"At the moment, [Saturday Night Live UK] has a grinning, whooping, gurning American mania to it."

"... [W]e and our US cousins have wildly differing senses of humour.... Much of the best British comedy relies on understatement, subtle wordplay, self-deprecation, self-mortification. It’s why Larry David is the American many Brits find most funny: he, like us, understands that life is a vale of tears, suffering and torturing yourself over mild social awkwardness...."

Writes Charlotte Ivers, in "Saturday Night Live UK review: Britain is funny but this isn’t yet/There’s talent in the cast — shame this Sky One debut was four parts American gurning, one part Princess Diana" (London Times).

A description of the "cold open": "Keir Starmer... and David Lammy... are psyching themselves up to phone Donald Trump, with the help of their 'Gen Z adviser.'... Keir: 'Oh golly, what if Donald shouts at me?' Gen Z adviser: 'You’re looking for more of a special situationship.'"

Also: "In a sketch parodying news headlines, the question is asked whether, once Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is in prison, he will 'be able to keep his mouth shut.' This is followed, I regret to inform you, by the punchline: '"I hope not," said his cellmate’s penis.'"

I don't see what's American about those jokes. And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor! Worse, don't excuse your bad jokes by claiming they are American. The SNL format — cold open, monologue, sketches, Weekend Update, music performance — is an empty shell into which writers can insert whatever humor the producers want. Take responsibility. Or withdraw into the vale of tears and suffer and torture yourself. Apparently, you find that amusing. 

As for the "grinning, whooping, gurning American mania" — I only know the word "gurning" from the perennial reports of the World Gurning Championships. I see the NYT had one last year: "In This Pageant, the Ugliest Face Wins/The World Gurning Championships in northern England celebrate the centuries-old art of face-pulling."

That's been going on for years. I remember reading about the World Gurning Championships in LIFE magazine in the 1960s:

Here, you can buy that issue of LIFE on eBay. It was March 14, 1969. The cover story is "The Daring Contraption Called LEM." Inside: "The Race for the SST." And here's an ad: "McDonald's introduces Big Mac/A meal disguised as a sandwich." And: "Why is the Camaro the pace car again?/Because it's the Hugger."

That's all so American. And the American point of view was that gurning was a British oddity.

ADDED:

More clips from the show: here.

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

"You didn’t like the 'Seinfeld' finale? Well, here it is again times ten! Larry David is not about to cower."

Writes David Remnick, in "No Kaddish for 'Curb'/Larry David bows out" (The New Yorker).

And yet, as I was watching, something felt out of kilter. It wasn’t the occasional comic misfire that was bothering me. Nor was it the sense that the end of “Curb” signalled the end of something more than the show itself; the immigrant and children-of-immigrant Yiddishkeit version of Jewish humor has been on the wane for a long time.... No, what was off was the timing, the misery of the moment. It was hard to think about the finale of “Curb”... amid the cruelty and carnage of the past six months. The comedy of manners plays with the mores of civilization; it can lose its charm when civilization succumbs to barbarity. In life, as in comedy, timing is essential.

Did Larry David ever intend charm? Did Larry David ever purport to fit with the times? He went looking for where he did not fit and leaned into his own repugnance. But it is always possible to demand an end to comedy because it is unseemly in a world where people are suffering and dying. Here, Remnick is making a special complaint, based on Jewishness ("Yiddishkeit"): A Jew should not do Jewish humor at a time when Jews are conspicuously killing people. (Remnick himself is Jewish.)

"Well, aren’t you all hot shit? And don’t tell me you haven’t been working it. You’re at the Kennedy assassination and you’ve got your seats on the grassy knoll."

Said Jerry Seinfeld, to the studio audience for the "Seinfeld" finale episode in 1998.

Quoted in "Larry David’s Last Stand/As the series finale of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ approaches, everything, it seems, has been building toward one of David’s most strongly held beliefs: that, actually, the ‘Seinfeld’ finale was pretty, pretty good" (The Ringer).

