SNL@40

Norm Macdonald is one of the brightest comedy geniuses out there today. I can prove it.

From a recent stream of tweets by him:

“Sometimes people ask me who the funnier character is, Connery or Burt. The funniest character in Celebrity Jeopardy, by far, is alex Trebek as played by Will. Without Will’s perfect take on Trebek,maddened by the outright hostility of Connery, the faraway uninterest of Burt, the sketch is nothing.”

He’s absolutely right.

Ferrell plays the perfect straight man, unusual for him. His Trebek is actually encouraging to his clueless guests, in fact, let’s allow Mcdonald to address that:

“Celebrity Jeopardy was about hope.

“It was about the hope of one man, Alex Trebek, the hope that never died. The audacious hope that never let the facts of the past interfere.

“It was a rhythm piece, as each disaster was signaled by the sound of a buzzer, and each new category signified more, new, hope.”

Suffice it to say, his Tweet stream is highly recommended reading. The Concourse has aggregated it here, though if you ask me, they buried the lede. The most interesting things he had to say were not about Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby.

It’s the overall insight into the process at a place like SNL and into the surprising cerebral aspect to the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch. (Although, I wish Norm hadn’t ended up kissing Eddie’s ass for kissing Bill Cosby’s ass, because Cosby, you know, (allegedly) “put the pills in the people,” but you can’t always get what you want.)

My own impressions of the SNL@40 special Sunday? If the good people at Saturday Night Live are finding out anything today from the feedback loop, they’re finding out how much people despise “The Californians.”

The sketch is a bizarre spoof on the daytime drama genre blending toward the telenovela, and its signature jokes are that A) People from California talk funny and B) People from California are obsessed with their local and regional traffic patterns.

I think this sketch has only ever been funny to Fred Armisen.

Watching the show as a whole, though, and not to mention the airing the previous Saturday of the pilot, made me realize how nostalgic I am regarding Saturday Night Live. It’s one of those things, I guess, that has been with me my entire life. I’ve watched it through bad seasons and good, and, despite what it’s popular to say, I think SNL keeps getting better.

Case in point: Watch this Saturday for one of the greatest rock bands of our time: The Alabama Shakes (new album debuts April 21, folks.)

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