Althouse: SNL

Showing posts with label SNL. Show all posts

December 21, 2025

The Eternal Cher.

Last night on SNL:

BONUS: Arianna Grande takes the Macauley Culkin role in a "Home Alone" takeoff... and really looks the part:

ADDED: I watched that second video after posting it, and I just want to add that I don't think they'd have gone through with it if they hadn't already put so much money and effort into producing it. The idea of beginning with a lovely Christmas celebration and descending into mayhem calls to mind the Conan O'Brien Christmas party and its horrible aftermath.

December 14, 2025

Did Trump say something about Karoline Leavitt's mouth?

I'm trying to understand the background to the satire in last night's "SNL" cold open:

It's better to know the background before attempting to get the satire. The fun is lost if you have to research it after the fact, but that's what I did. The question in the post title was my Google search, and I came up with this:

Wow, he actually said, about Leavitt, "When she goes on television, Fox, like I mean, they dominate. They dominate when she gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don't stop — pop pop pop — like a little machine gun."

"SNL" is so lucky to have him. The best lines are straight from the transcript of his ad lib remarks. What can they add?

Well, what they add is the sexualization. Trump was admiring her professional performance as press secretary. "SNL" is turning it into something completely sexual. They think they have a privilege to set back the progress of women in the workplace.

My tiny, squeaky voice says they don't.

November 14, 2025

"WTF is going on here with Michael Wolff giving PR strategy to Jeffrey Epstein?"

Said the podcaster Brian Reed, quoted by The Guardian in "Blurred lines: how Michael Wolff aspired to be part of elite circles he wrote about/The writer who features prominently in newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails has achieved extraordinary access but faced questions about his journalistic ethics."

Wolff's attempt at an explanation: "I was engaged then in an in-depth conversation with Epstein about his relationship with Trump and this seems to be part of that conversation."

The Guardian also quotes what NYT reporter Maggie Haberman said about Wolff back in 2018 (when his Trump-bashing book "Fire and Fury" came out: "He believes in larger truths and narratives.... So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true; the details are often wrong."

Reminds me of the old Ratherism "fake but accurate."

Back to The Guardian:

Click for more »

November 2, 2025

The Property Brothers take on the White House.

October 5, 2025

"SNL" is back.

With lots of clips — the whole show? — at YouTube.

I tried to pick one out for this post, but somehow I couldn't. Maybe you can. Bad Bunny was the host. The cold open was about that Pete Hegseth harangue.

The show has been around for 50 years, and I remember watching the first season, when the running joke was that they barely deserved to be on the air. It began like this:

I'm not the slightest bit uncomfortable about belonging there, with George, rather than here, with Bad.

May 4, 2025

"This order would reduce the number of interracial couples in TV commercials"/"Oh, it's just too many, right?"

"You see them in the kitchen together making meals from HelloFresh. He's wearing loafers, she's got tight braids. You're like: Where'd they meet, you know, what do they even talk about? It's insane."

Most of what is in that sketch has Trump signing orders with respect to things Trump has actually made an issue of his own, but I don't think he's ever seemed antagonistic toward interracial couples. I wonder how that made it into the sketch. And the line "He's wearing loafers, she's got tight braids" prompts us to picture the man as white and the woman is black, but the humor I've been hearing about these ads is that the man is always black and the woman is white. Anyway, the issue of interracial couples in TV commercials is a general topic for comedians these days. It's not connected to Trump, so it's rather scurrilous to throw this subject into the mix.

April 16, 2025

An "SNL" sketch that surprisingly spoofs the idea that you're not allowed to ask where that baby came from.

April 13, 2025

The world gave "SNL" some great material and "SNL" did not squander the opportunity. Enjoy the near perfection of "The White POTUS."

Why it's not complete perfection: 1. You need to have watched Season 3 of "The White Lotus" to get most of the jokes, 2. The joke about the watch is bad. It was like the old "moron" jokes of the 1960s — e.g., why did the moron throw his watch across the room?/He wanted to see time fly — and the idea that Eric Trump is a moron isn't worth spending time on.

March 2, 2025

"I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Maybe not. Maybe not. Awesome. Awesome, awesome. You've got to make a joke. You know... legalize comedy! Legalize comedy! Come on, legalize it!"

January 26, 2025

"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin' – I just might tell you the truth."

Sang Timothée Chalamet, on "SNL" last night, where he was the host, in a bunch of skits, and also performed, in his Bob Dylan persona, as the musical guest.

There were 3 songs — "Outlaw Blues" and, surprisingly "Three Angels"...

... and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time"...

What did you think? It's very hard for me to judge... other than that I was delighted that "Three Angels" was chosen and disappointed that the sound wasn't balanced properly in the end of the song and we lost Timmy's voice. But does anyone hear the music they play, does anyone even try?

I'm interested in the fashion interpretation of Bob's famous polka dots. Bob's were a shirt. Timmy's — same size and color — were a hoodie. The shift from shirt to hoodie sheds light on the choice to do "Three Angels." It's a rap song.

