Episode 1004: We are the Plus Ones of Someone who has Left
Also, Sugar! Butter! SNL turns 50! Google goes evil! And Flour!
Hi and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow! This week in the Wow, SNL’s birthday party! Waitress the musical comes to Max. And we’re still in the darkest timeline, but at least we have each other!
Let’s get into it.
50 YEARS
Last night Saturday Night Live did its 50th anniversary party. To me some of the most affecting stuff was the music. Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter opening the show with the lonely “Homeward Bound”; Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard doing “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a nice nod back to singer Sinéad O’Connor and how poorly she was treated after she tore up picture of the Pope John Paul II on the show to protest the cover-up of pedophilia within the church.
And of course Adam Sandler’s gorgeous “50 Years.”
It’s great to see so many cast members remembered (not just the “famous” ones). But it was also unexpectedly moving to see Sandler and others spotlight members of the crew. It was like getting to meet your best friend’s family after so many years.
Sandler talked about how none of this would have been possible if not for that first cast. And I wonder if there wasn’t something of that group baked into the DNA of SNL, a combination of anarchism, fearlessness, and ferocity that always wants to rise. You see it in Eddie Murphy and Dana Carvey, in Kristin Wiig and Kate McKinnon, in Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon, in Leslie Jones and Bowen Yang, in Tracy Morgan and Andy Samberg and Cecily Strong and so many others, a willingness to push the envelope and at times to get in people’s faces. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are beloved, but watch their Weekend Updates. They take no prisoners. Norm McDonald and Dennis Miller (among others) were the same.
There’s more sweetness in the mix now than there used to be, and the show’s gutsiness is often more evident in its hosts’ willingness to take risks than in the material. (Just how many hilariously specific and funny characters can Timothée Chalamet do?)
But I’m always leaning in, hoping for another one of those moments where SNL refuses to be what you expect and shows us its teeth. Even after 50 years there’s still really nothing else like it on American television. Maybe there never will be.
A NOTE FROM THE UNIVERSE
This weekend also saw the debut on Max of a filmed version of the stage musical Waitress, starring Sara Bareilles as Jenna, a small town pie-making waitress in a scary marriage who is stunned to discover she’s pregnant. It’s a bit of a challenge of a show tonally; while a lot of it is really playful, at the core is a woman being terrorized by her husband. And the filmed version actually ends up feeling more confronting, because the audience doesn’t have the distance of the theater to protect them. The violence and humiliation that Jenna is going through is up close.
But Waitress is also really inventive. Throughout the show (particularly when she’s conceiving of new pies) the people of the town become like gentle spirits, bringing her what she needs and echoing what she’s feeling.
Here’s the opening.
They’re sort of like the brooms in the The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
But I think underneath there’s a belief that for as awful as things can get, the universe actually yearns to help us. Which is an interesting thing to think about.
CORPORATE GUACAMOLE
Last week Google decided to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, and took down its calendar notations for things like Pride, Women’s History, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Black History Month, Indigenous People’s Month saying there were just too many. Meanwhile Disney has cut back its DEI programs, saying it’s a reflective of ongoing development in their priorities rather than fear of being punished by the current administration.
In other news, I can recommend Startpage is a pretty great search engine, one that does not lead with AI nonsense that is ugly and wrong about half the time. Duck Duck Go seems to work pretty well on my phone, too—and in both cases, I was able to make those search engines the default on my browser, which is Firefox. This is also possible on Chrome or Safari, though if you’re at all looking for other browser options, I have been with Firefox for years, and I find it very invested in privacy and the internet we used to have, where tech companies had aspirations like “Don’t be evil” and meant it.
I switched to Apple Maps the day I heard about Google Maps. They only lasted one day more before switching over to nonsense. I’m looking at others now.
This is where we’re at, I guess. It’s corporate whack-a-mole. (I thought calling it guacamole might make it more palatable.)
It reminds me a little bit of a song by SNL cast member Jane Wickline. She’s telling Colin about this great party she went to that went all night, and the longer she sings, the clearer it becomes that she completely overstayed her welcome and eventually had to be run out. At one point she says, “I am the plus one of someone who has left.”
Yeah, all of that, that’s kind of the vibe. Nothing we can do but help each other, keep singing (and move our business to better places, if they exist).
Have a great week!
I didn't know that I needed to hear Sara singing this morning!! But I Did! Thanks. Love what you do, do more.