To get us started, can I get a word?
The Powerful Adrenaline of Real-Life Mad Libs
Hey, sorry to bug you, but want to come to an improv show with me? I’m leaving right now. No, it’s free. Where? Oh, it’s in the basement of that Italian restaurant on 5th. Yeah, grab your coat. C’mon!
I’m really excited to see this group. They’re kind of new, so I can’t promise it’s going to be, like, the funniest show you’ve ever seen. No, I mean, I’ve seen some of their stuff online, and they seem pretty funny. They’re an all-LGBTQ+ group who act straight; it’s this whole thing. I wonder what they’ll do. Oh, my god, if they even try to address that weird Twitter thread about chickens—No, for real? You think so?
Train’s here.
Ok, it’s this building here.
Hi! Thanks so much.
There’s a bar downstairs, so let’s head down. Honestly, we should be glad we even got here in time to grab seats before it—Oh, perfect timing!
Hey, how’s everyone tonight? Thanks so much for coming out to the show! We’re “On The DL,” and we’re going to do some improv, is that okay with you guys? Oh, my god, great, ok. All we need to get us started is one word. Can we get a word? Just shout it out.
Wait, okay, shit. I know that this is the first thing that happens at every improv show, but I’m never prepared for it. God, ok, I’m so nervous. Every word I can think of sounds insane right now. Like, what would they do with “Tasmania”? Ugh, okay, um…
Haha, uh, any word, guys. Just shout it out!
Why is no one else shouting something? This is so nerve-wracking. I mean, I don’t want to do it, but surely someone must want to. The anticipation of no one else shouting something is killing me. Maybe I should just shout, uh, “chair”? Ok…
CHAIR! Jesus Christ, I feel like my nervous system just did “what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam boiler.”
Are you guys serious? No one said anything, then everyone shouted at once. Anything can happen at an improv show, I guess!
Ooooooh, my god, that’s hilarious. What did you say? Oh, good one.
Freud really was right (heartbreaking: the worst person I know made a great point). The build-up of tension and the release of it always makes this moment — and the answers that come from it, plus the comedians’ reactions — always make this hilarious.
Okay, let’s try it one more time. Can we get a… let’s say a noun?
BANANA!
Ugh, always so weird but so freeing. The adrenaline rush I get from just shouting something out when I typically wouldn’t be able to? I always want to do it again, but that would just be heckling at this point. The show I went to yesterday—god. That woman kept trying to talk to the comedian; thank god they kicked her out. It’s the cardinal rule, don’t talk to the comedian during the show. God, it’s never not going to be weird to me that I can just shout whatever I want. Like, they’re asking me to talk.
I heard a “noodles” over there somewhere? Okay, great, let’s get started. Noodles, guys.
That was such a good show! I still have no idea how they managed to transition seamlessly from a scene about getting lost at sea in 1800 to one about eating crab in space — like, literally, what?
Oh, my god, yes, and when they made that callback at the end to the first suggestion of noodles? Yeah, yeah, when they were all shouting at once. That was so funny! I thought it was such a good connection. I felt like they were really thinking about the show, even though there were only, like, 10 of us there. Exactly! Like, they reminded us that we gave them something solid to work with after none of us thought we had a good suggestion.
That’s what I’m saying! It’s one of my favorite things about going to improv shows! Yeah, there really is a sense of community and a bond that you form with the performers at that moment. They put soooo much trust in our hands, man. Whatever word they decide to go with at the top of a show defines the whole thing. Like, the word becomes the foundation not only for the content of at least the first few scenes, but the energy of the whole thing! If we had given them—right, great example, vampire. The show would have started off with that dark vampire-y vibe. Funny, but in that area. But noodles? It makes sense they went right to making spaghetti.
No, exactly, like, it’s insane. But there’s nothing in the world like the adrenaline rush you get right after a performer asks for a word.
The next improv show I’m going to? Uhhhh, there’s one on Tuesday I was eyeing. Wanna come? Yay, ok! I’ll text you the deets.
Wow, you’re a genius. You’re so right, we should show up prepared at the Tuesday show with a word. If I can remember (I’m not going to remember), I’ll do noodles — that was a good one. What about you?
Oh, nice! Train’s here.
Saturday Night Dead?
