2021 came up with some pretty big questions: Can we overcome the COVID-19 pandemic? Will the economy recover? Can the nation heal its dangerous divisions? Then, of course, there was the biggest question: what does late-night comedy do without Trump?
“Saturday Night Live” answered the last of these, at least in part, with the first episode of Joe Biden’s presidency. And the future looks … uninspired.
After a month-long hiatus, the show struggled to find its position and seemed hopelessly outdated by a world that has changed drastically since the venerable sketch comedy, now in its 46th season, was last on air in December. Despite all the choirs – an astonishing uprising of the capital, the split of Kim and Kanye, the meme of Bernie Sanders’ inauguration mitts, QAnon idiots in fur, vaccine rollout gaffes, Game Stop goofballs gaming Wall Street – host John Krasinski and the cast got little use for nothing from “SNL’s” writers.
There was a ‘Ratatouille’ parody, which reimagined the film’s precocious rodent as a rat controlling Krasinski’s movements in the bedroom. There was an unusual take on “Supermarket Sweep,” a feeble “Weekend Update” with jokes about transgender “tucking in” into the military, and other lazy, crude jokes scattered about sketches I’ve already forgotten.
If Trump has had one win in the past month, “SNL” may suddenly seem lost without him. The big orange beacon of spot has left the building, and where is the fun of having fun with Biden (most recently played by Alex Moffat, who replaced Jim Carrey) or Vice President Kamala Harris (Maya Rudolph) when all is gone To work far is an aggressively normal inauguration and bourgeois daily press conferences. The new Washington team will certainly be parodied when it starts on one of the most challenging terms in modern memory, but it will never spin the drama like its predecessor. “SNL” will have to broaden its scope again, for wringing humor out of the White House will never be as easy as it has been for the past four years. The health of the country depends on a boring POTUS.
When the recurring series tried to pull humor out of the news on Saturday, it rarely got it right. Out in the cold open air, Kate McKinnon hosted 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 congressman from Georgia who promotes QAnon conspiracies, supported the execution of Democratic leaders on Facebook, and thinks the mass school shooting took place in Parkland, Florida. In the segment, Greene brings a gun to the interview, shows off threatening to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and believes the California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers.
The problem is, that’s not satire: it’s the truth. And the bit doesn’t improve as it goes … for a few more “guys”. Among them was OJ Simpson (Kenan Thompson), who appeared to talk about introducing vaccines into what is now “SNL” passing on for ironic humor. (Simpson has been vaccinated against COVID-19, unlike much of the country.)
Why write jokes when the farcical nature of reality is hard to beat? There’s no question it’s getting harder to make headlines, perhaps even more so than it was when Melissa McCarthy turned Sean Spicer’s obnoxious roar into a comedic genius.
But “SNL” has built a 45-year-old comedy empire on top of culture, politics, and everything else that captures the zeitgeist. There is no doubt it will do it again. But the show must turn itself away from an old presidency and look with fresh eyes to the present and the future – vague or bloodshot it may be after four years of Trump.