Nielsen estimated that 76.3 million viewers tuned in to the last episode of Seinfeld, making it the fourth most watched television finale since 1960. That’s an astronomically high number by any era’s standard, especially today’s. In a world where the NFL and almost nothing else consistently pulls in huge audiences, there are barely any truly widely watched scripted shows left....

The monoculture’s last gasp may have been in 2019, when 19.3 million people watched the Game of Thrones finale. Four years later, the Succession finale–the TV event of the year—drew only 2.9 million.

The last episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" becomes available for streaming — it doesn't "air"! — tomorrow. People are predicting that it will parallel the final "Seinfeld" episode. Presumably, there will be a trial. We've been headed toward that all season. And we've been told that since Larry did the act — he gave water to a lady who was waiting in line to vote (in Georgia) — the outcome will hinge on the jury's view of Larry's character. So how can it not be a review of all the bad things Larry's done, tracking the  "Seinfeld" finale? But who really cares, a quarter century later, whether the "Seinfeld" finale was actually good? Maybe somehow the finale "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode will go meta and become an examination of Larry's longterm belief that he ended "Seinfeld" exactly the right way.

Which episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" have the best Richard Lewis scenes?

I watched Season 5, Episode 10 last night — the one where Richard needs Larry's kidney but won't let Larry use his golf club.

I see here, at Consequence, that I can watch 5 great scenes with Richard Lewis, including this ("Congratulations on the intercourse"):

But I'd like a list of whole episodes with a strong Richard Lewis presence.

"This is beyond bizarre. Is some woman about to falsely accuse him of something?"/"You have an irrational hate of women and I'm sorry your [sic] so lonely."

From the comments section at "HBO pulls Larry David documentary hours before premiere so comedian can 'do it in front of an audience'/The Larry David Story was supposed to premiere tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT."

Now, the more interesting question is how can you do something live after you already have it filmed? Before you say maybe they never did film this documentary but were always planning to say we're doing it live, look at the trailer, which seems to be evidence — albeit not conclusive evidence — that there was a documentary already made:

Key line in there: "I'm a total fraud."

It's said to be an extensive interview — Larry Charles interviewing Larry David — so what I'm hoping is happening is that they are following the "My Dinner with Andre" method. To make "Andre," 2 men had extensive, rambling discussions, then they edited it into a very tight conversation, which became the script, that they — actors, now — performed.

In this case, perhaps Charles and David filmed long interviews, and the idea may originally have been to edit the footage into a documentary, but then they decided it would be cooler to make a transcript of the edited footage and perform it as actors in one continuous live show. 

"My Dinner with Andre" became a classy as hell movie, but LD is a comedian, so, for him, the highest form is speaking to a live audience.

"37A: Author/TV personality who wrote 'Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.'"

The clue to the longest answer in today's NYT crossword. I'll put the answer below the jump in case you care about solving the puzzle and — what's wrong with you?! — haven't solved it yet.

Here's the grid — filled out — at Rex Parker's blog. It's great clue, because it's an interesting quote, and you actually want to know who said that. My first thought was George's mother on "Seinfeld":



"I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park!"

But the answer is not Estelle Costanza. She's not an "Author/TV personality." Well, I thought, who wrote that episode? What's the episode? It's "The Contest"! It's about masturbation. Would the NYT center its puzzle on masturbation?! The writer of the episode could be considered an "Author/TV personality"... maybe. It's Larry David, but it's a 15-letter answer. Maybe Lawrence David? Lawrence Gene David? No, still not 15 letters.

"Carl Reiner was Rob Petrie; the workplace experience and situations drew on his experience as a TV actor and then writer in the 1950s."

"But he couldn’t be Rob Petrie.... Van Dyke’s charisma and jack-in-the-box physical comedy as the recast lead gave Reiner a more telegenic avatar. Instead, Reiner became the star-within-a-show, the shouty, egotistic boss who kept Rob dancing on eggshells. The role would not make Reiner a household face. Just the opposite. In the early seasons of the show, Brady held court and berated his writers as shot from behind (or heard from offscreen), so viewers knew him mostly from the back of his bald (or toupéed) head. ('Seinfeld' would echo the device decades later with its depiction of George Steinbrenner, voiced by Larry David and embodied by Lee Bear, his back to the camera.) The device was a masterstroke. It made Reiner’s lack of distinction distinctive. He was no longer a second banana but an angry light bulb, radiating his peevish glare on all his underlings."

