rolleyes Halsey? Really!? This is one of those I'm-not-watching shows, but sometimes those are good because the bar is so low.

Ohhh, Meek Mills is the guy who got the crazy probation violation judge a couple years ago. He has quite a rap sheet, though.

Same here (but I'm not 12). The whole sketch was jr. high humor but it was great, particularly the queef joke. The "delightful surprise" tag was about a three-second time-delay fuse for me, all the better. I rag on SNL regularly for its MG selections, especially the lack of rock acts, the last few years. I'm not very familiar with Greta Van Fleet and wasn't too impressed. I love Jack White and when he was on last the last year or so he sucked, so you never know. The musical sound quality and last night was horrible for the first song, so that might have something to do with it. The vocalist was too soft and it's doubtful the bass guitar was even plugged into an amp.

Yay for a rock MG. Yay x 2 for Rachel Brosnahan. Great show and she's great in it. [shameless fanpimp for another Prime series, Patriot] Yay x 100 if there's an Alex Bornstein cameo!