SNL Recap
Despite a myriad of rumors, season 50 ended without any confirmations of cast departures. So in the season finale there was no Kate McKinnon boarding a spaceship moment, no Kristen Wiig She’s a Rainbow moment, no Will Ferrell cast testimonials moment. Instead, it was a standard episode with all of the usual ups & downs, hosted by old friend Scarlet Johansson.
I tend to be a softie when it comes to finales. I’ve read enough about the brutal work schedule in the typical week, so I am well aware of how much of a relief it must be when a season draws to a close. If this was say, episode 12, I might cringe at a monologue in which the entire cast sings a self-referential song set to the tune of Piano Man, but in this case I feel a sense of warmth while watching it. Take a bow, you earned it.
I had trouble deciding between the two best options for Top Sketch Of the Week, as they were both funny but not all-timers. It’s a coin flip but I will go with the morning news sketch. Anchors Ashley & Kenan make the whimsical puns we are familiar with from watching morning news shows. Usual evening news anchor ScarJo was filling in and was having trouble adding her own light touch to the proceedings. There were just enough odd details to make it work.
The runner up was the bar sketch. Marcello & Ego were a couple, and the establishing premise was that she is clingy & he is desperately searching for a way out of the relationship. ScarJo then comes in to tell them that they are sitting at her usual table & demands that her boyfriend (Bad Bunny) fight for her honor. Marcello & Bunny commiserate in Spanish over their shared dilemma, and with the two girlfriends only having limited understanding of Spanish the situation grew increasingly absurd.
This week featured another “meh” cold open in a season filled with them. It was another Trump piece, this one ending with JAJ going on to sit in the audience whilst riffing. I was also underwhelmed by the elevator sketch. In this one Mike Myers returned, as himself, and wound up stuck alone in an elevator with his old nemesis Kanye West, portrayed by Kenan. For all of his skill as a sketch comic, Kenan is not a particularly skilled impressionist, and he doesn’t even bother attempting much of a Ye impersonation. It’s all about the script, and there wasn’t enough there there to make it worth the Myers cameo.
The two pre-taped pieces this week varied in quality. I’m not sure if we needed another Bowen Is Secretly Straight video, but here it was, including blink and you missed it cameos from Gina Gershon - reprising her role as Bowen’s main squeeze - and Emily Ratajkowski. Better was the Please Don’t Destroy piece. It started out with ScarJo treating them to a first class airplane ride to help lift their spirits. What looked like what would be a Lonely Island Lite music video veered when they learned their destination was Newark. It seems that a flight from LaGuardia to Newark is pretty pointless even before getting to the safety issues of the moment. It included a role for Bad Bunny as an air traffic controller on his first day on the job attempting to help land the plane. Solid work.
An end of the season means we are going to get another joke swap on Update, but first it was time for the return of Miss Eggy. Ego is fantastic as always, I love the way that she is able to turn on a dime and so seamlessly switch from the Def Comedy Jam cadence to her normal Ego voice as she tells Jost to stop interrupting her right back to the Miss Eggy persona, but it was probably a bit too soon to bring this bit back so quickly. This was one of the weaker editions of the joke swap. It was a nice touch that ScarJo sat at the desk next to Che - remember that many of the jokes in the Christmas episode were made at her expense - but this time it suffered from Che laughing through the punchlines. You couldn’t always hear them clearly. As for the Jost half one of the jokes had him dangerously close to saying the n-word. Colin Jost & I happen to be alumni of the same high school, so I will proudly chalk it up to the advantages of a Jesuit education that he learned proper pronunciation, saving him from a career ending flub.
This season some of the stronger moments have tended to come in the post-Update portion of the show. That was decidedly not the case this week; the show’s ending felt like everyone collectively decided to just grab what had been in the discard pile to fill out the show. I try to refrain from singling out a specific terrible sketch, but I have to say that the intimacy coordinator sketch may have been the worst one of the season. A shoddy premise poorly done, we need not speak of it again.
And with that season 50 is done. Like any season it was filled with its share of highlights as well as lowlights. I’ll have a final wrapup of my thoughts on the season in Friday’s newsletter. Otherwise, I will return to recapping classic episodes next week. With no new episodes for several months I’ll be able to make some good progress.
The Final Four (Pro Version)
So much for the predictability of the NBA playoffs. Everyone naturally assumed that three teams - Boston, Cleveland, & Oklahoma City - were the clear class of the field. It was only a matter of determining which team would be OKC’s opponent in the Western Conference finals. About that… time to put away the chalk. Oklahoma City is still alive, but it took them 7 games to win the West semis. Boston & Cleveland have already gone home. The Eastern finals are a 3 v 4 matchup; the West is 1 v 6. What happened?
Injuries were a factor - Cleveland was short handed - but it doesn’t tell the full story. The Celtics were in deep trouble in their series against the Knicks even before Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles, having blown 20 point leads in Games 1 & 2. For ages the NBA playoffs have been a prolonged march towards an inevitable result; there would be a mild upset here or there but generally at least 3 of the last 4 teams left standing, if not all 4, were the higher seeds.
One season does not a trend make, but is it possible that the NBA playoffs are going to be more like the MLB playoffs? MLB essentially has 2 separate seasons - the 162 game marathon and the postseason sprint. One can argue that success over the 6 month grind is a more indicative indicator of which is truly the best team rather than awarding the Rob Manfred Piece Of Metal to the squad which best takes advantage of the small sample size of October. They don’t raise flags for the former, however.
Now we shall see which is the most enticing NBA Finals matchup. A Knicks/Wolves final which will forever settle the question as to who won the KAT/Randle trade? A Pacers/Wolves all “apolis” city battle? Would a Thunder victory finally exorcise the demons from the “What a Pro Wants” ad campaign? Whoever wins, there will be new blood in the championship pool. If you don’t count the Thunder’s Seattle roots, which the franchise does not seem to do, then the most recent championship among the 4 finalists is the Knicks victory from 1973.
