Shout-outs and inferences are supposed to take the place of exploration and discussions. It's as though the nation decided to replace Dr. Spock with R.D. Laing. And as the wheels spin in the mud, sending dirt flying, and nothing gets accomplished, remember that.
You won't easily forget it if you caught either ABC's Better Off Ted or another rare live episode of Saturday Night Live. In both cases you saw that they, like Barack, were happy to offer shout-outs in the place of real observations, surface in the place of depth. And still expect to get laughs. Well they can dream, can't they?
Better Off Ted has Portia de Rossi (of Ally McBeal and Arrested Development fame) and that's about all the show can currently call an asset. (For those late to the party, we don't review child performers. The lead character has a young daughter. That actress is not mentioned nor evaluated in this article.) As Veronica, Portia provides the show with some forward momentum that keeps making you think any second the show's going to shift into a lower gear and make it out of the mud. Then Jay Harrington's Ted does something and you realize nobody's going anywhere.
Excuse us, then Ted does nothing because that is the real problem. Over and over. Take last Thursday's episode which featured Ted finally almost kissing Linda (Andrea Anders). Almost. And almost starting a relationship with her. The kiss was prevented by Linda's refusal to remove her HAZMAT mask while sirens were going off. The relationship was prevented by . . . writers who don't know anything?
Who in the world wants to spend thirty minutes with someone who constantly does nothing and then mopes about it?
Despite the title, the show has yet to demonstrate there's anything good about being Ted.
Constantly, he almost does something and . . . then . . . doesn't.
The problem isn't with Harrington, it's with the writing. For example, Ted takes his young daughter to work and brings her to a meeting. The meeting is about bombs but, so as not to frighten her, the word "bunny" is used in place of bombs. For that scene to be funny, it needs to be uncomfortable but every time tension almost develops, you've got Ted walking it back. The same way Ted loves Linda but then walks it back at the end of the episode.
Ted never does a damn thing. He just spins his wheels.
And that's really too bad because the cast shows real promise. No one's really managed to overcome the material except Portia but the actors have created likable characters, characters you want to know and spend time with, characters you want to see do something.
Instead every thing's blunted corners and stationary bike rides. It all adds up to nothing currently. Stronger scripts could make this show better. Sidebar, we really, really hope to review Rules of Engagement again. It is the most improved show on TV. Megyn Price remains wonderful but Bianca Kajlich has really carved out a character and the writers have steadied Adam Rhodes allowing Oliver Hudson to hit notes in that role which are among the year's best. We can actually say many nice things about the show and have a friend with the show begging that the improvement be noted. We hope to offer a lengthy examination of the show but if you hated the show as much as we did in year one, you might be pleasantly surprised if you check it out currently on Monday nights, CBS, after Two & A Half Men. And in a world where Rules of Engagement can actually become engaging television, anything can happen.
Well, almost. Nothing will apparently ever make Seth Meyers a comedy writer. And as long as Lorne's willing to let him continue as "headwriter," Meyers is bound and determined to sink the show.
Saturday was one of those increasingly rare 'new' shows. Hard for some viewers today to believe, but once upon a time, SNL was required to do new shows regularly. There was none of this two or three new shows, series of repeats, two or three new shows, series of repeats nonsense.
But the inability to produce a full season's worth of episodes is the least of Lorne's problems as the first skit last night made clear. It was the Christ-child Barack and it was so unfunny. As a general rule, maybe someone who gave $4,600 to Barack's campaigns in 2008 shouldn't be writing skits about his hero, the one he referred to on air last night as "a super cool Black guy"?
Seth offered another sloppy wet one to his would-be-lover and Fred got stuck in front of the camera trying to make sense out of it. What did we tell you throughout 2008? That SNL never developed a life for Barack. [Click here for one example.] They still haven't. He exists in a vacuum, trotted out for photo-ops which could actually pass for commentary on SNL's part if there was any indication that they were intending that. Instead, you've got an adolescent with a crush trying to write comedy and failing miserably.
