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Saturday Night Live

I'm obsessed with Chloe Fineman's recent performance on Saturday Night Live. Watch here:


Lunacy is signaled right away. Chloe describes the Oscars as her "favorite holiday," and doesn't pause to suggest there might be a difference between, say, Oscar night and Christmas.

Chloe announces, soberly, that the Oscars are a fine chance to consider women and their "steering-wheel acting." That's when the heroine is finally alone in her car, and she can just let it all out. She's not crying....she's not laughing....SHE'S ACTING!

There's actually only one example Chloe can cite, from "Knives Out," but it's part of the madness of the script that no one notices this. Renee Zellweger has her meltdown, but it's not via steering wheel; she's in the back of the cab. Saoirse Ronan comes from a pre-car era, but she can have her meltdown in a buggy. (No matter that I'm certain the iconic Ronan speech--"Women have hearts! And minds!"--doesn't actually occur in a buggy.)

Now the transit theme is abandoned entirely, and Fineman can just delight in becoming Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet, and Laura Dern. As she relaxes and becomes more confident, Fineman's impersonations become more eerily dead-on, while also seeming more over-the-top.

Kate McKinnon has said, If you're going to mock someone, you have to love and understand that person, first. And there's no question that Fineman--while having some authentic, biting observations about Oscar movies (they are indeed predictable and often far from actual life)--still also loves the people she is talking about.

I was really delighted by this clip. Enjoy!
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