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The Narrator Returns wrote:Next week's episode will be hosted by Dave Chappelle, with musical guest A Tribe Called Quest.

That's amazing.

Chappelle's monologue was smart, confident, and relevant. The best monologue this season. Thoughts on the episode?

terabin wrote:Chappelle's monologue was smart, confident, and relevant. The best monologue this season. Thoughts on the episode?

Easily the best overall show of the season, although that's not saying much. Clearly, Chappelle and A Tribe Called Quest bumped the quality up a couple notches just doing what they do well. I liked how the one really awkward, under-cooked sketch turned out to be a self-referential riff on issues that routinely plague SNL skits.

As much press as Chappelle's monologue is rightfully getting, I though Kate McKinnon's opening tribute to Cohen (which likely simultaneously signaled a hiatus for her Clinton impression) was near perfect.

I've seen it rightfully dismissed as a bizarre way to remember Cohen, having a comedienne who is playing a US political candidate (Cohen was Canadian) sadly sing one of his songs to mourn the fact that someone who hosted the show last season is now the President-elect of the United States. There are a lot of icky conflicts of interest going on there, and while I certainly admire the effort, the exact sort of raw sincerity and insight that Chappelle's monologue (and I would say the first sketch, too) are being praised for was missing from that tribute. It's not that easy to whitewash the role that SNL had in attempting to normalize Trump.

For me the bizarre amalgamation of the various conflicting aspects of the scene only heighten the impact. Sometimes I think we forget that pop-culture is a messy thing when executed at a certain point in time. We can always hope for something perfect and flawless, but it's rare in reality. I think the opening this weekend attempted to capture and convey multiple sources of sadness that piled up upon many people within a very short period of time. I didn't mind that it wasn't in service of one monolithic concept in an attempt to remain focused on one idea. Plus, Cohen himself was a man that enjoyed dipping into multiple facets of art and culture across many years, so it felt apt from my (admittedly oddly combined polite Canadian/emotional American) perspective.

One of the biggest issues I had with McKinnon's performance wasn't the fact that she did in Clinton garb, but the fact that every cover of "Hallelujah" is almost identical to what John Cale did what the song during the early 90's. From Jeff Buckley to k.d. Lang at the Winter Olympics in Whistler, B.C., people have turned it into a slow, dirge-like tune, and I just wish they would deviate from that formula. Lyrically, it's not even particularly dour, so I don't understand why it keeps being interpreted this way.

Or just choose a more appropriate song like Future.

knives wrote:Or just choose a more appropriate song like Future.

Sure! "Democracy" or "Who by Fire", too.

beamish13 wrote:One of the biggest issues I had with McKinnon's performance wasn't the fact that she did in Clinton garb, but the fact that every cover of "Hallelujah" is almost identical to what John Cale did what the song during the early 90's. From Jeff Buckley to k.d. Lang at the Winter Olympics in Whistler, B.C., people have turned it into a slow, dirge-like tune, and I just wish they would deviate from that formula. Lyrically, it's not even particularly dour, so I don't understand why it keeps being interpreted this way.

It is unfortunate that a song sung originally in a complex variation of tones is always reduced to just a single tone, and an odd one at that given the brazen, sardonic humour of much of the original. Yet I seem alone in not liking more or less any cover versions of the song.

Just based on this thread, sounds like you're not alone.

It would be great if Cohen's other work wound receive more notice within pop-culture, but it's going to take a while before anything equals "Hallelujah"'s stature within the current cultural landscape.

John Cale's is still my fave - I just wished he had been tapped to produce some of Cohen's more misbegotten albums. So many of Cohen's studio recordings were terribly produced.

Anyway, it says something about the world when SNL's had quite a few sobering cold opens in the past decade or so, while the first 25 years seemed relatively untouched by sadness outside of Steve Martin's remembrance of former cast member Gilda Radner.

The SNL Update anchors suck at the TelePrompTer part...but this weekend's update was spot on-apart from the correspondent bits.

Michael Che and the teleprompter have never been friends ... and I'm not sure that's the teleprompter's fault. Though he has improved, Che's on-air delivery/cadence always makes me wonder if he actually reads any of the jokes beforehand.

That Melissa McCarthy skit is legit the best thing I've seen from SNL in decades.

She can probably play Alex Jones now too.

The news networks keep highlighting the sequence where McCarthy starts using props and ramming people with the podium, but I think my favourite part is when McCarthy's Spicer issues the apology from the press-corp to him, and then declares that he doesn't accept. The impersonation is really just a rehash of a few of the characters she's done on past SNL episodes (like that female basketball coach caught on tape), but it's so incredibly effective when applied to Spicer's absurdly combative demeanor. Sadly it does a really good job at highlighting how our new reality is unbelievably preposterous.

Just saw this, but this past season of SNL has earned a whopping 22 Emmy nominations. (Only HBO's Westworld has as many nominations this year.) Prior to this, SNL earned a total of 209 nominations over 41 previous seasons, and the most it had ever earned in any season had been 16. Not only is this a record for variety shows, but it ties 30 Rock's record for most nominations in a season by a comedy.

Politics certainly helped boost the recognition, but Emmy Awards aside, the show's recent casts have gotten quite a bit of praise from TV columnists all over the place. (New York Magazine even placed the last decade's worth of casts near the very top of a ranked list, falling behind only the original.)

The last time I saw an entire episode was many years ago. Since then, I've only watched cherry-picked segments that were streamed the follow day, which is probably how most people catch it now, and I have to wonder if this has helped create the illusion that the show is much better now than it has been since the original cast. The show has always been notoriously uneven from the very beginning, rarely sustaining 90 minutes with quality material, but if you're only seeing the vetted parts, it feel likes a rock solid 30-minute program.

I think it's just a product of rules changes, though - until a few years ago, variety/sketch performers were ineligible for performing Emmys, which produced a third of its nods today.

This past season relied waaaaaaay too heavily on politics for its humor, and typically after a week of being inundated with the same general jokes/gags on social media and elsewhere, it did not have the impact it once had in that department. I’d go as far as to say it was one of the weaker seasons that I can remember from my near lifetime of watching the show, and it is desperately due to be shaken up and to become less reliant on cameos from people who aren’t in the cast. Have some of these young cast members perform some of these impressions - apparently Beck Bennett does an amazing Trump, for one. The show has always had a bit of a shabby quality that was slicked over by easy reliance on star power for what was a pivotal time in its history - but I guess that worked for almost everyone but me

You're not alone, and of course SNL's largely toothless and redundant political satire, generally one of its worst traits, is being rewarded in a big way by Emmy voters who favored the institution-worshiping West Wing over The Sopranos (the show that diagnosed America's current ills perhaps better than any other) for years.

SNL did have two satirical ideas I thought were pretty funny this year: Melissa McCarthy's first Sean Spicer sketch, which was all the better for catching everyone by surprise, and the decision to always portray Steve Bannon as Death.

There were a couple others, like the "Black Jeopardy" with Tom Hanks or Scarlett Johansson's Trump-supporting dog. Both of those probably pointed to a more productive satirical direction that trying to spoof Trump or his administration directly.

I also liked Cecily Strong's Cathy Anne character on Update.