And it worked, none better than in the opening cookout scene, with Burr and Kate McKinnon (much more later) finding an angle on pandemic lockdown madness that hit over and over. I mean, how did this pitch go? Because The Fly. Here's why. The whole monologue has some very, “I have a Black friend, so I can sh*t on women and gay people” energy. Kate McKinnnon as Dr. WeKnowDis offering a second opinion on Trump, on the other hand, is terrible right up until Kate McKinnon completely loses it, strategically breaks character, and turns the whole segment on its head. Club. I kid, I kid: But for real, the Trump jokes at the top of “Update” killed, especially Che. Still, Burr could not have been more at home as the one authentic testimonial-giver in the ad for Boston-based Samuel Adams’ new pumpkin-flavored brew. If anyone’s listened to any sports talk radio in the months when COVID had essentially shut down all sports, then Burr’s inept attempts to come to grips with something other than the daily scores will sound awfully familiar. Damnit. It is Saturday Night Live tradition that a few days before the show airs, the guest host and musical guest join one of the SNL cast members to film a slew of simple promos. Oh lord. Do you remember it? Maybe it’s that—apart from the cold open and Update—the show mostly ditched politics, a move that, considering SNL’s wobbly track record in that area of late, freed everyone up to just be funny performers. (Score: 6.5 out of 10), ← To Trump’s steroid-fueled brag about him catching the disease he’s done exactly nothing to prevent (calling it “a blessing from God”) Che quoted God as saying, “Hey, we tried guys.” And speaking of Trump’s gasoline-on-the-fire “leadership” on COVID, Che got his biggest groans (and my highest scores) for claiming that, while he’s not glad Trump died from the disease that’s killed over 210 thousand Americans on his watch, seeing Trump up and about is like “a car crash where the only survivor is the drunk driver.” One more. McKinnon is money as ever as the second ineffectual moderator of this ongoing shitshow, Susan Page. Stand-up comedian Bill Burr played an ignorant sports commentator unaware of a tragic police brutality incident on the latest episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Yeah, no. “I’m making fun of toxic masculinity!” Are you, Bill? It’s a Masshole thing—there’s something ingrained in that accent and attitude that prepares the hearer for inexplicably hostile confrontation. Bill Burr took the reins of “Saturday Night LIve,” kicking off the night with a very topical and edgy monologue that carried through the rest of the evening.. Comedian Bill Burr raised eyebrows with his "Saturday Night Live" monologue. The Pride month vs. Black History month? Carrey spent more time on his good-but-not-great Goldblum than he did on the Democratic candidate tonight, and it’s probably just as well. Pete Davidson looks good. As was the vibe in most of the material all night, there wasn’t the feeling that SNL was lowering its standards as much as leaning into what they know they can do well. For better or worse, it’s a very Bill Burr sketch (mostly for worse). (I did like Harris’, “I’m at TJ Maxx and a white woman asked if I worked here” face.) “It was the worst SNL monologue I’ve seen in years.” “@Nbcsnl, please don’t ever leave this person hosted again. Jost, lost in the face of the good doctor’s machinations, finally asks, “Kate, are you okay?,” to which she, responding as herself, laughs, “I’m obviously not.” That it’s a pre-planned on-air mini-freakout doesn’t make it any less of a liberatingly funny on-air freakout, and McKinnon connects with the audience so endearingly as to bring tears (of laughter and otherwise) to the eye. Hearing Burr spit out the term “woke culture” prepares you for some hacky bigotry, but instead pivots to a run of unlikely allyship—that turns its comic derision instead on privileged white women inserting themselves into the cause of racial justice. Burr left Boston, too, becoming a headlining stand-up comic before making forays into character roles in TV and movies. Mat, who probably has 5 or 6 year-old pumpkin-flavored beers sitting in his fridge that he’ll unload at someone else’s house at the first opportunity after the pandemic, will also like this one. Davidson, incredulous, on Rowling: “She creates a seven-book fantasy series about all types of mythical creatures living in harmony with wizards and elves. Comedian Bill Burr struck a nerve with a stunned cross-section of “Saturday Night Live” viewers from white “bitches” he claimed hijacked the woke moment to gay individuals to cancel culture to people risking their families’ lives because they’re too dumb to wear a face mask. The Moranis joke? “I have a lot of wigs and mustaches at my disposal.”. — Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) October 11, 2020 The monologue Somehow only now making his first hosting turn despite being one of the world's most popular comedians, Bill Burr … Riding on their transgressive momentum, Jost and Che just kept nailing jokes, which is a rhythm that, when they find it, is as confident and funny as any team of Update anchors ever. But her broadcaster-smooth extended aside about Trump’s health (“Oh, I wasn’t asking out of sympathy, Mike, I was asking with a simmering rage for his incompetence and a sadistic hope that he is not well”) comes from her and nothing in the debate itself. This weekend, comedian Bill Burr will host Saturday Night Live. I don’t think I’m going to count tonight’s late-sketch appearance as a full Biden outing for overall evaluation’s sake, what since Carrey spent a third of his time as the fly on Mike Pence’s head, and another third as Jeff Goldblum. Of course, he’s not saying that it’s great that some yahoo took a poke at the recently reemerged Moranis—he’s just laying it out there that his Masshole-adjacent native New Yorkers are getting back to their old, sucker-punching ways, pandemic or no. His Update appearances as himself have always been his best showcase, and this one was one of his best, Davidson wading into the transphobic ruins of what was J.K Rowlings’ reputation. Bennett does a lot of things well, but it’s in his undersold immediate recognition of his friends’ unheard-by-us disapproval of his spotlight-grabbing, shirtless anti-Trump rap that’s so funny and, well, so human. [VIDEO] 'Saturday Night Live' recap: Bill Burr hosts Season 46, Episode 2; Jack White performs — 'SNL' monologue, best and worst sketches. Kenan Thompson does stellar underplaying as ever as the host who sees just what a hornets’ nest everyone has just stepped into, but it’s Burr and McKinnon’s all-too-relatable, Frankenstein’s monster social ineptitude that makes the sketch run. Not all of the skit is successful, mind you. Che and Jost going for broke here, telling jokes like this is their last season. And while it’s a false comfort taken from unlikely white males actually being on the right side of something, it’s still all the funnier when Davidson’s stoner little brother comes right out and slams the formerly beloved children’s author for “go[ing] all Mel Gibson on us.” He also delves into some shady stereotyping in the Harry Potter-verse concerning the “little giant-nose Jew-goblins” she made the wizarding world’s banker class. Even though SNL’s pared-down pandemic audience (no jokes about the pay-for-laughs revelation last week) made reading reaction harder than usual, Burr wound up wrapping his set with a “Well, that’s my time” of the type usually reserved for a comic who just bombed. Trumpdates: We Will Never Live Down 'Basket Full of Deplorables' | Comedian Bill Burr hosted SNL on Saturday night, marking his first time on the long-running sketch series. (“Unpresidented” for “unprecedented,” “the noon normal” for “the new normal.”) Steeled for that to be the one and only joke, the laughs came, instead, from Burr and McKinnon’s layered, escalating, crazy-eyed fury at being corrected, their day-drinking quarantine brains emerging as so buffeted and bruised by their nine-months of packed-together isolation (and 20 COVID scares) that their neighbors’ innocuous corrections cause repeated eruptions of faux-sincere, glass-throwing repentance. Comedian Bill Burr caused quite the reaction with his opening Saturday Night Live monologue after addressing a variety of topics including cancel culture, white women and … Running down a list of harrowing things hovering over our heads (election, pandemic, whether the criminal reality show host elected on a wave of white grievance will take American democracy down with him), McKinnon—interrupted only by an expert accidental squeak of her elbow on the blood pressure bulb—tries to land on a positive note. Raw, live, and visceral just feels really right right now, you know? But it’s when her gabbling, softly accented doctor started manhandling Jost under the pretense of giving the co-anchor a blood pressure test with her squeak-toy sphygmomanometer that the real joke burst out from inside the dopey setup. Are you? https://nypost.com/2020/10/11/bill-burrs-snl-monologue-causes-twitter-firestorm “Trump surviving COVID is like the drunk driver being the only one that survived a car crash.” Exactly. Boston-area Massachusetts is a tough place to navigate. The joke, once again, is on privileged white folks (in this case, celebrity variety) trying—and failing, to often eye-rolling degree—to insert themselves into a struggle they’re far too removed from to truly understand. #SNL “ “I … Comedian Bill Burr has come under fire for his monologue on Saturday Night Live this week. The comic, who hosted the sketch comedy show for the first time, gave a … The worst: I really don’t have a clunker to pick out this week, but the low-key Mafia sketch perhaps could have used an ending, so I’ll go with that. Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. And there were a few funny throwaway lines, as when Pence refers to the “Macho Man Randy Savage amount of steroids” Trump is taking. And here’s to giving Alec Baldwin as much time off as he clearly wants until his comic nemesis hopefully evaporates like a bad fucking dream. Cold Open — The nice thing about a Vice Presidential debate that does not involve Donald Trump is that it’s actually not parody-proof, and Maya Rudolph and Beck Bennett do a terrific job of parodying Kamala and Mike Pence. Burr’s is a boldly unlikeable act, one that teases those prepared to burst out in whooping agreement-laughs before clanging both those he’s suckered in and some nearby unsuspecting targets over the head. Che, doing back-to-back animal stories after the political stretch, nailed’ em both with the flair of a guy who knows he’s killing. What can I say—Kenan makes a funny fly.) I love having Maya back in the house, I truly do. Comedy flash-bangs hurled into the clearly wary audience included wishing death on the families of those still not wearing a COVID mask, cheering on the recent New York sucker-punching of beloved, long-absent Rick Moranis, and a run about “cancel culture” that began with Burr announcing, “I don’t want to speak ill of my bitches” when talking about white women. types” and more about how (mostly white) people latch onto something they think absolves them while still engaging in the systemic behaviors actual activists are protesting. That he and adult son Mikey Day ultimately get into a fistfight over cereal choices and some clearly unresolved issues just cements the Massachusetts spirit of it all. The Blitz Bill Burr is Gil Scott alongside Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim, all as football broadcasters. (“I can say that, because I’m half-goblin,” Davidson reassured everyone.). This is probably the funniest SNL Monologue in a long time and it is no surprise that it offended the Twitter community. Maya was fine as usual, although, like the fly, Kamala Harris’ slideshow of already meme-happy facial expressions to Pence’s interruptions and obfuscations represented the easiest-to-pick fruit from the debate. On one hand, the gig seems like the sort of thing Burr would make fun of. The mask jokes? The company’s latest actual advertising campaign attempts to paint this pricey, suitably complex beer’s charms as the go-to choice of your workaday Masshole, but Burr’s working class connoisseur does an immediate, to-camera spit take at this bandwagon-jumping seasonal varietal (a real product, so watch your labels this Halloween), coughing out the eventual concession that it’s something you might catch a buzz off of if you’re desperate and somebody left it at your house. (Some online have praised this as McKinnon breaking character but, bless your hearts.) “Bill Burr can fuck himself. Host Bill Burr does stand-up about the … Of the three new kids, Andrew Dismukes was likewise invisible, I saw Lauren Holt with a line in the Sam Adams commercial, and Punkie Johnson won the day with a not-insignificant role in the mafia sketch. Danny Peary's Cult Movies books are mostly to blame. Wearing a grey face covering, the 52-year-old comedian hosted the second episode of … Even here, though, Burr anchors the proceedings with a nimble subversion of expectations. Burr has a way of making you think he’s going to say something truly awful, then swerving to say a completely different awful thing, without ever letting the first awful thing dissipate completely. For better or worse, it’s a very Bill Burr sketch (mostly for worse). (And here comes the autobiographical element once more—ride it straight to hell, Perkins.) Because that would be tasteless. (Score: Ummm, yeah, no, not for me out of 10), Social Distance Get Together — I thought the skit was going one place, and it went a completely different, not-all-together great place, where a married couple blows a gasket every time they are corrected for using the wrong word (e.g., “unpresidented” instead of “unprecedented.”) I thought they were gonna zig, and instead they crashed and burned. By Abigail Covington Everyone’s into their characters as completely as their characters are into their own assumed self-righteousness, with Kyle Mooney correcting the don’s pronouns about a newly-out LGBTQI thug (“Hey, they’re a friggin’ murderer”), and Beck Bennett’s Nicky (formerly Nicky The Nose) choking up while explaining that nicknames based on physical appearance are just hurtful. !” contempt on a slightly different target that you anticipated. All of our TV reviews in one convenient place. If there’s one way to sum up the last episode of Saturday Night Live, it might be to quote the immortal words of the Limp Bizkit song “Break Stuff.” In not one, but two sketches, guest-host Bill Burr was breaking glasses. Answer me! Her name/catchphrase bit was going over about as well as could be expected—there were generous laughs, because it’s Kate. It’s not really about race, see? (Score: 3 out 10), The Blitz — Bill Burr plays an NFL analyst on an NFL show who is taunting his co-anchor, only to realize that his co-anchor is not interested in talking about the football because another Black man has been killed by a police officer. With nobody leaving the show after last year and Lorne packing in the new faces, there just isn’t enough room on this lifeboat. So that’s the joke. Burr’s godfather, just released after 20 years in prison, finds his welcome home dinner repeatedly interrupted by his capos correcting his outdated (as in 2000s) Sopranos-style offhand bigotry. Or about how Black people are always complaining about cops killing them. !” Watch here. By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 11, 2020 |. With just the right combination of subject selectivity and “fuck it” attack posture, Jost and Che delivered a much better Update this week. Funny, right? Bill Burr is known for pushing the envelope in his stand-up act, leaving no topic untouched onstage. ), The rest: It’s odd looking back. Wenowdis” (it’s Greek) smacked of a true loser of a one-joke premise, even if Kate looks striking in a wiry wig and late-period Groucho mustache. (Score: 8 out of 10), Woke Crime Family — A Godfather-like figure goes away for 20 years and returns to find that the rest of his mafia family is woke. If there’s a beneficent Masshole, Bill Burr is, begrudgingly and rewardingly, it. Again—smaller than usual audience, but I think any time the Update crowd goes still (instead of staying still), it’s at least going to be interesting. Cancel culture: F**k you. Jost and Che did this well. →. But it was Kate’s Update. And Jim Carrey’s Biden—exists. Privacy Policy / Advertise Bill Burr received mixed reviews on social media for his controversial opening monologue during the most recent episode of “Saturday Night Live.” … While no episode towered over them all (with one exception—Kate, it’s coming), I caught myself smiling through most of the episode tonight. That Punkie Johnson’s Black woman has infiltrated the murderous gang for her own benefit by playing on its own, hypocritical systemic blind spots is a clever twist, especially as she just appears in a vacated seat midway through the sketch. Maybe it was the lack of talk show sketches, game shows, or recurring bits in favor of some original, moderately ambitious conceptual stuff. One example of glancing off of current events without diving in over your head was the TikTok filmed piece, with Beck Bennett’s marginal actor (he’s on something called The Buddies on Nintendo TV) going for some of that viral “Imagine” internet heat. This is exactly why. The addition of Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden is completely unnecessary and idiotic. Okay, somebody tell me that Melissa Villaseñor is okay. Plodding and obvious, for 12 minutes. (Hey, the country is potentially crumbling under the sag of white supremacist, anti-democratic thuggery and unimaginable stupidity regarding an unprecedented health disaster, but if SNL sucks at tackling politics head-on—and it has for most of the Trump era—then just go for the laughs.). Burr is such a strong personality (both in his stand-up and his popular, homemade podcast) that it’s a little odd to hear him in tonight’s monologue explaining that hosting Saturday Night Live is “a lifelong dream.” Like everything else Burr shows up in, tonight’s show tingled with an undercurrent of comic tension, in this case from the incongruity that Burr was hosting SNL at all. It’s not that Bill Burr is too big for Saturday Night Live—it’s more that the comic ground he’s staked