Guide to Modern Saturday Night Live Disappointment

                Saturday Night Live is such an abject failure it’s not even funny. I know it goes through stages of relevancy but this is ridiculous. Nothing it has presented lately has left a lasting impression on my mind. At the end of it I only have one thought in my mind: “Why”. Why did I decide to stay in on a Saturday night when I could be out living it up, singing Karaoke, drinking, going to a concert, joking with friends, going to bed early, writing blog posts, clipping my fingernails,  literally anything is a better use of time than the succubus of time Saturday Night Live. 

                I have come up with a way of charting the decline of the average episode. Obviously this isn’t true for all cases, but for a majority of their recent output. Without a breakout star, there isn’t anything drawing you to it. Rather, people watch it out of a mindless obligation, like moths to the light. Each time people watch it hoping “Maybe it will be good tonight”. Such thinking is hopeless delusion. Perhaps some time in the future it may regain its marbles and begin to offer biting satire. Until such time, it continues to get smoked by “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” despite having an entire week to write it. During that week period, the writers work diligently to water down jokes to a point so bland it could be served as airplane food. 

                Below is the breakdown:

1.       Cold Open – This usually is an extremely weak political sketch taking on some relevant topic that’s been blaring loudly on the front page of the New York Times for about a month. If the open is anything other than a spoof on a current event (cultural or political) it will be a particularly weak show. 

2.       Guest Monologue – Whoever the guest is gets a chance to ramble on for about 5 to 15 minutes. Generally speaking since the writers don’t write it this happens to be one of the funniest moments of the show. Those who are ‘flash in the pan’ popular fail at this segment, resorting to childish skits. Better guests bode well for a better show. Exceptions do appear but as a rule of thumb it is fairly solid. 

3.       Immediate skits following the Monologue are more enjoyable than what comes later. Saturday Night Live front-loads the quality of the program knowing how old its target audience is getting. Writers know as a fact how hard it is to stay awake until 1 AM for people above the age of 50. Thus, these skits tend to fare better than the rest of the show. 

4.       Andy Samberg Sketch – Andy Samberg is Saturday Night Live’s token young person’s comedian. Most of the sketches mock things the elderly would find funny (Vincent Price, Communism Jokes, William Howard Taft jokes). These are called “Digital Shorts” and vary in quality. What Andy tries to do is create something ‘meme-worthy’ where he consciously knows people will share it on their friends’ Facebook Walls. Digital Shorts with a song involved have a better shot of accomplishing this goal. Laser Cat episodes fail in this attempt. But all Andy Samberg sketches try to create the false illusion that Saturday Night Live is a cool, hip show intended for relevant twenty something viewers. 

5.       Weekend Update – Weekend Update inspired comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to create their own successful shows. Now Weekend Update consists of those shows’ rejected jokes. In the off-chance the material is good; the Weekend Update person makes sure the delivery sucks to completely kill the joke. As a side note, this segment can be funny if they make fun of local New York politicians. I’m not sure why, but they have a knack for eviscerating any New York based politician. To be fair though, New York politicians make jokes about them too tempting and easy.

6.       Last Half Hour in the Program – If you’ve made it this far you’re pretty tough or a masochist. This is the dregs of the show. No matter how good the program has been this is truly terrible. You know how people bring magazines with them into the bathroom? Well, in this case, the writers bring a blank notepad with them whenever they use the restroom. Whatever they write in that couple minute period becomes a full bodied skit. It is generally about as good as the excrement those writers pumped out of their bodies. 

7.       Final Ten Minutes of Saturday Night Live – These ten minutes wish they were as good as human excrement. You should probably turn off the TV before this happens. 

My hope is you learn from these basic steps. I don’t want people ruining their Saturday nights for such nonsense. Even Wednesday afternoons in college in between classes watching recent repeats on Comedy Central sounds like a true waste to me. Perhaps one day I’ll see a change in this, in how Saturday Night Live gets better writers and better material. Who knows if that will happen, though I’d like to be one of the ones who finally bring the franchise back to greener, funnier pastures.

