SNL’s Baldwin Choice

[PGage]

I noticed this morning that there had been a new SNL last weekend, which I hadn’t seen, so decided to watch it. Nothing really remarkable, except further confirmation of my age. It’s not just that I don’t get most of the cultural references, but I don’t even get the comedy vocabulary and grammar and logic. The audience is laughing, but I can’t even decode what part of what we just saw it was supposed to be the joke. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the show perhaps it really was quite funny. I’m just so old that I’m actually an alien in the world that SNL targets. Of course Lorne Michaels is significantly older than me, so I guess kudos to him for being able to keep working in that universe. 

What was remarkable was at the very end of a, from what I could tell, pedestrian and indecipherable Sketch, Alec Baldwin appears for an extremely brief cameo.

I have not been militant in my pre-judgment of Baldwin’s criminal liability; perhaps he is guilty of manslaughter of some kind, though my inclination is to suspect the prosecutors office of being out to nail a celebrity hide to their wall. However, at best he was involved in some major bad judgment, both as producer and actor that resulted in the death of one and serious injury to another. Short of conviction of a serious crime I don’t know that he needs to be permanently banned from television, but, really? To force him into a minor and totally irrelevant sketch while he’s waiting to hear if he is going to be tried for manslaughter just seems like bad taste. I can see that his friends at SNL  Ishtar want to show their support for him, but maybe a Twitter post would’ve sufficed. 

It did seem like at least one of the members of the singing group that night gave him the cold shoulder when he tried to come over and gladhand her after the good nights, not sure if any of the regular cast had reservations.

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[Kevin M.]

Was Baldwin holding a gun in the sketch? 

Because that would’ve been f-ing funny!

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[Dave Sikula]

As an artistic choice, it was honestly no worse than the rest of the evening. I, too, am at the age where any number of the references might as well be in Icelandic for all the sense they make to me. I mean, I had no idea if the guy in the waking dream was an actual person or not (apparently, he is).

At this point, I don't think even a court case will be able to sort out what actually happened on the Rust set. Having Baldwin (who hasn't been convicted of anything) on the show was probably like having OJ on in the Ohlmeyer days. But let's remember that Lorne was also the guy who thought having TFG on was a good idea. 

Michaels's artistic sensibilities have been polluting American culture for almost fifty years now, and we'll all be much better off when he's gone.

--Dave Sikula

[PGage]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 at 1:32 AM 'Dave Sikula' wrote…

“I, too, am at the age where any number of the references might as well be in Icelandic for all the sense they make to me. I mean, I had no idea if the guy in the waking dream was an actual person or not (apparently, he is).”

PGage writes…

I am honestly shocked to learn that the dream guy is real. I don’t know that I cared enough to Google it, but it never occurred to me to check. I mean, I didn’t check if Toonces was real.

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