Barack took another step towards fascism and you know it tickled Seth so an entire speech was crafted for Fred to give as Barack -- a long, long, boring speech. In this one he talked about bullying and the studio audience dutifully applauded every time the APPLAUSE sign lit up. They just didn't really laugh. This product would stay in business, this would go the way of GM. They came alive for a brief moment when 'mature' Seth introduced skin mags into the routine but, Seth being Seth, that was just to get in a slam against Bill Clinton. Yes, that is stale. But so is Seth. Somewhere around recliners, or maybe after underwear or fake vomit, we lost interest and apparently so did the studio audience. Yet still the skit continued as if accumulating more minutes might make it funnier.
Never did. But it did make it clear just how misogynistic the show had become. That was a thread that ran through the entire broadcast and, word to Andy, stop partaking in it or it's going to kill your post-SNL career before it gets off the ground.
A bad "digital short" with Andy, apparently entitled "I Am the Boss," made no sense on its own but in the context of the show seemed to be yet another portrait of misogyny unbound. ("Suck my d**k" and other choice lines. NBC apparently has no censor issues these days. Gee, if only Gilda, Danny and John could have resorted to those words they never would have had to actually be funny and creative.)
Andy and the host (we'll be kind and leave him nameless) made up two men in a four men sketch (four by the end of the skit). They're talking about strippers and, for a brief second, the skit could have been about something, it could have even created a reoccurring skit. (Has no one noticed that the year appears on the verge of ending with no break out character introduced the entire season?) A cell phone rings and the stripper talk's set aside as it's all baby-coo, lovey-dovey. "Save your girlfriend voice for when you're alone," snaps one but the phones ring (Andy's vibrates) and they all partake. That's actually the makings for funny. The juxtaposition of the stripper talk and bravado versus the way these same characters speak to their girlfriends. We thought just maybe SNL was remembering how to write a sketch.
We thought wrong. It's all surface, we warned you. Instead of exploring that (and creating an alternative to Akroyd and Martin's "Wild and Crazy Guys"), the skit veered into the lead singer of the B52s calling, a call made to a friend on life support ("beep-beep-beeeeeep"), Yoda and many more but the low had to be calling Gizmo.
There's a reason SNL isn't funny and you can see it in the above skit. Given the chance to offer something relatable and funny, they quickly ditch that to offer up recycled pop-culture crap -- the sort of stuff Lorne once accused Anne of doing with Square Pegs (and Lorne really ripped apart Anne's work -- or are we still pretending that never happened?). Given the chance to actually create some memorable characters, they instead tried to shore up a weak sketch by dropping in references to Star Wars and Gremlins. How did that make it out of the writers' room, forget out of rehearsal?
"I'm Seth Meyers and here's tonight's top stories," Seth promised at the start of Weakened Update. Instead we think we found the new drinking game. Take a shot every time Seth works "Black" into a discussion about Barack. Try it.
A drunken stupor might allow you to ignore how underutilized women are on the show. Women finally popped up during Weekend Update -- excuse us, women playing women. Men playing women make frequent appearance. So after two not funny skits, the women were allowed a moment and they stole Weekend Update as Madonna and Angelina Jolie.
That skit also underscored how professional bachelor Seth can't relate to women on any level. At the end of the skit, "Angelina" declared, "Hey, Seth, take this bottle and suck on it like you're a baby." With no emotion and not even a reaction shot to the camera, Seth stumbled through the line, "I have so many mixed emotions right now." It was that line, that awful reading he gave it, which led a cast member to tell us last night that we're right and Seth has to go.
He should go. Kristen did a wonderful Madonna but, really, Madonna and Michael Jackson jokes? Is it 1989 or 2009?
You might have asked that during the awful skit 'spoofing' country music -- or what someone thought was country music. Why are they even trying to spoof country music? Because Seth can't write about his own life. He can't create recognizable characters or situations. But he can point the finger and laugh at the 'other' and that's all he can write, weak, undeveloped skits from a priss-ass point of view.
Doubt us? The host got stuck in a bad skit (as did a lot of other males). It was supposed to be a spoof of an eighties TGIF comedy and was titled Milestone High. Did you watch Boy Meets World? If so, you might remember that the lead character wasn't a sports star at his school. Nor was the lead character of Wonder Years. But there was Seth, the man who probably gave himself a groin injury the first time he pulled on a jock strap, pointing the finger at athletes because ha, ha, they were the 'other' to him as well. There was no skit there. No laugh lines, no characters and the whole thing ended as slowly as it moved. It did give you time to wonder why the students (two) were male and so were the teachers (three)? Maybe it was supposed to be The Facts Of Life in reverse?
