SNL Recap
Dang it, I had such high hopes for this episode. It wasn’t Walton Goggins’ fault; he brought his characteristic energy to the evening. He ramped things up all the way to 11, and many of the sketches were clearly written with him in mind. It’s just that too much of the material was lacking - either premises would peter out quickly, or the pieces didn’t expand much past one recurring joke. And as much as I love Arcade Fire, I can’t help but feel that Win Butler’s presence cast a pall over the show as well.
It was Mothers Day eve, so the cold open began with the traditional paean to the mothers of assorted cast members - or in this case actresses pretending to be their mothers. It turned into the latest rendition of JAJ’s Trump intrusion/takeover of the set. At least this time he did not force the other actors to remain in freeze frame; they all walked off the stage upon his entrance. Before too long a special guest joined in. When Jeanine Pirro was announced as the new DC US Attorney, my first thought was of course, why not? My second thought was that I wondered if Cecily Strong is still pregnant. A quick Google search told me that she had her baby last month, so she returned to present her depiction of a wine swilling Pirro, soon to be joined by Jost as Pete Hegseth. This is the second episode in a row in which Jost performed in a sketch; more evidence that he & Che are about to depart? This week included a marathon length Update, so perhaps Lorne is giving them a long exit ramp.
There was nothing truly outstanding this week, but if I have to name a Best Sketch Of the Week I will go with the Mother’s Day brunch sketch. Mikey and Andrew take their mothers Sarah and Heidi out for a meal, and Goggins as their waiter quickly goes from attempting to charm the moms to full out acting creepily and inappropriately seductive towards the two.
That wasn’t the only restaurant sketch; later on Goggins and Ashley took their two young children to a horror themed restaurant in a theme park. The restaurant had only recently opened, so the staff had not fully established the atmosphere yet, instead constantly repeating the refrain that it might be their last meal ever followed by a comically evil laugh. It was funny, but had trouble breaking out of the constraints of the central joke.
Who can complain about a sketch populated with cute dogs? Not this guy. One piece had the premise that guide dogs were being trained to sit through the performance of a play with their humans. The play in question turned out to be a cheesy melodrama; cut to the dogs assisted by puppetry as they roll their eyes in exasperation or thumb through the Playbill to help pass the time.
There was one additional cameo in a filmed piece. Here Jane breaks out of the confines of the Update desk and her Casio keyboard to sing about a baby shoe she had found in the zoo. While attempting to find the child it turns out that the shoe actually belongs to a tiny-footed Goggins. It turns out that he’s not the only potential Cinderella - Sam Rockwell shows up as himself with similar tiny feet. And this is Sam Rockwell, so of course he dances on those mini feet.
Update ran almost 20 minutes long and included 3 desk pieces. Marcello returned as The Movie Guy. I’m not sold on this character yet, but it included the obligatory Jost mockery, specifically mockery on how he married out of his league. Mikey was a Guy Who Just Walked Into a Spider Web; supposedly to talk about the effects of the tariffs but instead going into panic over the fear that a spider was crawling on his back. The best piece was Heidi as a woman who gets all of her information about New York from Facebook posts. Another great example of how adeptly Heidi uses specificity to make her characters shine.
That, along with her work elsewhere, makes Heidi an easy choice for Employee Of the Week. The end of a season always comes with thoughts about whether any of the show’s veterans are ready to walk away. I have already said that I believe Heidi is likely to step aside; if that is indeed the case, this is a good episode to leave on. On the other side of the pendulum, it was a brutal week for some who might be on the bubble. Emil was only seen in the background of the dog sketch. (I think he’s shown enough this year to be safe, but Chloe Troast’s fate taught us that nothing is certain.) At least he was seen; neither Devon nor Chloe appeared at all. I have little doubt that Chloe will be back next year, but Devon continues to look shaky.
Next week Season 50 will draw to a close with Scarlet Johansson (or Carly So Handsome as mispronounced by The Movie Guy) hosting for the 7th time, breaking a tie with Drew Barrymore and Tina Fey as the woman who has hosted the most times. Bad Bunny will be the musical guest.