From "Carl Reiner Knew TV Like the Back of His Head/With his creation 'The Dick Van Dyke Show,' the comedy legend created a self-referential masterpiece and wrote himself a memorable supporting role" (NYT).

Lots of back-of-the-head Reiner in this episode:

The "SNL" cold open mixes coronavirus with the Democratic candidates.

I recommend starting at 2:00, when the "Democratic candidates" begin to appear, with Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg and, tormenting him, Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren:



If you have low patience for "SNL" just watch this clip, with Bernie Sanders/Larry David advising you about washing your hands:



"I might get in trouble for saying this, but you know who was great at washing his hands? Joseph Stalin. Just sayin'."

ADDED: Too bad the cue — "Use Purell" — that brings in Larry — with his "No! No! No!" — is botched by McKinnon's mispronunciation of "Purell."

Does HuffPo really think Donald Trump doesn't understand that Larry David is not a Trump supporter?

So Trump tweets this a clip from Episode 1 of the new season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," showing Larry David putting on a "Make America Great" hat to appease a motorcycle guy who's angry at him:

TOUGH GUYS FOR TRUMP! pic.twitter.com/DbjZjGzLWU

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020

Larry, the character in the show, got the MAGA hat for the purpose of repelling other people, so he can be left alone. The twist in this little vignette is that the hat that makes the kind of people in his social group loathe him also — with another kind of people — works to undo loathing.

Trump knows TV. Trump knows humor. There's zero chance that Trump is mistaking Larry David for a Trump supporter. He may not have time to be watching "Curb" episodes, but he surely grasps that there's some back story to Larry's having the hat and can see that Larry is afraid of the "tough guy" and using the hat to mollify him.

But here's HuffPo: "Trump Just Tweeted A Clip From A TV Show That Was Totally Making Fun Of Him/The clip came from Larry David’s MAGA-centric episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'" I guess that will get many clicks from people who are hungry for news that Trump is an idiot.

The HuffPo article does nothing but explain the episode, to get the readers up to speed, so they can understand that Larry was "totally making fun of" Trump. Duh. There's no consideration of why Trump would tweet that clip if he knew that, which is what I assume.

How does it benefit Trump to propagate that clip even if Larry was making fun of him? Forgive me for spelling out something so obvious, but I can see there are some obtuse people who think Trump is a dummy who made a mistake.

The clip shows Larry as an oblivious, terrible driver who seriously endangers a motorcyclist and then is terrified at the coming confrontation. Larry is not the "tough guy" and he deserves the tough guy's anger. The tough guy is very expressive (with bad language and a threat of violence). Larry puts on the hat as a fake representation of camaraderie and saves himself.

When Trump offers this clip with "TOUGH GUYS FOR TRUMP," he's implying that you should want to be the tough guy. He's a good guy. He's a motorcycle guy, and he follows the rules of the road, but he gets rightfully angry when affluent, oblivious, insulated jerks violate the rules. You don't want to be like Larry, do you? He's not tough. He's not a good driver. He's a faker. And he's desperate to escape accountability.

Quite aside from how to read the clip, it's to Trump's advantage just to get people seeing that pop culture is using the Trump brand in an unusual and fun way. More Trump. More MAGA hats. Pure familiarity. And if it gets the Trump haters like HuffPo indulging in their own Trump-is-an-idiot fantasies, and they really do seem crazy, as Trump loves to say they are.

"But I think I was a good dad. I wasn’t a great dad. The great dad... I can’t stand the great dad."

"They’re not even friends with you anymore. They’re so busy they don’t have time to get a cup of coffee. I can’t stand them. Go. Go be with your kid. Who gives a shit. So the great dads, they renounce their lives.... They bother me, the great dads."