out for himself feels like it’s off the Saturday Night Live map. And it’s only just begun. SNL: Why Bill Burr’s Shocking “White Women” Joke Worked Burr presided over a great episode of Saturday Night Live , featuring Maya Rudolph’s martini … If you elect Joe Biden, satire will live again! Again, I don’t have all the faith in the world for this show to do a hard-hitting comic dissection of systemic racism in law enforcement. (Think of her as the mafia’s Candace Owens.) Sure, he has the Pete Davidson connection, but, as his monologue showed in its typically uncompromising willingness to piss people off, Bill Burr on Saturday Night Live is a constitutional mismatch. Viewers may know Burr for playing Patrick Kuby in Breaking Bad, although he has also fronted comedy podcast The Monday Morning Podcast since 2007. "SNL' Host Bill Burr Took Aim at White Women, Cancel Culture, and Gay Pride in a Controversial Monologue The eyebrow-raising set garnered lots of reactions across social media. Burr put on a hairpiece for a sketch about police brutality and poorly-timed pranks. It’s not enough to save it. (Score: 5 out 10), Weekend Update — How do you make Colin Jost and Michael Che funny? A recap of Saturday Night Live’s October 10, 2020 episode, featuring Bill Burr and musical guest Jack White, replacing Morgan Wallen. “The one thing that we do know is,” she begins forcefully before holding for an exquisitely prolonged pause, “that—no we don’t know dis.” All-star stuff, born of all-star performer confidence. Apart from the showboating turns in the obligatory cold open (more later), the best sketches tonight were more about characterization than premise. Yeah, there are plenty of topics in this utterly preposterous election cycle that SNL could be digging into–but, honestly, do we really want that from this show as presently constituted? This is parody! Watch here. F*ck off, Burr. Don’t bring that sh*t to my house, bro. Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. And, the best part about it, is that Bill Burr breaking stuff on SNL was cathartic as hell.. Bill Burr didn't hold back in his controversial opening "Saturday Night Live" monologue.. Are people working from home? For featured players, it’s a matter of biding your time and counting your screen appearances, but I can’t imagine anybody’s happy come the final sketch lineup at this point. As it turns out, that’s just what SNL needed. Host Bill Burr does stand-up about the COVID-19 pandemic, cancel culture and the "woke" white women. )—Bennett’s take is much more targeted, and inhabited. Burr is such a strong personality (both in his stand-up and his popular, homemade podcast) that it’s a little odd to hear him in tonight’s monologue explaining that hosting Saturday Night Live is “a lifelong dream.” Like everything else Burr shows up in, tonight’s show tingled with an undercurrent of comic tension, in this case from the incongruity that Burr was hosting SNL at all. The Blitz — Bill Burr plays an NFL analyst on an NFL show who is taunting his co-anchor, only to realize that his co-anchor is not interested in talking about the football because another Black man has been killed by a police officer. If you don’t? Jost got his gasps, appropriately enough, by describing the learned-absolutely-nothing spectacle of a COVID-stricken Trump speaking to a live, equally unmasked White House crowd being like watching someone smoking through a hole in their neck. The whole bit on white women? But apart from all that, it’s the character turns that are so watchable here. I would have flipped the mafia sketch and the beer commercial, but I’m not Lorne. Send up a flare. But, in each case, Burr’s swerve comes in turning that “You think you’re better than me? “So, the idea is this: A white guy is giving a Black guy shit because he lost a bet, and the Black guy is upset because cops keeping murdering Black people, but the white guy pretends to feel bad, but he’s mostly just excited that the Bears won and he’s gonna rub his Black colleague’s face in it! (Daru Jones, with his forward-leaning stand-up drum kit, is a spectacular, on-point sideman.) (Score: 7 out of 10 for the VP debate; 1 out of 10 for the pointless, unfunny Jim Carrey as Jeff Goldblum as The Fly asides). Burr’s persona is all over this sketch, with his don espousing a retrograde sensibility that’s as objectionable as it’s rightly confused about the moral gymnastics his associates are engaged in as they attempt to conform to the new normal. Sort of thing Burr would make fun of: but for real, the Trump jokes at the top “! 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