You thought SNL Weekend Update Thursday was funny? Really? Oh my God, are you serious? (OK, the Cubs-bashing was chuckle-worthy.)
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- October
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There’s a reason SNL rarely airs a live show more than three straight weeks. It’s similar to the reason the show has succeeded for so long on a weekly basis rather than airing more frequently like the late-night talkers.
It takes time to write funny material. And the more airtime you set out to fill, the less likely the material you come up with will work.
And that explains why the first edition of SNL Weekend Update Thursday was so painfully unfunny.
It was last-half-hour-of-SNL unfunny, and that’s saying something.
The debate sketch taking off on the Obama-McCain town hall face-off in Nashville last week was less interesting and not nearly as humorous as the real thing.
It parodied Tom Brokaw’s rigid and dumbfoundingly poor time limits enforcement pretty well, but that got old real fast. Darryl Hammond’s and Fred Armisen’s impressions of Obama and McCain, respectively, were among the worst in the show’s history. And that’s surprising since Hammond is the master of presidential impressions, and Armisen did such a brilliant Barney Frank only last week.
The faux debate felt longer than the actual one—at an egregious nine-plus minutes—and I could only wonder what the studio audience was laughing at. I’ll give credit where it’s due, though: Chris Parnell’s Brokaw was spot-on.
The high point was Bill Murray’s cameo. It didn’t save the bit, but at least he changed the subject to something we can all agree on: picking on the Cubs. Watch it here.
I saw it coming that “Brokaw” would start cutting off questioners, as he did with Kristen Wiig. I didn’t see the simultaneous questions to make up time coming. Good stuff, there.
By the time the show returned from commercial break, half the episode was over. It returned to SNL’s political bread and butter: Weekend Update, which probably should have been called Mid-Week Update.
The original faux news hasn’t been as funny since Tina Fey left. Still, the writing was better here, probably because it’s mostly a series of one- and two-liners, all topical. And just for the record, I too noticed the bald dudes at the debate that Amy Poehler pointed out.
But do you know what’s never been funny? The “Really?” routine that Poehler and Seth Meyers do. And yet they keep doing it and even made it worse by escalating it to “Oh My God Are You Serious? Really?”
We’ll get two more weekly installments of this unnecessary appendage, leading right up to the election. Let’s hope it improves some between now and then. And after that, I suggest Lorne Michaels stick to his weekend job.
P.S. This bit with “Hall & Oates” made me chuckle, too…
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 11:12 am by Brian Howard.
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So it was painfully unfunny, yet it was clever and made you laugh at multiple points. And the writing was, at points, good, even though it was bad.
Really? Oh my God, are you serious? Really?
I didn’t—and wouldn’t—use the word clever to describe this travesty, and out of fairness I referenced the 3-4 minutes out of 22 or so that induced a chuckle—definitely not a laugh. So yeah, really, oh my God, I’m serious, really.
But if you thought it was hilarious, I’d love to hear why.
More just confused by the criticism with accolades mixed in.
Certainly not their best work, but a few guffaw-approaching moments. We’ll see what happens with the new material a couple of days later… My guess is – stretched too thin.
I thought it was HILARIOUS! It’s dead-on! The AIG situation is so outrageous, what else can you say besides: are you SERIOUS?!?!?
i thought the andy thing was funny and the fred map it fix it