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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think her stand up is generally pretty funny -- she's not my favorite but I think she has some good bits.  I don't think SNL was her best work -- maybe she was nervous?  I think a lot of comedians try to take some of their favorite bits from their act and cram them into the shorter monologue time frame and you end up losing the flow from the original act, and it seems forced.  Monologues are generally better when they are written specifically for the show, but I think a lot of stand up comedians are uncomfortable doing stuff that they haven't vetted and worked out in front of audiences.

So far this season, the writing has just felt off in almost all the skits.  The AG doll one was okay, but not that creative.  The sorority girl one was really stupid (and a missed opportunity because a sorority girl skit would seem to hit in her heartland).  Unfortunately, SNL lost most of their best skit actors this year and didn't replace them with actors of equal calibre.  And I don't know what's going on in the writing room but they clearly lost some talent.  Hoping they are able to find some new ground.

On the female comedian critique above, I have strong feelings.  I often like female comedians better than men, but I do think that there's a real problem with them being boxed into a shtick in which they are just overtly focused on their sexuality -- like people only want them on stage if they are going to do a quasi porn act.  I feel like female standups were basically shut out of comedy 30+ years ago -- there were a few and they mostly made ground by making fun of themselves (Roseanne, for instance, or Phyllis Diller as an even more extreme example).  Then along came Amy Schumer and shocked everyone by talking about sex and her body so openly.  I think all comedians have a lot of pressure to press the boundaries and shock, and for female comedians that manifests as just a lot of easy jokes about blow jobs and sex.  It gets old fast, IMHO.  I think one of the funniest stand up specials I've ever seen was Michelle Wolf's Nice Lady, and it was like she made a conscious choice that she wasn't going to go that route.  Wanda Sykes is another that just doesn't really do that, and is so so funny.  Fortune Feinster is another that is able to do stuff that is not just sex jokes.  (Let's hear if for the lesbians who are able to talk about something other then men's d(cks in their standup.)  I thought Ali Wong was really funny in her first stand up and then her marriage fell apart and her act became like 80% sex jokes which are just more awkward than funny.  And I think Whitney Cummings used up all her funny jokes 10 years ago and now just tells stupid sex shockers.   I think part of the problem with getting famous is that you no longer live like a normal person, so no longer have the normal person material for jokes, but I guess that's a problem that stretches across gender.[/quote]

Very much agree with your assessment of female comedians. I also loved that Michelle Wolf special. Fortune Feimster is very funny but for some reason I can't get into her stand up specials. But she does a podcast with Tig Notaro and Mae Martin that can be really hilarious. Tig is another comedian who I used to love but haven't enjoyed as much lately. I think she is kind of falling in the Ellen trap of getting too famous/wealthy and it impacting her style of comedy. Her last special was pretty mid, I felt. Ironically, I felt Ellen's last special, post "cancelling", was better than anything she'd done in years. I just think comedians tend to produce better work when they are personally less fulfilled and comfortable, because stand up comedy really thrives on that frisson of the comic talking about the stuff everyone experiences but no one likes discussing. They talk about it, make jokes about it, and we all get this relief and release in laughing about it.

I actually think Amy Schumer has done a better job of evolving her act as she's aged and still being able to do this. I think her jokes about pregnancy, motherhood, her body changing, and her marriage have actually been pretty good. She seems to do a good job of figuring out what about her life is still relatable to a regular person and really mining that for content. Whereas a lot of comics will shift to talking about how their lives are impacted by fame or wealth. They can still turn this into funny jokes, but it will just never feel as relevant and personally impactful as someone doing comedy about something that feels like it's straight out of you own life, family, workplace, etc. But male comics struggle with this too. [/quote]

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