Can a MEME run for President?

               America’s come a long way since the 1950s. Since then, we’ve become a more open society. People are more accepting of an individual’s quirks. In fact, entire movies (Rushmore) and shows (Freaks & Geeks) celebrate individuals who are unable to be easily pigeonholed. But we still have a way to go before everyone becomes truly equal.

                Of course, I’m talking about Donald Trump’s potential run for Republican nominee in 2012. He’s pretty much become a MEME everyone knows, whether or not you’re addicted to the internet. “Celebrity Apprentice” shows off his flair and brash, uncompromising attitude towards those Hollywood elites, the “Left Coast”, most people in general and so on. Transcending media, he’s inspired countless douchebags to enter the field of real estate, hence the housing crisis we’re currently facing. 

                What will it take for Donald Trump to get the nomination? Will he have to buy everyone in Iowa and New Hampshire a mid-sized luxury sedan? Perhaps that might not be enough. His name has been used as a punch-line in New York and all over the country for literally decades. New York might be the only part of the country which can tolerate his extravagant ridiculousness, the gold-plated toilet being one example. 

                Despite his obvious brashness and appallingly dreadful haircut, he does have some things going for him. For one, he’s declared bankruptcy a lot. If he becomes President, he’d probably be able to help the United States default on all its loans. Then somehow, we’d post a record profit. Honestly I doubt we’re going to be able to pay back that money. Instead we can have a ‘strategic default’ where we don’t have to go through any pain. Countries might decide not to deal with us, but that might also have to do with Donald Trump being our President.

                The world would have much warmer relations with the US as a result of a Trump presidency. France and the US would become closer due to Trump’s promiscuous habits. Most of Europe would enjoy his complete lack of any sort of religious experience and a lack of even pretending to care about religion. Eastern Europe would adore him, since nearly all his wives have been of Eastern European extraction. Finally, we’d have a first lady who had previously been a model. Our ascension into new levels of cool would be complete. 

                Donald Trump’s policy promises wouldn’t really be anything, since he’s fairly amorphous. Sadly, this might doom him in any kind of primary. At CPAC this year half the audience loved The Donald and the other half booed him. Sure, he pretends to have normal Republican views, such as Pro-Life, Anti-Gun Control, but even among these are stranger ones. Going with a libertarian bent, he claims the US should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan along with an Anti-Foreign aid position for good measure. 

                Being a MEME, he’ll be fun. That is a guarantee. Showing up for a roast on Comedy Central shows he’s in touch with the jokes people could throw at him. By now, he has literally heard whatever insult people could hurl at him. Donald has thick skin, so you can get pretty creative in mocking him nearly endlessly. Plus, all the jokes at his expense mean he oddly has name recognition.

                President Trump would be a lot of fun. First, all states would get the word “Trump” added in to increase real estate values, like “Trump Hampshire” or “Trumpchusetts”. Despite no actual improvement done other than the name addition, the single act of adding the name will improve re-sale values. Look at the various buildings he’s slapped his name onto, somehow people are willing to pay more for a building named after him. And those same people even know who he is and his appearance. Logically, it shouldn’t make sense but it works. 

                Though Trump would reject European-style health care, he’d embrace European-style partying. Suddenly, our days of being a place where people have weak parties will end. Working with both Democrats and Republicans, he’ll manage to amend the constitution mandating all parties last at least two nights at a bare minimum. His first act in office will be the inaugural ball, which will last roughly two weeks of non-stop partying. It’ll be similar to Andrew Jackson’s party, except the White House will be more destroyed. While Obama did open up the entire National Mall for the party, Trump will use all of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina as part of his sprawling, decadent party. After Trump’s inaugural party is over, it’ll add roughly $2 billion but everyone will agree it was totally worth it.

                I don’t think Trump will win the nomination if he does run. Sadly, most people in America enjoy electing dishonest people who promise great things. Looking at Donald’s face and listening to his words, I see no evidence whatsoever of lying. Here’s a person who has no filter. Whatever he is thinking he will say. Debates would create new ways of putting people down. Putting people down is an art form for the Donald, he’s the Pollock of hurling insults onto blank faces. 