Stevie At 75
Yesterday Stevie Wonder turned 75 years old. It doesn’t seem plausible that he is 75, but then I remind myself that he has been famous for my entire life and it seems equally implausible that he is only 75. His milestone reminds me of something that isn’t exactly a pet peeve of mine, more of a mild annoyance.
We have all heard the phrase Great American Songbook, generally used to reference the Tin Pan Alley songwriters as well as the songs written for classic musicals. (There is significant overlap between the two.) That’s all well and good, but it feels like a remnant of old school disparagement of rock & roll, or any music targeted to a younger audience. It belittles rock; the GAS canon is art whereas rock & roll is frivolous and merely a passing fad.
Can you honestly say that the songs of Stevie Wonder or Bob Dylan or Paul Simon or Carole King or any number of great songwriters will not last as long as those of Irving Berlin? Stevie and his peers have written as many songs worthy of inclusion in that proverbial songbook as the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein had. I realize that the Great American Songbook designation is meant to indicate a specific era, which is why this isn’t a hill that I choose to die on. Maybe the issue is that there needs to be a similar catchall term for the work of the Stevie Wonder generation of songwriters that bestows the same level of respect that the Great American Songbook label does.
Pete & Shoeless Joe
I have trouble getting too outraged over MLB’s reinstatement of Pete Rose along with all other deceased individuals who had been on the permanently ineligible list. It’s not as if a franchise will reanimate his corpse and offer him a front office position. The only concrete ramification would be the Hall of Fame question, and that won’t even come up for years. The decision mostly demonstrates that Rob Manfred is the emptiest of empty suits. Knowing how feckless Manfred is, it was only a matter of time that he would reverse the ban once Trump started to bloviate on the matter. Frankly I’m surprised that it took Manfred as long as it did to bend the knee. Yes, the banishments of Rose and the rest have technically been permanent, not lifetime, so death should not have affected anyone’s status, but I can reluctantly agree with Manfred’s stated reasoning. It’s not as if he can do any further damage to the game, so what’s the sense of perpetuating the ban?
Even the Hall of Fame question isn’t an urgent one. Rose, as well as Shoeless Joe Jackson, will not be up for consideration until the next time the Classic Baseball Era Committee meets, which will be following the 2027 season. That means there will be plenty of time to formulate the pro or con arguments regarding Rose’s worthiness. There’s no guarantee that the committee would elect him either. The specific voters on these panels changes from year to year, but in a previous eras committee vote Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were firmly rejected. Is there any reason to believe that a different set of voters would treat Rose differently? 12 out of 16 voters would have to put his sins aside and vote for Rose. I’m not sure that could happen even if the Hall intentionally stacks that year’s committee with pro-Rose voters. And in the unlikely event that Pete Rose does in fact get elected to the Hall, expect the clamor for Bonds & Clemens to get in as well to increase. (For the record, I am pro-Bonds & Clemens. I’m less comfortable with the idea of Rose; he broke Cardinal Rule #1.)
As to whether it seems unnecessary cruel to wait until Pete Rose died to reinstate him, have you read anything about his life? F that guy. Anyhoo, Manfred is gonna Manfred. Surely Trump will make no further demands of MLB.
The DC Comics IP - Green Lantern/Green Arrow
There is a little more nuance to it, but at heart the difference between DC & Marvel during the Silver Age is that Marvel comics were set in real locations with recognizable local landmarks and the characters were given relatable human flaws, whereas DC stories were set in fictionalized cities and the heroes were square jawed paragons of virtue with little personality differences to be seen. The short-lived Green Lantern/Green Arrow series which ran from 1970-1972 was not a commercial success, but it was an important series in the big picture in that it allowed DC to dip its toes into telling stories that were either relevant, allegorical, or both. And most importantly, it took 2 of their core characters and at the very least made them somewhat two-dimensional.
The series was written and drawn by the team of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams around the same time that they revitalized the Batman line of books. Green Lantern had been one of DC’s longest lasting legacy characters. The Silver Age reboot of the character introduced hot shot test pilot Hal Jordan as the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic group of what can essentially be thought of as outer space cops. As to what I said earlier about the stereotypical DC hero - Green Lantern might have been the squarest of them all; as the societal changes of the 1960’s took place, it is hard to think of a hero who could be more easily identified as representative of The Establishment.
