2021 has arrived with some big questions: can we overcome the COVID-19 pandemic? Will the economy recover? Is the nation able to heal its dangerous divisions? Then, of course, there was the biggest question of all: What would late-night comedy do without Trump?
“Saturday Night Live” answers the last of these, at least in part, with its first installment of Joe Biden’s presidency. And the future looks … uninspired.
After a month-long hiatus, the show struggled to find its footprints and has sadly surpassed it by a world that has changed drastically since the venerable sketch comedy, now in its 46th season, was last aired in December. Despite all the problems – an astonishing uprising in the capital, the tearing of Kim and Kanye, Bernie Sanders’ inaugural shoes, QAnon idiots in fur, the rolling out of vaccines, stop-stop goofballs in Wall Street – the host John Krasinski and the cast has been given little to cooperate with by “SNLs” writers.
There was a ‘Ratatouille’ spoof in which the early rodent of the film was again represented as a rat controlling Krasinski’s movements in the bedroom. ‘Supermarket Sweep’, a weak ‘Weekend Update’ with jokes about transgender ‘tucking’ in the army, and other lazy, rude gags spread in sketches I’ve forgotten.
If Trump has won one victory in the past month, it could be that “SNL” suddenly looks lost without him. The big orange beacon of ridicule has left the building, and where’s the joy of having fun with Biden (recently played by Alex Moffat, who replaced Jim Carrey) or Vice President Kamala Harris (Maya Rudolph) when it’s all there is to it? work? far is an aggressive normal inauguration and civil daily personal information. The new team in Washington will surely be parodied because it tackles one of the most challenging terms in modern memory, but it will never make the drama turn out like its predecessor. “SNL” will have to increase its scope again, because spreading humor out of the White House is never going to be as easy as it has been for the past four years. The health of the country depends on a boring POTUS.
When the series returning Saturday tried to turn humor out of the news, it rarely hit the mark. In the cold open, Kate McKinnon presented the talk show “What Still Works,” where she looked at what, if anything, still works in America.
Her first guest: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the newly elected Georgia congresswoman who promotes QAnon conspiracies, endorsed the execution of Democratic leaders on Facebook and thinks the massacre of the massacre in Parkland, Florida, was staged. In the segment, Greene brings a gun to the interview, boasting of the threat to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, believing the wildfires in California were caused by Jewish space lasers.
The problem is that it is not satire: it is the truth. And the bit does not improve as it goes on … for a few more ‘guests’. Among them was OJ Simpson (Kenan Thompson), who made an appearance about the explosion of the vaccine in what now passes on “SNL” for ironic humor. (Unlike much of the country, Simpson was vaccinated against COVID-19.)
Why write jokes when the joke of reality can be hard to beat? There’s no doubt that it’s getting harder and harder to make headlines, perhaps even more so than when Melissa McCarthy turned Sean Spicer’s furious roar into comedy genius.
But ‘SNL’ has built a 45-year-old comedy empire on top of skewed culture, politics and anything else that captures the spirit of the times. There is no doubt that it will do again. But the show must be weaned from an old presidency and look with fresh eyes at the present and the future – whether it’s vague or bloody after four years of Trump.