By Cody Heintz, Business Editor
I knew Thursday Night Live (TNL) was off to their usual start when their opening scene felt like it was four and half minutes too long, and their slam zoom was not only out of focus but the actors head was not even in the full frame. For the most part the opening scene was devoid of any comedic moments except for the conversation with a priest, which was generally funny. The elevator package showed potential with a decent concept, but except for the interaction with the waitress, there was no really funny moment until the end. The insurance scene was a good idea but felt a little too dated and seemed to try to do too much. The main problem with this scene is that it seemed to have no focus and instead just constantly seemed to go off tangentially while adding nothing of comedic value. The entrance of Mister Rogers was a highlight and the parody was dead on. It got to the point where I was genuinely laughing at the jokes and interaction between characters.
The next package titled "My Strange Addiction" was probably the best scene of the show and not only a funny premise, but also good writing. However, though it does suffer from the typical TNL problem and that is the writers and producers of TNL does not know when to end a joke. This is a classic example of how TNL can take a good joke and concept and just drag it on to the point where the entire scene just suffers in quality. If the scene was cut down by about a minute and made faster cuts and transitions the quality would have improved drastically.
The Cash Cab package is an example of how a good concept could turn out badly. The idea had plenty of potential but both the writers and actors, Joe Pentz and Brandon Davis, didn't do a good enough job of engaging with their roles as the robber seemed to have over-acted his part to point where it was annoying and the taxi driver looked like he didn't even try to act a part other than himself and was a bore to watch on screen.
The Hispterhood scene could have been great at pointing out the absurdity of the hipster culture, but it just hard. The opening joke about not wanting to throw a cup of coffee due to price was perfect and could have been used as something to build on but instead went into absurdity land with Mike Hayden looking like he just came from a failed Harry Potter audition. If the hipsters were more based in real world stereotypes and typical hipster action it could have been a funny parody. Instead it just turned into an absurd and annoying mess.
Even though the joke was in the title the package "Nurple of Doom" seemed to build up to a joke that didn't really deliver and the Super Sayian moment looked like a middle-school student in Microsoft Movie Maker made it. One of TNL's hallmarks "TNL News" was up next and was a pretty enjoyable set with both topical and offbeat topics with good writing and Jake Link's solid news anchor delivery made this an enjoyable sketch to watch.
The musical guest for the evening was Mount Olympus. They were a decent rock band but didn't really bring anything new to differentiae themselves from the rest of the guests that have appeared on TNL. Their set felt like it was starting to drag on at the end and that they were being used to fill up dead air.