Alamo Jo @chitteringroach - Tumblr Blog

Despite being a relatively young critter, I do have to admit I have a huge soft spot for the first season or two of Saturday Night Live. Like, I was born after 2000 so there's no rose tinted glasses here, but there's just something I love about messy season 1's of shows.

The feeling pervades the first five seasons, but is extremely acute in season 1, that feeling that the wheels are going to fall off this thing at any moment, and that's what I love about it.

After some 50 years, we tend to forget that 11:30 on a Saturday night is actually a dogshit timeslot to be stuck with, and they were replacing old Carson reruns. The cast was called "The Not-Ready for Primetime Players" because the show was seen as a step down from pretty much anything else.

(Let me preface this by saying I did almost no external research before writing this post, so some details are most likely wrong)

But especially the first season, it's obvious they're writing the rules as they go. The first episode is hosted by George Carlin, who doesn't appear in any sketches, and just does some short standup sets. The next is hosted by Paul Simon, and it isn't even a sketch comedy show, the whole episode is just musical acts. Not to mention the extremely frequent re-use of hosts because, as I said before, this was a dogwater time slot for a show. (I bothered to look this up), but by episode 8 Candice Bergen had already hosted twice -- and if I remember correctly, there was a segment where she just recited some poetry. Not like, funny poetry or anything, but just... a short little poem. Why? I'm unsure. But there were a handful of hosts they had again and again.

Fun fact: Steve Martin is never a host in season 1, but we get repeat appearences from Candace Bergen, Elliott Gould, and Buck Henry (who, despite popular belief, was the first 5-time host, not Martin).

Anyways I love how messy the first season is. Some highlights/lowlights of general weirdness/sketches I like include:

'The Land of Gorch', a recurring segment featuring entirely original Jim Henson puppets that pretty much everyone hated, so much so that almost all of their appearences in the second half of the season were them talking about how they were about to be cancelled and thrown out

Short films produced by Albert Brooks and other short films produced by Gary Weis (I prefer Brooks' work, but Weis ended up working for the show for longer)

Whatever the fuck they were doing with the Bees? People remember the Killer Bees sketch where the sketch goes wrong and we get a faux behind the scenes look at the production, but throughout the first few seasons, cast members in bee costumes would just... show up. The first Blues Brothers performance included the Bees. I believe there's a Bees on Ice segment somewhere in there. I do not know this for certain but whole heartedly believe they accidentally spent too much money on the bee costumes and needed to make the most out of them.

Repeatedly offering the Beatles a comically small amount of money to reunite and perform on the show (The joke concluded in season 2 with Eric Idle's "The Rutles")

Andy Kaufman. Just Andy Kaufman.

Although sullied in retrospect by Chase's... everything, "Word Association" is great in no small part by Richard Pryor's delivery.

I personally love the sketch "Waiting For Pardo", a parody of Waiting for Godot, with Kris Kristofferson and Chevy Chase waiting for Don Pardo. As they attempt to wax philosophical in the vein of the original play, Pardo's voiceover cuts in, and, in his signature Price is Right tone, sells philosophical concepts, such as Marx and Kant.

#snl #saturday night live

call me peter the way i deny him three times before i make his cock crow

#jesus #yaoi

is snow nature?

#snow #ask

they call me ishmael the way i leave them wailing

#moby dick #what the fuck do i tag this

joe pera and haha you clowns both employ this “quixotic idea of goodness”. Like you understand they’re a character but it makes in some way if you can truly believe the world could yield such a person — a person who so genuinely believes and says these things —it can’t be all bad, right? Like buying into Don Quixote’s mass delusions of fantasy so that you can truly feel like you’re a noble lady, you can buy into this idealistic perception of goodness and gentleness when latching onto this person.

#haha you clowns #joe pera #adult swim

spoilers for adventure time fionna and cake s2 finale

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fuck it i know for some reason i keep posting about this deadbeat fuck but i swear to god the big blue monster is Martin. Or at least a Mertens.

i am far from the first one to point at the obvious visual similarity to the Finn-Martin-Amalgam-Monster-"Oh God I've Become My Father"-Beast from Don't Look.

