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At its most basic level, comedy is exactly this kind of left hook of expectation. You thought that man was going to keep walking down the road, but he falls into a manhole cover. You thought Henny Youngman was going to use his wife as an example, but he just literally wants you to take her. You think a comic is going to get nastily personal at a roast of one of his friends, and instead he hits him with a pillowy soft selection of material from a 1950s insult joke book, as Macdonald did during a legendary set during the roast of Bob Saget.

If Norm Macdonald is one of the funniest comics of his generation – and there are plenty of other funny people, from David Letterman, who booked him as the comedian on his final show, to Louis C.K., who provides the foreword to Based on a True Story (not to mention the a network of former collaborators and distant well-wishers who will debate just where Norm is in their personal top fives) – it is because he knows how to set off this juxtaposition so well. He knows how to build your expectation so deep, that even the slightest hitch can be hilarious – and the wild, ridiculous swings he often employs, in that pointedly dry tone of his, can be something else entirely.

Stand-up might always be the purest expression of that sensibility, but in a twist that fits one of his drier jokes, it also might be the least visible aspect of his public persona. Because of its place in our consciousness, Macdonald’s run on Saturday Night Live – specifically, his time behind the Weekend Update desk – will always define him. It is both an ideal and an imperfect showcase.