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After suffering through perhaps the worst season premiere of Saturday Night Live I've ever seen and her two comedy-black-hole moments on this week's Bored to Death, I have to ask: am I the only one who just doesn't think Kristen Wiig is funny?
She hijacks sketch after sketch with bizarre, self-indulgent characters. She does a lot of accents and speech affectations, but they aren't funny. I keep seeing her hailed as the best thing in comedy since Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but I have to say, I'm just not seeing it.
(For the record, Maya Rudolph was the same way, and similarly loved by a section of the audience, and I didn't see that, either.)
And she's in movie after movie and pops up in everything, and she is just a black hole where laughs go to die.
It sticks in my craw that Saturday Night Live cuts its female performers so casually, as if they feel like they really only need one woman to play every female character on the show. So they dump talented performers like Michaela Watkins and Casey Wilson, who are actually funny, and give Wiig 85% of the screen time and keep a couple of extra chicks like Abby Elliott and Jenny Slate (who was dully unfunny but provided the show with its only moment of tangible energy when she realized she'd accidentally sworn on the air) to just fill out the background. It's annoying, and brings down my enthusiasm. I want to laugh. Kristen Wiig does not make me laugh.
If Kristen Wiig were funny, it would be a different story. But I don't want SNL to turn into The Kristen Wiig Show any more than I wanted it to turn into The Maya Rudolph Show. And I really want to know why SNL thinks having multiple female leads for sketches is somehow too much. Certainly there never seems to be the feeling that they've got "enough" men on the show performing.
From:
http://samuraifrog.blogspot.com/2009/09/tv-report-kristen-wiig.html
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Enjoy... or um... hate. =^)
Well obviously I disagree with what this person had to say. I find Kristen hilarious. And I am glad they got rid of Casey, but not so much Michaela (thought she was hilarious, especially as Hoda)
ReplyDeleteBut of course Jenny and Nasim don't have any big stuff right now, because they are features and featured plays get less air time and what not.
I agree, Kate. I thought the decision to lose Michaela made sense. Her strength was really in doing what Kristen Wiig could do when Kristen was already in the skit. That's not the most useful person to have. Michaela would have been far more useful if Kristen wasn't on the show (so she might want to try again in a few years). I think Jenny and Nasim have fresh perspectives and will bring a lot to the show. You're right. You can't judge them by a few episodes when they're featured. You need to wait a full season.
ReplyDelete- TAE