Telling a joke about an engagement ring that fell on the Brooklyn Bridge, Seth felt the need to add that there was good news to the story, the man didn't have to get married. If you're not yet smelling the misogyny, you must have tuned out before the 'big' skit featuring ten actors, nine of which were playing The Muppets. There was Kermit, Fozi Bear . . . Wait. The most famous Muppet -- what's her name? Oh, yeah, Miss Piggy. Yeah, despite putting ten actors in the skit, you had no Miss Piggy.
Not even a man dressed up as Miss Piggy. Yeah, Andy dressed up as the comic strip character Cathy again. No, it's never funny. Yes, it does emphasize everything that's unattractive about his nose and remind you that funny alone doesn't make for sexy. We've issued warnings. He seems bound and determined to kill off any post-SNL career.
Having washed our hands of it, we were able to focus on the sketch and grasp something others may not have: It was a repeat. You had a meeting where various characters spoke of ways to save their jobs during the economic crisis. Change it from comic strip characters to Broadway characters and you've got the same skit they already did -- down to the bits about racism when Keenan's character is mistaken for someone else.
How did that one get the green light? The first time it was done, it wasn't that funny and the skit altered for comic strip characters was even less funny.
The problem with both skits, besides not being funny, is you're attempting to get a laugh off of someone else's work. You're not genuinely creating anything of your own. And, once upon a time, Lorne really looked down on that. In fact, we're remembering his actual critique of Dick Ebersol's SNL reign and of that era's dependency on celebrity imitations to get laughs. To paraphrase Dr. Denise Vennetti, Saturday Night Live forgot to look at itself. Or any other human being. The whole show played like the writers went flipping through US weekly during the pitch meeting.
Seth Meyers is the mental midget secretly obsessed with Octomom and whether Reese and Jake will get hitched while pretending to have a genuine political thought in his head. That actually is funny and we'd suggest that Seth either explore that character quickly or Lorne go ahead and fire him before the season's over.
There was one new standout on TV last week, Coming Home: Military Families Cope with Change. That half-hour Sesame Street program aired on PBS Wednesday night and featured Queen Latifah as the host along with Muppets Elmo and Rosita. (John Mayer was a musical guest.) The program's focus was the returning wounded and their families. How do children cope with parents wounded while serving in Iraq?
It's an important question and issues of physical and emotional wounds, issues of distance and detachment, of longing and belonging were all addressed in an intelligent, honest and age-appropriate manner. That last point was lost on a friend who's a veteran from the Vietnam era and pooh-pahhed the special stating it didn't "show the true horrors of war."
A young child wants to play with their father, wants to talk to him but the father can't leave his depression or the couch? Guess what, that's a horror of war if you're a child outside the war zone. And Queen Latifah made that point clear, for those who bothered to pay attention, as she shared her father's issues when she was growing up.
This was a show geared for children. We would have assumed the red, talking puppet heavily featured in the special would have been enough to establish that point but apparently we were wrong.
The special was a long time coming and good for PBS for stepping up. Six years into the Iraq War and finally a program that addresses what many children in the United States are going through. A lot has been made (rightly so) on how coffins were hidden away throughout this illegal war. Even more hidden have been the wounded. A notable exception to the silence has been a 2004 Mother Jones feature. (Clamor also did an outstanding feature but the magazine is no more.) The wounded men and women return to their lives and, for some, their lives include young children. How do you prepare children for that?
In a superficial society that wants to pretend the Iraq War ended just because the bulk of Americans and the media lost interest, how do you prepare the children of the wounded for their parents' return? At a time when everyone from the president to a sitcom to the reigning live TV show wants to earn credit by riding on the shoulders of others, Sesame Street rolled up their sleeves and went to work. It was messy and it was real, it was age-appropriate and one of the few things we've seen in recent years which truly argued for the continued existence of PBS.
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*Note. You can hear the Barack quote on Friday's episode of Washington Week.