In 2017, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings declared that he considered the streaming platform’s main competitor to be the human need for sleep. This mission to subsume all entertainment in existence under the big red N has now led the upstart studio to train its crosshairs on the meaty legacy target of Saturday Night Live. In hiring former SNL cast member Chris Rock to do live comedy on a Saturday night – his new standup special Selective Outrage being their first foray into non-pretaped content – Netflix has thrown down an unmistakable gauntlet, though it quickly becomes clear to anyone tuning in that there’s no revolution close at hand.
Watching 90 minutes of goofy sketches broken up by commercials doesn’t demand nearly as much of its viewership as doing the same with an uninterrupted hour of finely honed, politically charged monologuing. Where SNL has the informal atmosphere of a boozy party with friends as likely to crack up at their own antics as you are, Rock’s Baltimore set is by its nature a sit-and-listen affair.
