So, yes, obviously, it is a little ridiculous to call someone who is already a featured player on SNL by the age of 30 underappreciated. I acknowledge that. But it genuinely concerns me that people might not understand the work of Kyle Mooney.
“Sure, that’s funny, he’s funny. I laughed. It’s funny.” NO. Do not damn him with faint praise. Speak only when you know what you are about to say or shut your mouth entirely. It’s exquisitely tuned; it is a symphony written on a grain of rice, and I wish to helling Christ I could find a better way to describe what’s so unique about Inside SoCal and the Chris Kirkpatrick videos.
What I want to do is say that he interrogates a certain type of white maleness that is normally ignored as the default, but without saying “interrogates,” “default,” or “white maleness,” both because academic speak is deeply unlovely and also because this barely begins to describe what it is that he does. It’s like watching a surgeon perform an operation on himself without chloroform.
Two different jokes about Southern California don’t have to compete, but I will simply say that it is utterly wrong that the Californians sketch is the better-known and better-loved of the two. We have made the wrong choice; we are living in the wrong timeline.
“Fucking Lauren Reed, the whole Lenwood house.” The details are finely wrought in gorgeous filigree. Every name and location rings with the hearty echo of Truth. Whatever the male equivalent of vocal fry is, Kyle Mooney has found it; that peculiar mix of upspeak, self-conscious bass notes, and indirect eye contact that characterizes a certain variety of lovable, terrible maleness are all beautifully reproduced here. You know this man. He is rarely right about anything, but you never have the heart to correct him. He is utterly predictable and yet full of surprising emotional depths.
“Why aren’t blunts, tall cans, newer-style movies, my mp3s, the boys, lifting, TV, Madden, Halo, bomb-ass Mexican food, sick clothes, or my girlfriend Bree bringing me happiness? Instead I feel empty, and a fear for what tomorrow will bring and shit.”
You love him, despite yourself. He is your boy Todd.
This…this I am afraid to watch, sometimes, and yet I do it almost weekly. Kyle’s carried the Chris character over to SNL for videos like The Fight and Chris Kirkpatrick For Student Body President, where he’s taken on some of Todd’s softer qualities. Here you see him in true form.
The worst possible outcome of your watching this with me is mistaking this for a slight, three-minute monologue by an unpleasant and unsettling character. In Chris Kirkpatrick, Kyle is noticing things on purpose that are designed to escape notice. (I feel myself on the verge of saying “default” and “unconscious” and “reflexive”; let us hurry onward.) Chris’ anger is ridiculous, his posturing is threatening, and his voice when his uncle calls brings tears to my eyes every time. Everything I can think to fear or resent or feel tender about in straight white maleness is here, in one goateed youth, and he’s flailing nunchucks around in inexpert frustration, and I want nothing more than to take his weapons away from him and watch him smoke cigarettes for hours.