Said Larry David, in one of the interviews in that Howard Stern book of interviews.

"The department head... said there might have been alternative explanations for the professor’s behavior including 'maybe he just needs his eyeglasses adjusted'..."

"... (to explain the breast staring), 'he might be on the autism spectrum,' 'he might just be socially awkward like Albert Einstein was' and 'do you think maybe you’re more sensitive than other people?'"

From "UW-Madison dean acknowledges school's failure to address sexual harassment" at the Wisconsin State Journal.

For reference, here's Larry David getting out of a social gaffe (racial, not sexual) by lying about having Asperger's syndrome:



But it should be noted that some people with Asperger's Syndrome have been speculating for years that Larry David is on the spectrum and that Jerry Seinfeld has diagnosed himself as "on the spectrum":



Maybe all that great "observational" comedy has to do with the autistic tendency to focus on exactly what isn't the focus for the nonautistic.

In that clip, Jerry talks about comedians being the only people that he feels "completely relaxed" around. Maybe that suggests some insight into what's wrong with Louis C.K....



Meanwhile, on the tech front: "'I see things differently': James Damore on his autism and the Google memo/ He was fired from Google for arguing that men may be more suited to working in tech than women. Now James Damore opens up about his regrets – and how autism may have shaped his experience of the world."

Where are you on the spectrum from "This excuse is bullshit" to "We must empathize with and accommodate the differently abled"?

"I've got the 'spergers and I thought it was hilarious. Don't take it so seriously."

Comment on a Reddit discussion about the episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (Season 9, Episode 6, "Namaste") in which Larry David claims to have Asperger's syndrome to avoid retribution from a man who was offended that Larry said "You're black!" to him when he met him in person after speaking to him on the telephone. Larry got the idea after encountering a kid who he was told has Asperger's but might just be an "asshole."

Another commenter said:

It was a bit cringy to me due to having kids on the spectrum. My wife went a bit silent during those scenes and I could tell it was bothering her as well. We struggle a lot with both of them, especially with school. And our lives are really stressful, it's nice to take a break and watch some curb. But then it was a bit of a gut punch seeing comedy based on your children's disabilities. =(

Larry David — in the opening "SNL" monologue — looks at the sexual harassment stories and notices that "many of the predators... are Jews."

The elite freakout.

On "Meet the Press" today:

CHUCK TODD: ... New York Times, I think it was Saturday, Maureen had a lead that said, basically interviewing all these Upper West Siders panicking now. And in fact I think referred to it as 'The polls are showing a "margin of panic" for Clinton supporters.' Describe this east coast freakout that I feel like you've seen among the elites this week.

MAUREEN DOWD: Right. Well, my friends, one of my friends, Leon Wieseltier, calls it a national emergency. And my friends won't even read — if I do interviews with Donald Trump — they won't read them. And basically they would like to censor any stories about Trump and also censor any negative stories about Hillary. They think she should have a total free pass. Because as she said at that fundraiser recently, 'I'm the only thing standing between you and the abyss.' Oh, and they're taking — Democratic strategists are taking antacids. In the Times today.

CHUCK TODD: Well there you go.

I think the NYT article under discussion is this, from Friday: "Hillary Clinton’s Backers Thought She Couldn’t Lose. Now, ‘I Can’t Go There.’" It begins:

Beside the olive display at Zabar’s, that iconic hub of lox and neurosis on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Linda Donohue was trying to talk herself down.  Surely the polls she tracked anxiously were not to be trusted, she said. Surely Donald J. Trump, the man with the garish golden tower across town, would not be allowed to reach the White House....

If you keep going far enough, you'll get to a quote from Larry David: "The possibility of [Trump becoming President] is too horrifying to broach... It’s like contemplating your own death.” But doesn't he contemplate his own death? He says (it's the quote in the headline): "I can't go there."

Today, there's another NYT article about how New Yorkers are feeling. It's not about Trump. It's: "After Blast, New Yorkers Are Feeling Around for Psychological Shrapnel."

"Are you a magician?"

Anton Yelchin on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," annoying Larry David with a card trick.

