Steve Carell's best time on "S.N.L." this week



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After In the last two months, everyone in the "NL" distribution this week seemed ready for a break. Throughout the Saturday show, the writers, apparently exhausted, relied on backtracking and proven tactics. (Sometimes they deviated lazily in the your deaf.) Even before the host, Steve Carell had brought a handful of his former co-stars on stage to tease the unlikely reboot of "The Office," the cold had dusted off a drawing that had not had time to take dust: another Laura Segment Ingraham blatant Fox News.

As in the previous edition, Kate McKinnon as Ingraham offered a glimpse of the type of advertisers you get when you offend most countries. ("Order of Reverend Whitaker's dog baptism kit," says McKinnon. "All dogs will not go to heaven unless they are baptized properly.") The same gag had been used in a Another cold open, from 2012, after the conservative presenter of a radio show, Rush Limbaugh, called a Georgetown law student a "bitch" because she had criticized the politicians of the Jesuit college in contraception. ("Moist Books," cried Taran Killam, listing his new sponsors, "The Mosquito Breeders of America.") "Santa Claus is the father of Jesus", "Blackface is a compliment", "If you have less than five weapons on fire, you're gay "). In doing so, the segment went even further back and felt the "veracity", concept popularized in "The Colbert Report" in 2005, to explain the particular flavor of the misplaced authority under the George administration. W. Bush. Colbert's "veracity" was such a powerful descriptive word that the definition he suggested was incorporated into the dictionary.

"The Colbert Report" was of course directed by Stephen Colbert, a longtime friend and former colleague of Carell. The two former students of Second City, both from Catholic families, have confided to Gary and Ace, intimate partners of "The Ambiguously Gay Duo", the fight against crime, a short film "SNL" that lasted several years. Do not tell ". They also launched a simulated debate on "The Daily Show" in the "Even Stevphen" segment (Carell: "The federal government should stay out of the natural disaster sector!") Colbert: "Sir, you're an idiot. It's time for Washington's big cats to lift their laws and forbid the ever-adoption of a law banning these hurricanes and tornadoes. ") During their tenure in the" Daily Show "and beyond, the two broadcasters of cable TV, wearing different versions of the same mask strangely angry, opinion.

Carell's special spark as a correspondent for the "Daily Show" felt native to the mid-twentieth century, even though it helped shape the 21st century. This is Sonny Bono's smiling bravery and silly stupidity in "The Sonny and Dear Comedy Hour", as well as the young Steve Martin's refusal to recognize the vice that shakes his head. Carell is a humorist in this mold. With Samantha Bee, Wyatt Cenac, John Oliver and Colbert, he traveled on unseen scenes with real people to create the ancient masquerade that gave Jon Stewart's character without character a more human, more reliable look. and a lot more funny. Carell had a soft heart. In a technique later developed by Nathan Fielder during his fake business show, "Nathan For You," Carell often tried to fool the joke and largely avoided real-world customers. often unconscious, who appeared in his crazy reports.

Carell was often at his best, comically, when he was immersed in these real-life situations, but not necessarily when this situation was "Saturday Night Live." Despite the seeming anarchy of the episode, a sketch reminiscent of the original "Star Trek", in which Pete Davidson claims help, was vaguely written and seems completely unclear. collapse at the end of the show. The show can often be quite conservative and have a tight scenario. As Tad Friend wrote in a 2010 profile, Carell helped initiate the wave of highly improvised comedies of the last decade. On several takes, he apparently composed many of his lines in the cult hit of 2004 "Anchorman" on the set, his only instruction from director Adam McKay being to "say something". This freedom really let him sing his abilities. Even when his characters are in the depths of their impasse, their most inexplicable ignorance, a wink – something real is hidden under the mask, a hint of truth.

Of course, the improvisation is integrated into the series D.N.A. of "Saturday Night Live". Much of the writers' room of "S.N.L." is made up of improvisers, like Carell, who have developed their ideas in institutions such as the Straight Citizens Brigade. But these ideas become sclerotic once they have been polished and pasted on memory cards. From there, the engine of laughter in S.N.L. relies on delivery and physical appearance, as well as a rhythm that is part of the story before the distribution takes the stage for the shoot. They can only do it once. Maybe that's why the best skit of the evening was Carell, Leslie Jones and Mikey Day NASA Astronauts aboard the International Space Station answer questions from schoolchildren on Earth when, suddenly, an airlock problem leads to chaos. The whole thing is a coordinated dance of floating idle panic, daddy jokes ("I Apollo-Gize"), pet props, screens in the screens and another astronaut ( I'm not going to spoil it), which is beating on the boat. like a drum.

Carell and the rest of the cast was successful here, but elsewhere the comedian became a dramatic actor who upset the audience in "Foxcatcher" and did not find his tempo. To be fair to Carell, as he recently told a reporter from Squirehe has not really exercised his live action comedy muscles for years. Maybe they are a little faded. And, to give the indefatigable writers "S.N.L." their due, most episodes of the season have been pretty strong. They left next week for Thanksgiving. Let's hope they'll be back on December 1, refreshed, ready to pick up their comic jerseys, hear the metronome's ticking and replay them.

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