The Atlantic recently published a story about how “SNL Is Excelling in One Particular Way”: their pre-taped sketches. The article makes the argument that “SNL needs to find a greater balance between its live and prerecorded comedy,” arguing that “pretaped segments have shouldered a lot of the heavy lifting, delivering consistently notable comedy and commentary.” While I agree that the pre-tapes are overall funnier than the live sketches, I would argue that the digital and live sketches are doing the same amount of “heavy lifting” — this season more than ever.
If you’re unfamiliar with Saturday Night Live lore, you may think it was created to be a live show, but that’s not true! Pre-taped content has been there from the beginning, thanks to the six comedic films by Albert Brooks featured in season one. Regardless, The Atlantic argues that “SNL’s spirit has most often emerged under the pressure of live television. … Yet this season, the live sketches are where SNL has struggled most for a spate of reasons: underdeveloped premises, writing that misses the mark, a lack of recurring characters outside of the ‘Weekend Update’ desk, and a relatively new cast still learning to work together.”
The problem is that you’re pitting two things with different resources against each other. The ideas for both come from the same brains, but digital sketches get more money, space, rehearsal time, et cetera. Plus, many of the pre-tapes this season just take templates — like movie trailers and music videos — and plug jokes into them. Live sketches demand a new format every time, or it begins to feel contrived or repetitive. Both are valid, but they’re each created under vastly different circumstances.
And here’s the thing about writing missing the mark more in the live sketches: Writers and cast members working on pre-taped sketches have more time to rewrite sections, rehearse, or physically edit joke timing. With live comedy, you have what you’ve written and rehearsed a handful of times, and that’s what you perform — one and done. And sure, that means the writing in a digital sketch will be tighter, but only because it’s gone through much more editing (both written and digital). Live sketches have a sense of looseness that contributes to the electricity of the whole thing. Maybe the writing misses the mark, but the experience makes up for it. With digital sketches, the writing has to be perfect, because it can’t be saved if it flops.
Additionally, digital content can also add humor where live sketches can’t with the magic of post-production, giving the impression they’re funnier by default. But what’s different is that the editors have had the chance before its premiere to play around with graphics, transitions, music, and more — the things that make digital content, well, digital, In “We Got Brought” with Megan Thee Stallion, for example, we get to see cast member reactions cut along to the music, which makes the flow of the video funny and hits a specific humorous beat that you just couldn’t live.
The article also touches on the idea that prerecorded content seems more lavish and large-scale. “Though pretaped fare lacks the spontaneity and uncertainty of live sketch work, it tends to be a place where bigger concepts can flourish and surprise,” it argues. I can’t disagree that there have been some hilarious but big digital concepts so far this season, like A Christmas Epiphany and M3GAN 2.0. However, I don’t think they’ve been any larger than the those of the live sketches. I think the only difference is, again, time and budget. There are sketches that, if given the same resources, could be blown up to major proportions. For me, these are sketches like Jurors, Jets Fans, and Big Dumb Hat. Sure, they have uncreative names, but what’s important is that I can easily imagine the exaggerated digital sketches they could be.
While the Atlantic’s article makes a valid point that this season of SNL has had more successfully funny pre-taped sketches than live ones, it leans heavy into the idea that the quality is better while failing to consider the root of that issue. The show isn’t purposely putting more resources into digital sketches in order to have them outshine the live ones; they’re just each created under such different circumstances. I understand the desire to take SNL at face value, to watch what’s put on the screen and think, “Funny!” But if you want to claim that one thing about the show is particularly better than another, you need to consider its inner workings. Neglecting to do so is just another way of saying that the work put into live sketches isn’t as strong as that of digital ones, and that’s not only incorrect, it’s dismissive of the people who put that work into it, from set designers to writers. The resources you have are everything in comedy, and SNL is simply turning the lemons it’s given into lemonade; it doesn’t get to decide if they’re fresh or rotten.
The Comedy Showcase
The Correspondents’ Dinner is actually happening this year, and Roy Wood Jr. is hosting it!
I love a good Tig Notaro interview, so naturally I loved Tig Notaro: ‘Can I recall a bad gig? The first two years of my career’ from The Guardian.
Thank you @talialichtstein on TikTok for this beautiful display of cancel culture totally and definitely in action.