                Let’s hope he gets the nomination. After watching so many boring nominations, I want something entertaining. Ron Paul was a good start, but Mr. Trump might the logical endpoint for our hyperbolic political culture. MEME for President!

Futurama: Season 6 review (thus far) **Warning: Spoilers**

Disclaimer: I’m a big fan of Futurama so some (read: most) of this will come off as cheerleading.

Futurama hit the airwaves as Matt Groening grew frustrated with his first creation, The Simpsons. As he gradually saw the Simpsons change into sitcom fare, he realized that he needed an outlet for his more philosophical, goofy bent.

Nearly from the beginning, Fox decided “Hey, let’s treat Matt’s show like garbage and see what happens.” So the show got shifted around like those cards you see street hustlers play around with. Eventually this mixed with the stranger nature of the show itself (which employed a great deal of Sci-Fi) lead to its cancellation.

But like a vampire, it lived in the undead realm of Cartoon Network re-runs. These proved to be effective once the show rose from the dead, like Family Guy did once college students bought the DVDs and watched them over and over. Cult-like followings of the show also came from various Sci-Fi aficionados who enjoyed the extremely nerdy humor employed.

When I first heard about the re-birth of the show, I was worried. Remembering how the Family Guy franchise suffered hard, I thought the same might occur with Futurama. Jokes that I originally thought funny with Family Guy felt stale upon watching the new episodes, like the show had plagiarized itself, if such a thing is in fact possible.

The movies didn’t help. Futurama worked best when it had certain restraints, so a full length movie sort of diluted what might have been strong singular episodes. Fans expressed disappointment at most of these, so I won’t go into it here. I’ll just say that perhaps Matt was on a movie kick from “The Simpsons Movie” so he felt that doing the same with another cartoon might work in raising its profile.

Comedy Central proved a good ally. Most other channels would’ve been like “Nah dude, just play the episodes”.  I guess Comedy Central figured that the movies would be better than playing Saturday Night Live repeats from the early 90s once again. 

So that leaves us with the actual episodes. These have been pretty excellent, with a few actually reaching the standards set in the first few seasons when they were on FOX. So it is doubly nice to know that even years later they are able to keep up the quality and that the movies were weak due to their length, not due to a lack of creativity.

“Rebirth”, the first episode, sort of had an in-joke about the show’s cancellation while getting right back into the meat and potatoes of the series. Leela and Fry are involved, and there’s some strange goings-on regarding the entire crew. Dr. Farnsworth steals the show to some extent, thanks to an extra dose of insane that they give him.

Not all succeeded in this way though. In the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela” there isn’t much to laugh at, and Captain Zapp Brannigan can’t even make the episode work. Plus, the end feels very forced and confused, like the writers had spaced out and quickly dashed it off. 

On the other extreme, “Lethal Inspection” rocked. Everything I could’ve wanted from the series came together here. Plus, the focus on mortality worked well and gave the jokes a bit of heart, which was nice from some of the more gag nature of what had been going on (like with the Attack of the Killer App episode, which had that gross and unfunny singing Boil). Some of my favorite Futurama episodes from yore worked in this way so it was a real treat.

Ultimately, the new series does work in a good way. Perhaps there’s a little more of MOM than before, but that’s alright. When you get down to it, the writers genuinely care about the characters. That’s the difference between this and “Family Guy”. Family Guy relies on cut-away gags (parodied by South Park) and cruelty (see Brian getting shot in the kneecaps). There’s little attempt made in that show to allow the audience to sympathize with Peter, Stewie, etc. Futurama brings that to you. Leela, Hermes, Bender, and the rest of the gang are treated with the utmost care. And the reasons that some episodes fail is when the writers forget that and just write cheap jokes (like with Amy and Bender hooking up).

I’m glad it is back. Hopefully they’ll continue the rest of the season using only the best bits of time travel, friendship, and love.

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