ADDED: I haven't been able to force myself to go see Chalamet's movie yet, so I don't know how close these performances last night are to his embodiment of Bob in the movie. In a Reddit discussion, the top comment is: "Actually credit for Timmy for not doing Bob, I much more appreciate a Dylan cover that's not trying to be Bob and that rendition of Three Angels sounded fresh."

"From now on, there will be two genders... And we're done with LGBT. No more drag. No more guys and wigs. No more whatever these guys were wearing."

"What a weird way to dress, right? A little zesty darling. I'm off to start America. Hand me my wig and my tights and my big blousy shirts."

That was the cold open on "SNL" last night. Nice job, and I appreciate that the players — who had to freeze into a tableau at one point and remain frozen — quite professionally held the pose and resisted cracking up. James Austin Johnson, as Trump, had some funny lines — like the one I quoted above — and the players did not devolve into the old "Not Ready For Prime Time" raggedness — which was great in its day.

Lin-Manuel Miranda showed up — to play Hamilton — and he froze into the tableau along with all the others and committed to holding the pose. I think it was planned that he — and he alone — would crack up at a specific point — but that point does not arrive until the players have held the pose for 4 whole minutes, with "Trump" cracking jokes the whole time.

Trumpers and anti-Trumpers — did anyone not like that?

January 19, 2025

Dave Chappelle does the opening monologue on "Saturday Night Live."

Here it is, from last night, all 17 minutes:

January 13, 2025

"On Friday, the staff often hears Michaels say, 'We have nothing.' He’ll be staring tensely at the index cards on his bulletin board, which lay out each tentative segment."

"Employees a quarter of his age are amazed that, after fifty years, he can still seem scared. If things look particularly bleak, he’ll ask writers if they’ve been saving any good material for an upcoming host, telling them, 'Sometimes you have to burn the furniture.' On Saturday afternoon, in Studio 8H, there’s a run-through of the sketches. The show is often considerably too long at this point, so more sketches might be cut... Sometimes the guest host nixes a sketch. In 2015, Donald Trump was to play a tree standing next to the Giving Tree, the Shel Silverstein character who gives and gives of herself until she’s reduced to a stump. The sketch ended with the Trump tree calling the Giving Tree a sucker. Trump refused to do the piece, not because it portrayed him as heartless but because he worried that the tree costume made him look fat."

From "Lorne Michaels Is the Real Star of 'Saturday Night Live'/He’s ruled with absolute power for five decades, forever adding to his list of oracular pronouncements—about producing TV, making comedy, and living the good life" (The New Yorker).

December 30, 2024

"Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, and you’re very safe."

ADDED: It really happened:

December 9, 2024

"Here comes Mr. Bob Dylan himself..."

The best part of this is how much James Austin Johnson looks like old Bob Dylan.

It's interesting that a woman plays Chalamet. That might have some verisimilitude, except that it made Chalamet much shorter than Dylan. In real life, Bob is 5'7" and Timothée is 5'10".

ADDED: Uproxx has an interview with James Austin Johnson about his Dylan imitation and links to this 2022 appearance on the Tonight Show where he sang "Jingle Bells" in Dylan voices from difference eras of Dylan:

James Austin Johnson sings “Jingle Bells” as Bob Dylan through the decades. #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/kuPegi5Dhw
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) November 29, 2022

November 17, 2024

"Did you just do the weave?"/"It's my own version of the weave, I call it the wander."

November 10, 2024

"Saturday Night Live" did a good job with the election results.

It goes a little long, but stick with it, because one person is much funnier than everyone else...

... and he's not a current cast member.

They did not repeat the inanity of their response to the 2016 election — the sorrowful "Hallelujah" performance by the Hillary impersonator. And I think they realize that as a comedy show, they are better off having Trump as their raw material rather than the dreary, awful Democratic Party.

The basic comedy idea used in the "SNL" cold open last night is very similar to what the brilliant comedian Tim Dillon used in his new podcast, released earlier in the day: Trump detractors are terrified that now Trump will come after them.

Click for more »

November 3, 2024

Pointing my fingers... pointing my fingers... at you....

ADDED: And Trump already replicated the mirror routine — here, with Jimmy Fallon, back in 2016. The Mick Jagger routine happened in 2001. There may be earlier examples of this routine, or similar things, like Harpo and Groucho in "Duck Soup," and, replicating that, Harpo and Lucy on "I Love Lucy."

October 20, 2024

Who better than Alec Baldwin to play the role of Bret Baier as a complete jerk in last night's "SNL" cold open?

And I liked this "Weekend Update" segment that I think was designed to make the audience hold Trump in contempt... but might make them love him:

October 14, 2024

I don't like this random worker being embarrassed. She didn't ask to be exploited as scenery.

Just a pro-tip for Kamala campaign staffers...

When you film Bill Clinton going to a McDonalds for a campaign stop... you might want to edit out the part where the cashier thinks he's Joe Biden.

What a complete mess. pic.twitter.com/NEKdBVWjs9
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) October 14, 2024

ADDED: "Oh, my God! It's Bill Clinton!"