Live from New York, it’s…Thursday night?! Saturday Night Live‘s longest-running Weekend Update anchors, Michael Che and Colin Jost, left Midtown Manhattan’s 30 Rock on a weeknight to host a live stand-up comedy show. For Peacock. With ads. What could go wrong? Or did they get it absolutely right?
COLIN JOST & MICHAEL CHE PRESENT: NEW YORK AFTER DARK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: It’s not a new or novel idea for Saturday Night Live to add an additional live broadcast on a Thursday night in primetime. NBC did just that during previous election years, in both 2008 and 2012, with Weekend Update at the core of these bonus weeknight episodes. And in 2017, Lorne Michaels let current Update anchors Jost and Che have their own episodes in August before that SNL season ramped into production.
But this is not that. It’s Peacock’s first live comedy special all right, but it’s not a special per se, and it’s not quite an SNL special, either, as instead, Jost and Che preside over a swift one-hour stand-up showcase broadcast live from The Bell House in Brooklyn, with a few commercial breaks, a house band (1500 or Nothin’) and stand-up from Alex English, Aida Rodriguez, Karlous Miller, Aminah Imani and Mike Birbiglia, plus cameos from Tracy Morgan, SNL‘s Sarah Sherman and Impractical Jokers‘ Sal Vulcano.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: It’s more like a night on the town than like any comedy special you’ve seen online, unless you’re one of those people who has signed up for a smaller streamer’s livestream before.
Memorable Jokes: Outside of the outside opening sketch, it’s clear that we’re watching something in the moment, and Jost also hits the topical button early with a joke about the presidential debate from 48 hours earlier, referencing one of Trump’s more outrageous claims: “Nothing sounds more presidential than screaming they’re eating the cats and dogs.” But the way Jost jostled the former president also got Che to weigh in, roasting Jost in the process: “You’re doing prop comedy on a debate reference?!?”
They also got in a dig or two about who was hosting them.“We’re on Peacock! You guys know Peacock rig ht?” Jost said. ‘You know Peacock from the phrase, ‘I can’t believe the NFL made us download f—ing Peacock.’”
As for the individual comedians themselves, English (who just left the SNL writing staff this summer) kicked off an unofficial theme of the night: the pros and cons of giving oral sex. English claimed as a gay men he was “ready to go back in the closet” and that the act of “sucking d— is actually embarrassing.” He also had a bone to pick with the asexuals getting represented with the A at the end of LGBTQIA, wondering what they had in common with all of the other oppressed genders and sexual identities.
Imani, a few comics later, asked: “How many people going to talk about dick? everybody!” She also slyly referenced Peacock, realizing she’d just made a joke about Love Is Blind, the popular Netflix franchise.
In between, Rodriguez also had a line of thought following Tuesday’s Trump-Harris debate. “Donald Trump has lost his white women,” Rodriguez suggested. “That’s why he was like, they’re coming for your pets, girl!”
Vulcano’s presence reminded us not only that he and Jost both grew up on Staten Island, but also mostly to remind us that Jost never represents the island or even visits, although he did buy one of the ferries (with former SNL star and fellow Staten Island native Pete Davidson, with plans to turn the ship into a floating comedy club). “How’s ship life?” Vulcano asked. Jost laughed it off. “It’s great. It’s really financially rewarding,” he said, reporting that his accountant is thrilled with the purchased, before adding: “You say I bought a ship like I took away your way of getting off of Staten Island.”
Miller mostly stuck to crowd work for his short stint onstage, bailing midway through his own joke about his gay uncle talking about a recent breakup.
And as the “headliner,” Emmy nominee Birbiglia got in a plug for his podcast, Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out, by claiming Jost had ghosted his request to guest on the pod, and deciding to use his live Peacock time to ask the questions right then and there. Not that these were the real questions he would’ve asked Jost, mind you. Birbiglia mostly just gave Jost a hard time about being the lesser-talented half in his marriage to Scarlett Johansson.
Birbiglia did have some jokes he likely wouldn’t have room for in any of his monologue specials, too, such as a bit about how he “never got over the banking crisis” because the banks never faced any consequences, which led to him wondering if the government might also bail out comedians if they ran out of jokes, which led to him impersonating a paralyzed Mitch McConnell, and joking:“Maybe if you freeze, you shouldn’t be a Senator anymore?”
Our Take: On the one hand, comedy fans in 2024 might not have a realistic view of stand-up comedy if they’re only consuming the art form through social media clips or slickly produced specials. So for better or worse, it’s actually beneficial for a large streaming platform to offer up a slice of nightlife to a mass audience so they can see just how rough-around-the-edges a live comedy show can be. That roughness sometimes also allows for precious moments of pure funny that could only exist in that moment.
On the other hand, you still want a live comedy event on Peacock or any streamer to feel somewhat special, don’t you?
The ad breaks took away from that, as well as from the overall running time, making the whole thing feel less special.
And from the diminished expectations set in the opening sketch where Che has to explain to Tracy Morgan that, unlike Peacock’s Olympics coverage, “it’s just a stand-up show.” During their brief opening set onstage, once they finally figured out the mic levels, Jost suggested that what we’d be watching might only be “the second funniest live event this week.”
Our Call: And yet, I’d say STREAM IT. You want to know what it’s like out there in the clubs these nights? This live offering accomplishes that. And like Jost joked in the monologue: “Tonight’s going to be like group sex. If it goes well, then we can do it again every couple months with our friends. And if it goes really bad and it’s a disaster, we’ll never talk about it again. And either way we’re going to film it.”
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Colin Jost & Michael Che Present New York After Dark,’ On Peacock, A Slice Of A Night In The Life Of Live Stand-Up Comedy appeared first on Decider.