Which is not to say that he wasn’t a great character. As a Green Lantern he had possession of a power ring, which allowed him to create virtually any weapon as long as he had the will power to do so. The corps worked under the watch of the Guardians of the Universe, a race of immortal beings whose home planet was situated in the literal center of the universe and who possessed the central battery, the power source for the rings that each corps member wielded. Over the years there have been a staggering amount of side characters, and writers took advantage of the freedom to go nuts when conceiving the assorted members of the corps. Not only were there aliens of all shapes and sizes, there was 1 GL who was a giant fungus, another who was an actual sentient planet, and so on. The Green Lantern mythology was so vast that it was the likely reason why the Ryan Reynolds starring Green Lantern movie was such a massive flop. The writers tried to include too much of the back story into 1 movie; the film was overstuffed and exhausting. It was the perfect example of a missed opportunity.
Green Arrow had his own long and winding path to prominence. He was initially a combo of Robin Hood and Batman, especially the latter. Like Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen was millionaire playboy by day, masked crime fighter by night, all the way down to having a teenage ward who also served as his costumed sidekick. Even though he was a longtime member of the Justice League he was as bland and nonessential of a character as they come, that is until a series of changes were made to his character.
Not only did he grow his distinctive Van Dyke beard - good luck trying to maintain a secret identity with that look - but he lost his fortune to embezzlers. Now he really steered into his Robin Hood roots; he had become the champion of the downtrodden and a vocal liberal. His type of liberalism was the exhausting self-righteous type; think of a male version of Cecily Strong’s Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Gotten Into a Conversation With character.
This also meant that DC had a perfect hook - two “green” characters with differing ideologies. Green Lantern’s ongoing series was rebranded as Green Lantern/Green Arrow and the monthly title was now a team-up book. In the first issue Lantern came across what he assumed was a gang of street punks attacking an innocent man. It turned out that it was a group of tenants going after a slumlord who had criminally neglected the building he owned. Arrow called him out on that assumption and the scene ended with one of the most famous pages in DC history as an elderly man shamed Lantern for his inability to see the big picture.
The following issues involved the 2 heroes, joined by one of the Guardians and on occasion Black Canary, as they went on a journey to “discover” America. At times they dealt with the societal issues of the time, at others the stories were science fiction allegories, and in the most notable arc in the series a story about teenage drug use led to the revelation that Arrow’s sidekick Speedy was an addict himself.
The book was an artistic success, if a bit dated, but not a big seller, so it was eventually canceled. Both characters remained among the central figures in the DC universe, and the title would be revived a few years later, albeit as a more standard superhero team-up. The two characters had divergent histories when it came to live action adaptations.
To do Green Lantern justice entails a massive special effects budget, and since the Ryan Reynolds movie failed there is little appetite to try it again. There were hints that Green Lantern was about to be introduced into the CW Network’s Arrowverse series of shows, but that never happened. Green Arrow has done a lot better in a visual medium. A pre-This Is Us Justin Hartley portrayed the character for a few seasons on Smallville, and of course the show Arrow was the first of many DC related shows that aired on the CW, and he was practically the central character in that entire intertwined group of shows; it’s not for nothing that it was dubbed the Arrowverse.
This specific set of GL/GA stories does not lend itself well to a live action adaptation. For one thing much of it was so of its time that it would have little relevance to a 2025 audience. But… Max is currently filming a series titled Lanterns. Starring Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart (the backup GL and also the first African-American DC hero) the show’s tagline describes it as a True Detective inspired story in which the 2 are investigating a murder. The promo photo certainly has the feel of the 1970’s comic series; two superheroes sans costume traveling across America. I have long since learned not to get my hopes up concerning DC inspired adaptations; if this show can hold up the legacy of the classic series that had inspired it I will chalk it up as a big win.
Closing Laughs
And so we reach the finish line once again. Thanks for tuning in, have a great day, and be sure to come on back on Friday.