BUT ALSO

a) all of the universes that we see in Huntress Wizard's montage have their Mertens bloodline accounted for. Vamp world never had a Finn, just a Martin, who is dead. Of course we know Farmworld Finn. Baby Finn was de-patriated from his corresponding world last season. Winter King world, as we quickly learn, Finn's a knight of the slime kingdom rather than the candy kingdom (i'm not speaking more on that scene i'll be honest). I mean there is one universe where there is no air and she immediately dies, so I will cede that technically the Mertens legacy is unaccounted for there, but presumed dead. In all the worlds with an alive Finn or relative thereof, Huntress' seed grows close to them (technically this only includes Farmworld and Winter King, and Ooo prime at a stretch but also this isn't the strongest piece of evidence and didn't mean to write this part this long sooooo)

b) Martin presumeably got some level of power or responsibility after changing his "mode of existence" in The Comet. Main series never follows up on what this means, but the only thing we know is that, during F&C's Prismo the Wishmaster, Martin is on the Scarab's shit list for "Desertion." The fact that the cosmic organization has it listed as desertion implies that he deserted them in specific, just like fucking uhhhhhh fire guy.

and most of all...

c) Motherfucker's hitting the guardian pose. Looming half out of the ocean looking ass.

#adventure time #fionna and cake #fionna and cake spoilers #adventure time fionna and cake #adventure time spoilers

spoilers for ep 7 of fionna and cake

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MASSIVE missed opportunity for Mary Todd Lincoln to show up

#adventure time #fionna and cake #fionna and cake spoilers #adventure time spoilers

disco elysium asks the hard questions like “how would your relationship with religion change if you had unbearable psycho-sexual fixation with christ”

#disco elysium #harry du bois #i’m using the phrase psychosexual fixation as a punchline because saying it’s really nuanced isn’t a funny joke

COCK BEARS?

CLOCK BEARS. CLOCK BEARS. I AM SO SO SORRY

chitteringroach

spoilers for all of adventure time and at: fionna and cake seasons 1&2 (up to episode 4)

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The more I see of adult Finn the more I think he really is his father's son (Martin). I've had most of these thoughts for a while, but only was inspired to make this post after seeing some random reddit comment saying that adult Finn's recklessness and getting so seriously wounded without seeking any help seemed like Martin behavior.

I feel like both the original series and even F&C made points to show just how thin the line between Martin and Finn can be. If you apply Finn's emotional tendencies to Martin's actions in the original series, it doesn't justify his actions, but it does provide a framework to some big questions of why he took a hard left into scoundrelry after he left the islands.

The Vault is the most obvious similarity -- both of them tamp down emotions that are too raw to really process, and for Martin, that kinda includes the entire concept of Finn. Both struggle with verbalizing emotions (as seen in The Visitor for Martin and, well, a lot of episodes for Finn, but Breezy and Frost & Fire come to mind). Both also like to shoulder burdens alone (Martin: ending of On The Lam, or his sacrifice in Min & Marty, Finn: Both Hall of Egress and Don't Look involve him cloistering himself away rather than seeking assistance).

Although never explicitly stated, both of them seem to have deeply held views on the kinds of people they are, and struggle to deviate from that view of themselves. Finn, especially at the beginning of the series, is a textbook hero. Literally. The Enchirideon is a textbook for heroes. He saves princesses, he gets loot, he does dungeons, he beats up the bad guy, all just because he's a hero, and that's what heroes do. He always thought he would die saving someone, because that's what heroes do. I always felt that the notion of "that's what heroes do" was a driving force of Finn's infatuation with PB as well. He was the hero, so he gets the princess, right? So many of Finn's struggles are about him realizing he didn't need to be exactly what was expected of him and learning to do things his own way: getting over his infatuation with PB, sympathy for Ice King, and a general trend towards pacifism as the series progresses. He's able to grow due to the support system around him as well (namely Jake, but honestly he has more good influences than bad in Ooo).

