In a draft that will never be seen, I tried connecting John Mulaney’s past two years, the zeitgeist of vibes, and LCD Soundsystem as an institution. It all came off very [jerk-off motion]. That post was written before even watching this week’s episode! The lesson? I should never assume that the noise of the pop cultural world is a puzzle that only this sporadic newsletter can solve. Eesh!
LCD Soundsystem being announced as musical guest was surprising as both a fan and a person who is easily surprised. Coming off their COVID-cancelled run at Brooklyn Steel and an Amazon holiday special featuring Macaulay Culkin and the less-favored member of Tim & Eric, signs pointed that LCD Soundsystem was releasing new music. So far, not the case! They are mostly promoting residencies in two of America’s worst sports cities.
Like John Mulaney (this parenthetical is mostly a chance to discuss Mulaney, a comedian I think about too much. The discussion about Mulaney in the past two years - sobriety aside, given that he has been open about his substance issues - boils down to, to me at least, the realization that Mulaney is a celebrity. That seems obvious, but even I have had difficulty thinking about someone from VH1 panel shows and Brooklyn comedy drop-ins as a big star. He obviously is! Part of the reaction to his celebrity seems similar to when a band gets too big, but even that is inapt given that he is often on television. The dissolution of his marriage to a not-really-but-actually-sort-of public figure [brought into said public by Mulaney] is a more typical celebrity scandal rather than the implosions the comedy industry has had recently. It’s like Billy Crudup leaving Mary-Louise Parker for Claire Danes, but one person is a comedian, one person isn’t truly famous, and many people who follow celebrities do not really like the third person. With many comedians saying awful things or doing awful things, the expectation for someone’s life being covered instead of their comedy = they must have done something fucked up: but, in this case, it seems more like a run of the mill mess), James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem has had a weird time recently. As noted before, LCD’s run at Brooklyn venue Brooklyn Steel was canceled as the Omicron variant started to surge. With higher authorities not really guiding anyone with anything substantive (NYC decided no more masks starting March 7th because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), Murphy received a brunt of public frustration and eventually came to the decision to cancel the last three shows in the run. He also dismissed and locked the gates (not Marc Maron style, but locked him out of the office) on founding DFA partner Jonathan Galkin (the guy from Hey Dude), so again, lots of stuff going on for James Murphy. This is the trick, forget a terrible year . . . by being on Saturday Night Live.
Like Taylor Swift, LCD Soundsystem opted for some DEEP CUTS, playing “Thrills” (from their first self-titled album) and “Yr City’s A Sucker” (from the companion collection of singles released with that first album). Unlike Taylor Swift, who was able to turn a mythic version of an older album cut into a number one single, it’s not clear why LCD played the songs they did. As a fan of the band, I enjoyed it. Many people did not. Some of that could be the synth mixed REAL LOUD on “Thrills,” but most of that is just that people love to complain about (and be bewildered by) the SNL musical guest. Oddly, the rest of the show is not investigated that way.
My partner mentioned seeing a random person online imply that John Mulaney picks out his musical guests. I don’t know if Lorne Michaels would give that sort of power to a host, even someone under his wing, but the musical guests on Mulaney’s shows seem like the type of musicians John Mulaney would like (save for Thomas Rhett, I guess?).
No Notes
LCD Soundsystem also were in a sketch as the Guardian Angels which seems like a very New York idea James Murphy would have. According to Murphy’s Wikipedia, he turned down a job writing for Seinfeld (I can’t find good confirmation of this and think it might be one of those self-eating Wikipedia citations, but here’s an old Guardian article that mentions it).
In lieu of a cold open, Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong presented the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York given all that is happening in the world. The segment was met with universal praise in the media and online. I need to be very clear here: the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York did a wonderful job singing “Prayer for Ukraine” in what was a triumphant and cathartic moment for them and many people who are affected directly and indirectly by the Russian invasion. From the perspective of SNL, this sucks shit. Since 2000, SNL has gone with a serious cold open five times: September 29th, 2001 (a Rudy Giuliani speech and Paul Simon singing with first responders after 9/11), December 15th, 2012 (The New York City Children's Chorus singing “Silent Night” after the Sandy Hook shooting), November 15th, 2015 (Cecily Strong sending support to Paris after terror attacks), November 12th, 2016 (Kate McKinnon dressed as Hillary Clinton singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” [which then gets parodied *by SNL* in the season finale with Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump singing the song in an actualization of this meme {oddly enough, this has been scrubbed from the SNL YouTube page}]), and October 7th, 2017 (Jason Aldean performing Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” after the Las Vegas shooting [coincidentally, both the Cohen and Petty performances happened soon after each artist’s death, but this gets lost quickly to history in SNL’s form of grief porn]). The common thread through three shootings, one series of terror acts in Paris, one invasion of a sovereign nation, and the result of an American election is not that they are the biggest six news stories of the past 20-ish years, but they happened near enough to a taping of a sketch comedy show that some people involved with said sketch comedy show thought they should be remarked upon. To cite Tom Scocca, this is smarm.
I’d guess SNL isn’t broadcast in France or Ukraine so these cold opens are more for people in America with connections to those countries. As a bit of television, it’s all absurd . I don’t think the Russian invasion will be over by dress rehearsal of the Oscar Isaac and Charli XCX episode, so will Saturday Night Live bring out the choir again? Will the show remark on future mass shootings, or only ones with high losses of life like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas? If Donald Trump gets re-elected in 2024, what song will McKinnon sing then? What if something awful happens during summer hiatus? I don’t mean this as a gotcha, but what the fuck are we doing here? Michael Che and Colin Jost did Weekend Update jokes about the situation like a half hour after the choir performance, because what else would they talk about? Jost’s jokes were anodyne and hacky, and Che’s jokes were somewhat more personal and biting, but it seemed deliberate that they were the only people on this edition of Weekend Update as to not mire the rest of the cast or guests in explicit hypocrisy. Sure, other TV shows have shown recent solidarity with Ukraine visually and with remarks, but no one seems to pat themselves on the back as often as SNL does.
Here is a good Daily Beast report on the Horatio Sanz abuse story.
Here is a good Please Don’t Destroy sketch.
Next week: Oscar Isaac and Charli XCX. If DeuxMoi is to be believed, this was Oscar Isaac’s last chance to host or NEVER BE ASKED BACK AGAIN.