Who: Kyle Mooney

Cast Member Since: 2013

Kyle Mooney is having an interesting Saturday Night Live arc, which makes him a tricky cast member to evaluate.

Initially hired in 2013 alongside his Good Neighbor comedy troupe partners (Beck Bennett and producer/director Dave McCary) to take over the SNL Digital Shorts from the departing Lonely Island team, Mooney’s odd and quirky humor made an immediate splash, then took an strange turn between 2016-2018.

Starting at the beginning, Mooney’s first season was wonderful and marked some of the freshest comedy SNL had seen since the early Will Forte and Fred Armisen era circa 2002-2003. He debuted Weekend Update favorite Bruce Chandling in his very first episode, and his second episode included the hilarious Miley Cyrus Sex Tape. Both of these set the tone for what we could expect from Mooney – shy, somewhat self-deprecating humor that stuck with you if you let it. At times, you weren’t sure if you should be laughing at these characters or feeling bad for them. But what was certain is that it wasn’t like anything else on the show.

Mooney rounded out his first few seasons with other bizarre outings such as Inside SoCal, the ridiculously charming Awkward Flirts with Vanessa Bayer, heavy metal stereotype Chris Fitzpatrick and a series of man on the street interviews (which inspired a nice “In Praise Of” piece in 2015). My favorites, however, have always been his strange take on 1980s/1990s sitcoms in shorts like “Bad Boys” and “Beers”. He explained the motivation for these segments to the Washington Post in 2017 in such a wonderfully Kyle Mooney way: over his first two years at SNL, he watched every single episode of NBC’s Step by Step and Family Matters and summed up the experience thusly:

“If you watch it from another perspective that’s not just listening for laugh lines, it becomes a very abstract, almost psychedelic thing. You can get another layer and realize, this is actually really weird.”

While Mooney is arguably best known for his pre-filmed shorts, it can be surprising to note that 60%-70% of his screen time actually falls under the “live” category. Mooney has quietly racked up over 30 impressions and is almost always in the background as a one-line politician or news reporter in cold opens, a kid in classroom sketch, or other supporting, but necessary roles.

Then, around his 4th and 5th seasons, something happened. Mooney was still in nearly every episode, but in what felt like increasingly minor ways. In fact, his total screen time for Season 43 was down nearly 50% compared to previous years. What we did see, like the recurring Kyle & Leslie films were still very funny, but the more offbeat stuff was slowly vanishing from the show. The likely reason for this? My only guess is the show’s increased coverage of President Trump, which usually meant longer cold opens and other related sketches gobbling up air time. Fortunately, around this same time, NBC launched SNL‘s “Cut for Time” concept which showcased online some of the better content filmed for broadcast but ultimately didn’t fit the 90 minute episode allotment. This immediately began to feel like Mooney’s personal YouTube channel. So much so, that many outlets began calling him the undisputed king of the “cut for time” or some variation thereof.

This brings us to the recently wrapped 2018-2019 season. Mooney acknowledged his current position on the show in two ways: the season debut included A New Kyle which managed to cover both Mooney’s anonymity and Pete Davidson’s Summer 2018 Ariana Grande situation, then followed it up a few months later with a film about a SNL cast member getting cut for time – which ironically, was cut for time!

So how do you rate someone who’s funnier moments end up online and not in a traditionally defined episode? I’d say a 3 for the Cut for Time stuff, and a 2.5 for the content actually on the air. I’ll average and round that up to a light 3.

Enjoy some 2018-2019 Mooney content that made broadcast cut:

Sketch: Cop Christmas

Episode: Matt Damon/Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus (12/15/18)

Note: Mooney plays another insecure type character constantly on the end of the boys “busting balls”.

Filmed Segment: The Pumpkin Patch

Episode: Awkwafina (10/6/18)

Note: Mooney doesn’t have the lead role in this one, but his variation on the clueless Chris Fitzpatrick or Inside SoCal host as a pumpkin patch employee works very well.

SNL REPORT CARD / KYLE MOONEY: 3 Coneys

SCALE:

4 Coneys = Excellent / 3 Coneys = Good / 2 Coneys = Needs Improvement / 1 Coney = Worst

Jason Nummer still wonders what a second SNL season with Brooks Wheelan would have been like. You can follow him on Twitter at @jrnummer.

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