Using what little we do have about Finn's adulthood and going a little more into speculation about how Finn lives his life during the events of Fionna and Cake, it seems as though Finn has regressed at least somewhat. He seems listless and his drive to continue his adventuring seems to just be "it's what he does." In Fionna and Cake's Simon Pertrikov it's obvious that after Jake's death he struggles even more with processing emotions (as evidenced during his attempts to help Simon). He takes along TV (Simon Petrikov) and Bronwyn (Obsidian) adventuring with him, in a way that seems like he's filling the hole that Jake left.

To apply that lens to Martin now, his self-image is that of a scoundrel. When he had a support system around him, in the form of Minerva, he was able to grow, but upon losing that support, he backslides into the image he has of himself: a scoundrel. There are times where he almost gets some support (having a heart-to-heart with Finn in The Visitor) where he does try to connect with Finn, and at the end he even offers for Finn to come along! He did try! And similarly to Finn trying to fill a Jake-sized hole in his heart through his nieces and nephews, in On The Lam, we see Martin trying to find Finn-analogs to fill some hole in his life. You could even argue that vampire-world Martin in F&C's The Star shows that even further with how quickly he imprints on Baby Finn, with PB being Martin's support system in that world.

(Although we still don't know how Jake died, it's not impossible that both of them blame the mental versions of themselves for their major losses. Obviously, Martin loses Finn because his past life of debauchery catches up with him. If Jake didn't die of natural causes, it's entirely possible he died while on an adventure, which Finn blames himself for. Again, this part is entirely speculative)

I dunno. I started thinking of all of this again after F&C's Season 2 premiere, where they show a quick slideshow of all the different Finns they met during season one, and Martin was there for the Vampire world rather than Finn.

chitteringroach

spoilers for fionna and cake episode 6 -

Okay I just want to say that I wrote word for word that Finn had a "That's what heroes do" philosophy that's contributing to his currently self-destructive nature, which it *really* feels like Finn's dream is showing us.

#adventure time #fionna and cake #fionna and cake spoilers #adventure time fionna and cake #finn the human #adventure time spoilers #i feel so vindicated i've never been this good at character analysis #vindicated isnt the right word but i feel proud of myself

(spoilers for adventure time fionna and cake s2 e6)

maybe im the last person to notice this but everything in Finn's dream that killed him was time/clock related. Stopwatch bats, clock archers, clock golem, pendulum axes (admittedly this is the only one that's a stretch), clock bears, whatever that hourglass villain was, cuckoo clock execution, calendar tank, black widow alarm clock, grandfather clock iron maiden, as well as just the general clock motifs around the place. 2 things we know:

cosmic owl doesn't nessicarily mean croak dream. Now he did literally say "Finn's Croak Dream" (so that's a strong point against me) but there are both old and new examples about how the cosmic owl just makes dreams come true. (Biggest example off the top of my head is Frost & Fire, he shows up to tell Finn he blew it, and in the newest Fionna and Cake episode, since the cosmic owl was in Cake's dream for a moment, it came true, which HW confirmed.)

Although our introduction to the croak dream showed a situation that did happen, we know the dreams aren't always literal. Billy's croak dream is more metaphorical, since Finn wasn't literally there laughing at an iMac. Similarly, we see the Cosmic Owl make an apperence in Fern's "croak dream"/death dream sequence (Which might have shown his cause of death? It did show him decomposing into grass a little bit, but we also know he became a seed and the Finn Sword reappeared... so I don't even know if he's dead from like a in-universe theological perspective)

I'm also sure I'm forgetting a bunch of tidbits from the episode Hoots. But given that it took a while for Jake's croak dream to come at least half-true, we also know that these things don't meana that the croak dream recipient will absolutely die the next day, though that's much more of a theory than the more solid evidence. All of this to say:

What we saw in F&C Season 2 Ep 6 still could have been Finn's croak dream, and they didn't actually need to kill the Cosmic Owl, and it was just really just saying time was going to kill Finn, as in old age. (Also fits in with Huntress Wizard getting herself into sticky situations by acting first and asking questions never this season)

(To get in before anyone else corrects me on this, all of the Finn-gore in the dreams involved green blood, which could mean that the time is symbolic of Finn running out of time while fighting the disease/curse/whatever you want to call it from the Heart of the Forest. I don't know. I'm just high and putting theories out there.)