And no, today's focus won't be on HBO's "Game Change" starring the underestimated and exquisitely talented Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin which aired last night. I will see it later, but at the time I was not near HBO and had to forgo the show.
Unfortunately, the one show I did see was part of Saturday Night Live until its increasing banality sent me off into a nice, peaceful sleep.
Lorne Michaels, creator and executive producer of the astonishingly long-running "Saturday Night Live", must have NBC by what's left of their balls/cojones (yes, I finally stopped spelling it "cajones"). I heard they still flash particles of gold dust in his path as he walks to his Grand Temple Office, filled with Nubian slaves and a full-time manicurist, masseuse - even back in the days before he and Tina Fey offered "30 Rock".
How can SNL continue to stay on the air with the atrocious writing we have been witnessing for many seasons? Sure, almost every year since its inception Michaels has managed to find at least one, if not two, very good sketch actors who then go on to fame and fortune, or misfortune, depending on who they are. And, from time-to-time a sketch will actually be funny and one has a brief moment of "Ahhh, there it is!" That moment of why we tuned-in. To laugh. How rare that is these days unless the host inspires someone in the writer's chambers to wake up the dormant Laughter Maker in their head and create genuinely unique, witty and pithy characters to write clever scenes around.
The bad, awful, utterly stupid writing on SNL over the years defies television longevity. For instance, last night the show opened with a promising sketch on Rush Limbaugh. Taran Killam, who played Rush, was excellent in his depiction of the Big Mouth. Perfect mimicry from voice to body movements. Bravo on that! But the script he had to read? Too long. Too stupid. Too-Too-Too you name it. And the nonsense host Jonah Hill had to endure? Ouch! Read & Watch
If you tuned-in last weekend to see what Lindsay Low-Hand's "comeback" would look like when she did her latest twirl on the stage as the host, you'll agree (in all probability) that not only did the show fizzle like the end of Lindsay's "comeback", but the writing for the basic sketches was not only terrible but not funny at all in any way or any how. The cringe-worthy way-too-long-and-ultimately-inappropriate-sketch with Linds being herself at a prison-based "Scared Straight" venue, had to go on and on and on, ending roughly with threats of rape. How funny is that? Oh, hah hah hah! Not. No way.
When I watch the actors try to turn the bland, unfunny material into more than it is, as a true talent will do, half of the time the strain to find the punch-line and make it work is palpable, thus uncomfortable to watch.
Writing comedy isn't easy. You've heard and read that comment/statement thousands of times because it is really true. You need to be a be a bit bent as well as disciplined...or, as in the first years of SNL, totally coked-out of your mind. Seth Meyers, Weekend Update's bland-looking, blah-acting, uptight clean cut white college-type male is currently the show's Head Writer. I can't imagine him letting loose on anything other than a tennis court, so maybe that's a hint right there.
I don't know what, if any, drugs are openly going around in the writer's room these days, but if so, they must be prescription and primarily Opiates. Zzzzzz.
Image via: http://school.discoveryeducation.com
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