A delightful child actor, who grew up to appear as Chekhov in the recent "Star Trek" movies.

As played by Mr. Yelchin, Chekov was endearingly antic, humorously navigating his way through high-pressure scenarios and — even in the 23rd century — having difficulty with the “V” sounds in words like “Victor” and “Vulcan.”

And now he has died at the age of 27, killed by his own car, which he'd gotten out of and left running and which rolled down the driveway and pinned him against a brick mailbox.

He was born in Leningrad in 1989, to parents who were figure skating stars and who, that same year, left what was then the Soviet Union and came to the United States, to L.A., to escape religious persecution.

"I’ll advance a superwild hypothesis for why [the word 'super'] has taken off in this country..."

"... that in the land of the Super Bowl, of superstars in every discipline and their droves of superfans, of countless superheroes..., of the superrich who rule the uncontested superpower of the world, super is tied to American exceptionalism and its own sense of superiority. While it is true that many Europeans say super in their tongues and ours — the French, in particular, have a fondness for it — it doesn’t seem to be as rampant as it is for American English speakers. On its own in a Google Books Ngram search, super bottoms out in 1902 before elevating unchecked from 1910 to 1931, then again from 1940 to its peak in 1947 — both periods of growing American ascendancy. Perhaps, too, there was a need to buck up the troops during wartime with words of encouragement and optimism."

Writes novelist Teddy Wayne, who fits the mood of the Obama administration, which seems to have actively sought to dispel exceptionalism and deflate our sense superiority. Despite the old posters that said HOPE, Obama invited us to mature beyond our need for encouragement and optimism. Don't buck up. Buck down.

ADDED: This post needs a little musical accompaniment:



AND: How is it Teddy Wayne failed to mention superdelegates?! From last night's cold open on "Saturday Night Live," Larry David as Bernie Sanders expresses his annoyance when he's prodded by "Jake Tapper" with "You may have won Michigan, but Hillary still leads you in delegates and superdelegates":

Can I ask just something? What's a superdelegate? Who calls themselves that? It's so cocky. They walk around like they're such big shots. Ooh! I beg your pardon, Mr. Superdelegate. Let me tell you something. I've met some of these superdelegates. They're not so super. Mediocre delegates is more like it.

The NYT detects "a familiar mixture of celebration and anxiety among Jews in the United States and abroad" as Bernie Sanders becomes "the first Jewish candidate in history to win a presidential primary election."

It's "As Bernie Sanders Makes History, Jews Wonder What It Means," by Nicholas Confessore.

While Mr. Sanders was raised Jewish and even spent time on an Israeli kibbutz in the 1960s, he has been muted in his own embrace of the faith.... The Israeli paper Haaretz noted that Mr. Sanders often refers to himself as the son of a Polish immigrant, rather than a Jewish immigrant. “The Jewish establishment has a hard time considering him one of its own,” the paper observed.

Another Haaretz commentator, Chemi Shalev, worried that Mr. Sanders’ victory, and his firebrand liberal politics, would stoke anti-Semitism: “More than any other Democratic candidate, Sanders fits the bill of the G.O.P.’s favorite Jewish bogeyman, Saul Alinsky”....

Why do we have this idea that a candidate should forefront his ethnic or religious identity? I'd rather assume that Bernie Sanders is getting it right, presenting himself as an individual and not making much of his identity in a particular group. I'd rather call into question why other candidates try to gain by calling attention to their group identity. Hillary Clinton has been milking her status as a female like mad, even shaming those of us who are in this group — that is, the majority of Amercan voters.

I mean, just imagine Bernie pushing the "first Jewish President" theme as hard as Hillary pushes "first woman President." I'd like to see a SNL skit with Larry David running with that scenario. Here's a piece from a few days ago in The Washington Post, "Clinton looks to sisterhood, but votes may go to Sanders":

"Clinton’s struggles with women underscore the extent to which she has not yet figured out how to harness the history-making potential of her candidacy in the same way that Barack Obama mobilized minorities and white liberals excited about electing the first black president."

