Meh. Tina Fey is awesome. But Latifah didn't even try to get Gwen Ifill. Maybe I'm asking too much. Dude doing Biden was OK. I think they miss Amy Poehler.
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I was waiting for somebody in the audience to yell "Break a leg, Gwen!"
Meh. Tina Fey is awesome. - from Oct 5, '08. What can the works of Malcolm X teach us about Tina Fey? "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."
-- Malcolm X
Is Tina Fey one of the most powerful people in America?
"Because they control the minds of the masses...
Is Tina Fey one of the most powerful people in America?" - Dave Brown (and X)
That Palin is an unserious candidate is a powerful idea, so whoever does a good job dancing to that tune might seem powerful. But the fact is, if Fey wanted to portray Palin as wise or articulate, it just wouldn't work.
So that's not mind control, and it's not real power.
Is Palin a smart, thoughtful woman, unfairly maligned by the "MSM"? Or is she a political token way out of her depth? There is a fact of the matter, and most people had made up their minds long before Tina Fey came along.
The Biden impersonation fell flat, because despite what many MSM pundits said, Biden was SOLID in the debate, even his "friendship" with John McCain was not as heavily parodiable(?). Biden was the better of the two hands down. Of the two, Palin came off as the lesser of the two...PERIOD. The best line of the skit for me was exactly what came out of the debate, when the Biden guy said "Joe Biden is BETTER. THAN. THAT". Most Americans agreed.
Tina Fey was great as always. Latifah was as beautiful as always. To my eyes, she made Ifill better than she was.
Basically, they had to go more out of their way to parody Biden.
I did like them "calling" Palin out for the "Can I call you Joe" bit. It's true that throughout the debate she only called him Joe once I think for that lame as "Say it isn't so Joe" bit.
I actually thought Palin's performance in the actual debate was more of a caricature than the SNL performance.
How does the saying go, life inimates art, or does art imitate life? In this case, and I wish it were not true, it's the latter.
ta-nehisi.....Palin is being branded as a doofus on SNL.
SNL just announced a new primetime venue.
thursday nights.
More people will see the spoofs.
I can see the Carl Cameron interview coming.
at what point should Team McCain quit putting poor Palin out there like a staked goat in failed attempt to boost their rating?
What about her political future?
A month of primetime SNL skits and i think she will be a national punchline for years.
Maybe forever.
ibert is right.
but if SNL can spoof the debate, where many thought Palin did well, they can mock anything.
a rally.
a stumpspeech.
if i were Palin, i would quit giving SNL material, go dark, and start on rebranding myself.
i doubt she can do that.
I'm gonna have to disagree. Fey was brilliant as usual. I thought Latifa did a good job with Ifill, and Biden, although not a great parody on style/appearance, was amazing as a parody on content. Scranton as a place filled with "sad, desperate people with no ambitions"? Genius.
My primary disagreement with this post is that I believe that the Biden character, while not performed tremendously well, was incredibly well written. In a biased way, mind you, but still.
I agree. Biden was very well written. It was like listening to an internal monologue of what must have been going through Joe's mind that night.
And of course, Tina Fey has her character so down that it's tough to tell who's doing a better characterization at this point: Fey doing Palin, or Palin doing Ms. Hockey Mom. Fey's just a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude.
This was orders of magnitude better than their Obama/McCain debate spoof.
Similar appearances aside, I think the reason Tina Fey does so well with her Palin impersonation is that she's pouring a lot of anger into these bits. I mean, she's a hardworking, smart, and legitimately funny woman. She's good looking, and that never hurts, but she got to where she is by dint of hard work and talent. I think she sees Palin as a two-dimensional hack who tries to charm and b.s. her way to the top. For a woman who feels like she's had to work for everything that's she got, it must be maddening to see some other woman cheat by playing 'cutesy' instead of working for it. Best watch out Sarah, you're not the only "Mean Girl" around.
i actually thought that the queen did a pretty good job, subtley conveying utter shock at the sheer stupidity of fey/palin's responses. while she didn't try to "get" ifill, i thought she played her role in the skit very well.
