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Red Right Hand: BOTH IMAGES ARE ACTUALLY RELEVANT TO THIS...
*He is not a secret agent. Not at all.

 

BOTH IMAGES ARE ACTUALLY RELEVANT TO THIS...

It's funny how certain hosts on SNL make them really turn up their game. Literally funny. Alec Baldwin, shows always rock hard. And, of course, Christopher Walken.

I know it's fashionable to slam on SNL, much as it has been for about 20 years, but I like it. I like about 10-30% of it as a whole. There's those people who think that the show should just be the good bits and be a half hour, but I think the good bits are pretty random so you kind of have to have the whole 90 and let the good stuff find you. You got to mine the whole cave to get the gems.

Sure, some of it has to be chalked up to the host him or herself. Baldwin, as a comedic actor, is fucking brilliant and woefully underrated in general. I cite the monstrously awesome 30 Rock. Game over.

Walken is this whole other beast. It's like he goes on SNL do indulge in Shatnerism (shaat•nur•izm - n - state or condition of self-mockery based on popular perception of one's personality). He' totally created this character of Christopher Walken that he inhabits even when he's doing other characters in sketches. It's this that lets him be the only person on the show that I don't care if they're looking at the cue cards. Though, you know, Kristin Wiig, I expect the regulars, Kristen Wiig, to not do it as much as the guests, Kristen Wiig.

By the monologue, I was in danger of laugh related rupture. I would be happy to link to an official NBC clip of it, but they elected to continue pressing their Hillary agenda and put up a clip of the dull and Walken-less cold open instead. So, for reference, I present a YouTube video some smack amde by pointing his video camera directly at his TV. Honestly, not that bad after he gets settled.



Now, some have called this monologue unfunny or used the word suck, though acknowledging that Walken pulled it off anyway, or elevated the material in some fashion. They are wrong. I say it was written specifically for him and that the writer's likely envsioned the Walken character doing this material and thought it to be funny. Sounds like a bullsfuckingeye to me.

It seems very in character for the meta-Walken to take audience questions, provide those questions to the audience, and then berate them for having stupid questions.

Though, he admits that the question of "Which power would you prefer to have, invisibility or flight?" was a good one. It really is. But for reasons he doesn't get into.

I think one's answer to the question can be telling. Even if it's not a straight up answer. For instance, if you ask first if you'd be blind if you were invisible, that says you think too hard and don't know how to have fun and play along. Go back to nitpicking Stargate.

Sticking with the base two answers, I think flight says that you love life and like to have fun and blah, blah, blah not much wrong with you.

If you pick invisibility though, well. That's a thing isn't it. There really isn't an ethical use for invisibility in day-to-day life. Being chased by Russian mobsters and wanting to vanish isn't day-to-day life. It only happened those two times.

Flight is enjoyable in and of itself (see hang gliding). It's easy transport. Where you're going you don't need roads. Sure, it can have questionable applications, but it has innocent ones as well.

Invisibility is primarily about being in places you don't belong, seeing things you have no business seeing. It's about spying, eavesdropping and, if you're careful, much more serious crimes. Even it's most innocuous uses will still be slightly mean-spirited, i.e. pranking ("I pranked him in my basement all night long" - C. Walken). The whole power is inherently deceitful. Yeah, you could go sneaking through Afghanistan looking for the bad, bad man, but again...not every day life, is it?

Thus, it's quite a personality rib-spreader of a question. I even wrote a short script about it. Not a great one, though.

And because I mentioned 30 Rock.



I choose invisibility. I'm a jerk. Ask around.

What are you?
©2024 Michael Patrick Sullivan
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