Fri, March 14, 2008
Are you fucking kidding me?!—4:05 PM
I know I do this all the time – I guess I compose my best outraged rants on the way in from the mailbox – but this week's EW cover may take the ultimate prize. (I'd cancel my subscription if I didn't need the rants.)
Granted I haven't opened the magazine yet, but could they be more wrong? I'll grant you "most watched": The Daily Show is on cable, inaccessible to those viewers who have rabbit ears at home and no Internet at work, but "most influential"? "Funniest"?! I cry foul.
For a couple of years, I've spoken about SNL's creative nosedive from a relatively uninformed position, but in the last few weeks they've had guest hosts Tina Fey, Ellen Page, and Amy Adams. Onebee Kryptonite! Fey was hilarious, and in her Weekend Update visit she delivered the only funny or relevant political humor the show has aired since she left. Page and Adams were painfully underused, and the writing of their episodes was even worse than what I had been expecting while avoiding the show.
Like The Simpsons, SNL may still be popular with people who don't know better. Catchphrases are fun to repeat at work, there's no denying that. But to imply it is still funny, relevant, or politically influential is preposterous. Just because Hillary will book a guest appearance in a Hail Mary move – that shows how wrong she is, not how right SNL is.
Brandon, I may have to reconsider my assertion that there's not enough bad pop culture coverage to warrant regular FJM rants.
Bee Boy — Fri, 3/14/08 4:08pm
Yikes – in just a few weeks, I think I've used up my interrobang budget for the entire year.
Brandon — Sat, 3/15/08 12:19am
I agree that "funniest" doesn't belong there, but I gotta say, "most influential" feels pretty legit. For better or worse (actually, let's face it, for worse), they still have the bully pulpit. They did that "press fawning over Obama" sketch, and it was a topic of discussion at the next debate. Hillary appears on SNL, and it's news; she appears on The Daily Show and it's largely ignored. SNL still has the ability to impact the mainstream news cycle in a way that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report don't. In a just world, it'd be the other way around.
Brandon — Sat, 3/15/08 12:23am
I say all this having not read the actual cover story yet; apparently Minnesota is on the "Don't knock yourself out" list when it comes to timely EW delivery.
Bee Boy — Sat, 3/15/08 12:45am
But SNL freely admits that it waits until the culture has already registered a certain reaction to Obama (or Hillary), then bases a sketch around that. That doesn't sound like "influential," that sounds like "influenced." (Want to get really depressed? Reread this insightful profile on Americans' preference for very unsophisticated political comedy.)
A while back, my EW delivery went from Friday to Monday for a year or two; I was sure the postman was reading it over the weekend and then dropping it off. With the exception of the Oscar preview (this year's was delivered while I was in the air heading west), I'm pretty okay with "take your time" on the EW delivery these days. If I get it on Monday, that's just two fewer sleepless nights grinding the enamel off my teeth in aggravation over some minor editorial choice I disagree with.
Did anyone see the issue a few weeks back when they referred to Friday Night Lights as "on the bubble" for renewal, then claimed that "on the bubble" was an industry term? Fuck the heck? Besides the fact that it's much more common in bracketology than Hollywood, I'm pretty sure the term predates both by centuries.
The point is, give me any random issue of EW, and I'll come up with at least five wild-eyed rants about its contents. (Do not get me started on that goddamned "cultural dartboard" or whatever the fuck they call it, and how cute they think they are for putting one item a week on the next page!)
Bee Boy — Sat, 3/15/08 2:59am
Uh... so, yeah. It happened. Good news is, now even Minnesotans can read the actual cover story!
(And no, that timestamp isn't a lie. I clearly need help.)