But Obama didn't go around talking about it. He presented himself and we, the voters, thought about it on our own. If he'd talked about the prospect of becoming the first black President half as much as Hillary talks about becoming the first woman President, things would not have unfolded the way they did. We're properly defensive to the verbalized argument that a group-based first is something to strain after. It has to be a good feeling that arises from within, out of a real sense of good will and promise. The hard sell stimulates our resistance to the huckster.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry... WaPo is soooo so so so sorry Donald Trump was on "Saturday Night Live."

I went over to The Washington Post to read "Trump’s sorry night on ‘SNL’: An overhyped bummer for us all" and I couldn't help noticing the sidebar:



Nothing like showing us how you really feel. I get it. You hate Trump and you're irked that he got the platform of "Saturday Night Live" to pose on — just like Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago and all the many other politicians who've had a shot at hosting over the years. What was so bad about the episode?

Hank Stuever, the WaPo TV critic calls the episode "an anemic and halfhearted dud" and a "boring and misspent episode," but based on what? He says that the cast members seemed to lack the "desire to participate" or "play with him." There was one sketch that was about the cast doing a sketch while Trump was tweeting about them and feeling bad about that, and maybe that signaled how they really felt about him, but that doesn't make the show halfhearted and dull. That showed them going meta with whatever distance they felt they needed, which isn't necessarily dull.

Stuever seems to demand that the show do sharper political mockery, but the failure to insult and abuse a guest host doesn't mean there won't be stronger satire on other occasions or that the comedy we did get wasn't good. So what was such a "sorry" "bummer"? Well, Stuever didn't like the "You're a racist" yell from Larry David in the cold open. But that was great! And:

From there it was one dud after another — some of it featuring Trump, much of it not, the minutes slowing to a crawl. A sketch set in 2018, in a wildly successful Trump White House, fell apart quickly. “Weekend Update” did a fair job of playing a little offense.... The “Update” segment also made good use of Bobby Moynihan’s “Drunk Uncle” character — turns out he’s the ideal demographic for the Trump message...

I'm sorry, Stuever, you have not marshaled the evidence that this was a sorry, boring, dud bummer. You're just pissed that Trump was showcased.

ADDED: Here's my earlier post on what I thought of the show.

Donald Trump's "Saturday Night Live" stint.

1. This was the best part:



That's very funny even without knowing the original video that it spoofs, but you can watch that here. Spoofing that isn't original. It's already much spoofed.

2. For the commenter who asked at 11:05 PM last night, "Why aren't you live blogging SNL?" You have no idea how early I go to bed! I was up at 5, however, and I watched the DVR of the show over breakfast.

3. We loved seeing Ed Grimley! Too bad they had to put "Ed Grimley" in big letters on screen... presumably to help the kids out there whom they must have imagined all saying "Who's that guy?" Here at Meadhouse, Ed Grimley is imitated approximately every other day.

4. Trump did a nice job. He wasn't just a good sport about getting flanked by 2 Trump impersonators in the opening monologue. He seemed to enjoy it. And he accepted Larry David yelling "You're a racist!" at him. Laughing at the idea of being considered a racist. That's edgy. [ADDED: "A Hispanic advocacy group had offered anyone in the SNL audience a $5,000 reward if they called Trump a 'racist' during his opening monologue."]

5. I skipped over the musical act, but Sia stole my 1965 hairstyle.

6. Lots more Larry David in the cold open. David owns the Bernie Sanders impersonation. I wonder if that was the first time the line "It's Saturday Night!" was skipped. Cranky old Larry/Bernie says "Live from New York, eh, you get it."

7. Late in the show there's a fake ad for Donald Trump done by aging porn actresses. The punch line is Donald Trump walking on and saying "I'm Donald Trump and I in no way, shape, or form approve of this message," but the most interesting thing is the shot at Bill Clinton that comes at about 3:00. One of the messed-up ladies dreams of getting to visit the White House: "I haven't been there since the 90s," and the other says, "Oh, yeah, I hit my head on the desk." For a show that's seemed so in-the-tank for Hillary, that's some serious balance.