the entire series of parodies has been hilarious. i record the shows each week now, and cannot wait to see what fey has done with palin.
i think that snl and fey are both helping to sink mccain.
their campaign has sorely underestimated how destructive those parodies become, especially when there is not much else out there in the public record to contradict the parody.
contrary to what was stated by another poster, the way to deal with these parodies is by putting a candidate out there more, so the parody becomes just that: a parody. and not, as so many suspect, a very accurate representation of the person being skewered.
the problem is, as others have noted, that the real palin may not be capable of providing a real-life performance that is that much different from fey's comedic take.
if obama wins, he should send tina fey and snl flowers and a thank you card.
That was the best Palin/Fey skit yet. She absolutely killed her. That was a thing of beauty. After Mccain loses, I will be sad to see Fey disappear again. I am curious who will play Michelle Obama.
T-N: We've become too spoiled by Darrell Hammond's uncanny ability to morph into John McCain, or Al Gore, or Chris Matthews. Queen Latifah didn't have to do anything to "get" Gwen Ifill besides put on that wig and suit and smile pleasantly. Other than that Gwen isn't really a good subject for parody.
Remember, Chevy Chase "was" Gerald Ford without making the least effort to look or sound like him. (What am I saying? Of course you don't "remember." It was over 30 years ago. Well, take my word for it.)
Yeah, I think that their Biden was on point. The content was good even if the impression was lacking. And yeah, Tina killed it. But going forward, I really want to know when they're going to get someone who can do a decent Obama impression. It's funny to me because it's just not a hard one to do. But their guy just can't do it for whatever reason.
As a biased viewer, I liked their impression of Joe Biden because while parodying him, they also showed he was a thoroughly likeable and decent salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, which he is.
I didn't think there was much Queen Latifah could have done as Ifil didn't play a big factor in the debate for me.
This was the best debate parody so far. Very enjoyable. The McCain and especially Obama parodies make me cringe. I think they're so off.
konny wrote:
> But the fact is, if Fey wanted to portray
> Palin as wise or articulate, it just wouldn't
> work.
Actually, I bet it would, at least once Governor Palin's image as a vacuous, talking-point-spewing, cocktail-waitress-flirty politician sinks in a little more. Remember that 20-odd years ago, one of SNL's greatest political skits ever was a spoof where Ronald Reagan intentionally played stupid for the media, but in fact was completely in charge, running intellectual circles around his senior aides. Very funny stuff.
One of Tina Fey's great gifts is that, beyond being a talented comedic actor, she's a brilliant writer as well. She was head writer at SNL for years, and probably understands the unique requirements of the format and the audience. I happen to think that she's actually a better writer than an actor in most cases -- she was most effective on the show as host of the Weekend Update segment, which is essentially delivering snarky one-liners rather than playing a role -- but there's no question, either, that Tina Fey was born to play Sarah Palin.
Fey and Latifah were great, and the dude who played Biden did a great job IMO, especially with that big smile. Very funny.
It is sort of disgusting that they have to have a white guy play Obama in black face when they play him. Maybe if it was funny, maybe it would be okay. Maybe. But the way it is now, it simply isn't funny, and it makes you wonder why SNL won't hire a black man who can pull this off. I mean, it's clear by now the guy will have work for at least the next 4 years. Are we really going to have a white man in black face playing the first black President? SNL is better than that...okay, maybe not, but they should/need to be.
Kenan Thompson is pretty much only funny when he dresses up like a chick.
(Okay, I don't know if Fred Armandhammer is white or latino but he ain't black which is the point. Plus, except for when he plays Ugly Betty, dude fricking sucks.)
Best part about SNL last night after the opening Palin skewering - Andy Shamberg doing "Mark Walberg talks to Animals" - funniest shit of the night!
I usually listen to Washington Week on podcast rather than watch it, and I have to say that Queen Latifah absolutely nailed Gwen Ifill's voice and vocal tics.
Dude, Poehler is still on the show--including the episode you showed a clip from. She will not come back after she leaves to give birth.