Down on the Upside -- Saturday Night You Bull Sessions

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Date Posted: 03:02:42 03/02/05 Wed
Author: CCS
Subject: Down on the Upside
In reply to: Patrick Lonergan 's message, "REVIEWS: Hilary Swank 02/19/05" on 17:51:35 02/19/05 Sat

Well, I'm reviewing ass-backwards this week. I'll start with WU and then work my way from the one fifty to the cold open.

Singapore - This might have been funnier if I understood why coitus is being interrupted on the most coital of days. Is it a religious group? A health group trying to slow the spread of AIDS? A political group just stirring things up? Set-ups for WU, imo, need to make some sort of sense. This is like a word away from doing so. Still fairly funny.

Rome - Would have been funnier without all the extra junk at the end.

Cloning - Didn't do much for me.

Dean - Very funny, but could use some rewording for brevity.

Sushi - Not really sure on this one, my instincts say it's a little too odd to be funny. Perhaps a little too strained in trying to make Godzilla a reveal because simply ending at God doesn't really make much sense either. I've never really considered the Japanese to be human sacrificers.

Flu Shots - I've heard this sort of stuff before.

Survivor - Bleh. Is there that much general Survivor hostility? So far as reality shows, I thought it was fairly respectable. Certainly moreso than the grandfather of the genre, The Real World.

Suntanning - Was ok. I think the news article naturally leads the joke towards the question of smaller male bathing suits.

Kenya - What's the set-up here: the surgery or the penis potion? I think this is a funny joke, but with such an odd story like this you need to focus your set-up, in this case by ignoring the kids and their surgery.

Tommy Peters - There were good and bad sections to this. Didn't like the dork face stuff so much, and the end stuff about the band carried on a little too long. Could have used perhaps a bit more about the draft to replace the dork face stuff. The initial outburst is good and I really enjoyed the irony inherent in his choice of gig.

NHL - These sorts of brush-offs should only be done about the truly over-exposed, and sparingly then. It feels like this is just pure overuse of the archetype and would lead to a quick death of a similar styled bits in the future.

Bush budget - This was alright.

Negroponte - Okay joke, not exactly too surprising.

Negroponte 2 - Dumb.

Idaho/Iowa - Not really much to say about this, not much of a laugher.

Bush Syria - Nothing really distinguishes it from being just another mediocre anti-Bush joke.

Bush Lebanon - Funny connection, but I think it needs to be played more subtly and less over the top. The primary reason for this is if he says "lesbian" anywhere in his comment, it shatters the logic that would lead him to think that's what Lebanese and Lebanon mean. The secondary reason is because I like more humor more subversive.

Rumsfeld - See Bush Syria.

Sen. Clinton - Didn't quite see a joke in this. Especially with friendly fire in quotes, indicating it wasn't actually friendly fire, meaning what? An Iraqi shot her?

Kid Rock (Amy) - In my world it does. DUD.

Kid Rock (Tina) - First quote was sorta funny, second wasn't.

Andy Richter - You really didn't sell me on the premise for this one. A whole commentary because we were "promised" a cameo and it didn't happen. I put that word in quotes for a reason, all of us who watch the show frequently know that stuff like that gets cut from the show all the time. So what? It wasn't special enough for us to comment about here I don't think - especially with any sort of reference to the quality of the sketch as none of us have seen it. Anyway, and so then Andy Richter comes on because he's also on FOX, somewhat mocking SNL's double FOX-star booking, which once again is such a venial detail that we have no reason to mock it. Once he was situated into his bit, the lines were very random in a good funny way. It's too bad you couldn't work some way out that gave him a real reason to be on screen and deliver them.

Blake - I feel like I didn't watch a movie that's being referenced.

Brosnan - Your standard Bond production joke.

Friends - The only "in a related story..." of the update. Still not funny but nice to see the easing up on it.

Vince - More of an excuse to say someone else's catchphrase than a good joke.

P. Diddy - I really liked this joke.

Captain Stabbin - I do chancy things I shouldn't every once in a while. In this case, it involved going to the site advertised in this bit. It exists. Does it ever. And with links to "Cumfiesta" as well. While this is certainly outside my taste-meter, I think it's more important that all future internet porn related commentaries be relayed by fictional characters. It's just a little too weird and suspect to be turning Seth Meyers into your favorite porn personality. There also weren't very much that was a joke here - it was kind of going for straight out shock. That it does. I don't consider that a success though.

All in all this was a medium-level update, imo. It was a tad Bush-heavy and many of the jokes felt cliche-ridden. Decent on the commentary front. Joke batting average (hits italicized) was 7/25 = .280 which isn't too bad. Enough to stay in the line up.

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Replies:

It's the long awaited review -- Prateek S., 01:08:34 03/06/05 Sun