Also, is this the end of the Superteam era? All 4 finalists have at least 1 major star, but otherwise they have been built with a mixture of secondary stars and role players. None of these teams are terribly top heavy. Moreover the provisions in the current CBA make it so that rosters with a lot of talent get very expensive very quickly. The Celtics were already staring at a humongous tax bill next year; with Tatum out almost all of next year they might have to think very seriously about tearing the team down. The Bucks are facing the same situation with Damian Lillard suffering an Achilles tear of his own; there is already chatter that they might have to consider the unthinkable and discuss trading Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Updates
We have to enjoy whatever good news we can find. After months of anxiety concerning the future of Sesame Street once WBD chose not to renew its streaming deal with Max, Sesame Workshop has signed a new deal with Netflix. In another welcome change, new episodes will debut on PBS the same day that they premiere on Netflix. Cookie Monster lives for another day.
The NFL unanimously voted to allow players to compete in flag football when the sport makes its Olympic debut in 2028. It is limited participation; each roster can only supply one player to each national team, so don’t expect an influx of NFL players to depart training camps so that they can be Olympians. If nothing else, this maneuver will add a lot of interest to the inaugural Olympic flag football tournament.
Norm!
What is the greatest sitcom in television history? Because it entails apples to orange comparisons it is an almost impossible question to answer, but if pressed I would say that Seinfeld & The Simpsons are 1-2 in either order. There are several great candidates for spot #3, chief among them Cheers. Norm Peterson was the heart & soul of the show, which is why I was sad to hear the news that George Wendt died yesterday.
A graduate of the famed Second City troupe, Wendt was often seen guest starring in sitcoms before receiving his big break when he was cast as Norm, the lovable barfly. You probably know by now that I hate formulaic comedy that is overly dependent on catchphrases, but there are times when that is done right. Such was the case with Norm. Almost every episode in Cheers’s 11 season run included the scene with a Norm entrance. Somehow the writers were able to consistently come up with great lines in those scenes year after year.
Sometimes it’s too easy to conflate an actor with their most famous character, but Wendt in real life always seemed to have the same friendly nature that Norm had. It’s noteworthy that he played such a key role in the Cheers series finale. In the last scene he and Sam were alone in the bar; as Norm left he reminded Sam that he was always going to return to his true love. It then dawned on Sam that Cheers was his true love. A nice way to end a magnificent series. In my ongoing recaps of classic SNL I am currently in the period in which Wendt would occasionally cameo as one of the Super Fans. He was a warm & comforting presence in those guest appearances. (His other SNL connection is that Jason Sudeikis was his nephew.) George Wendt was 77, which means he was only 34 when he began portraying Norm which doesn’t seem possible. Raise a glass in honor of a great comic actor.
50 Years Ago - The Spin-Offs
Television spin-offs tend to fall into 1 of 4 categories. There is the type that becomes such a big hit that it clearly separated itself from the show from which it originated. 1975 saw the premiere of a prime example of that archetype: The Jeffersons, which merits its own post. Another is one which still has enough of a connection to home base that it’s not a big challenge to bring back the spun-off character if the new series fails. Look no further than Joanie Loves Chachi. The roughest type is when the new show not only flops badly but the concept is such that it’s not possible to return to the old home; think of how deflating it must have felt when Norman Fell and Audra Lindley would see Three’s Company thrive for years and lament the royalty checks that would never come. Finally, there is the show created to milk a few more years out of a popular series that has just ended a long run - AfterMASH or Joey to use two examples. 1975 provided examples of categories #2 & 3. Neither were very successful, proving once again that there is a huge difference between being a supporting character and a show anchor.
Whitman Mayo’s Grady from Sanford & Son was practically the Platonic Ideal of a such a character. He could come in, steal a scene with a great joke or two, and get out of the way so that Redd Foxx could do the heavy lifting. NBC decided that Grady was worthy of his own show, with the premise that he had moved in with his daughter & her family in a different neighborhood from the one where Sanford & Son was set. I honestly do not recall if I ever watched an episode - it was cancelled after only 10 episodes - but I was surprised to see who else was in the cast. Joe Morton was Grady’s son-in-law! Haywood Nelson was his grandson! No harm, no foul for Whitman Mayo; Grady returned to Sanford & Son following the cancellation of his own show and even stuck around for the Sanford Arms spin-off that briefly aired following Demond Wilson’s departure from the flagship series.
Cloris Leachman’s Phyllis receiving her own series was just as much of a creative necessity as it was an attempt to draw more blood out of the Mary Tyler Moore Show stone. Once Rhoda left Minneapolis the series was much more of a workplace as surrogate family sitcom, so Phyllis was almost superfluous. In the new show, her husband had suddenly died so she moved back to her San Francisco hometown along with her teenaged daughter. The trouble with this show was that Phyllis was inherently acerbic and intentionally unlikable, great characteristics to have in a supporting character, not so much as a lead. The creative staff needed to water down the character, robbing her of her essence. Over the course of the two seasons that the show ran there was one big reboot along with multiple cast changes, but they were never really able to find the correct formula. Once again, no harm no foul. While it’s true that Phyllis was cancelled after only two seasons, that also coincided with Mary Tyler Moore’s decision to end her show after 7 years, so Leachman didn’t lose out on anything. Besides, she turned out OK. She continued to work steadily and rack up Emmy awards all the way into her nineties. The relative failure of her TV show was a mere blip in her career.
Closing Laughs
That’s enough for today. Have a great day everyone. See youze again on Friday.
