Nothing has been more anticipated than the Presidential debates themselves than the premier of SNL and how the show would “cover” the stretch run. The hope was that we would be treated to something akin to the gift that was Palin/McCain in 2008. That stretch was arguably the last truly great sustained effort produced by the show, and although it got off to a decent start on the season premiere last night, it showed the continuing tone deafness of the once essential show.
The debate segment was funny enough, but even the great Alec Baldwin can’t out Trump Trump. I still find McKinnon’s Hillary over the top, but the segment worked as a whole…
Where the show lost me was the Weekend Update, where once again it showed that they are very far behind the standard set by Jon Stewart and now led by John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee.
The problem is tone deafness, the shows continued inability to make fun of both candidates while having the jokes ring true. We’ve all seen what happened this week. Hillary put in an exemplary performance at the debate, then watched all week as Trump imploded spectacularly. But that’s not the way that Colin Jost and Michael Che (who have the benefit of being, you know- live) called it. First Joke:
The first Presidential debate is over and it’s official; We still have to choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton...
drum clap….
Jost then went into a semi clever iPhone/Galaxy 7 joke, but Hillary’s consensus whooping of The Donald kind of made a false equivalence joke pointless…
With the next joke, Che says he didn’t know what he expected watching the debate, and likens the choice to staring into an empty refrigerator and being stuck with Tang or Prunes. Then he said:
It didn’t even feel like I was watching a debate. It felt like I was watching a divorced couple fight for custody of a kid that hates them both.
Really? That one may have worked months ago when Bernie was still in the thick of it, but it just sounds scripted and mean spirited now. Not to mention completely divorced from reality, if what you are covering is the actual debate and it’s highly reported aftermath.
Then Jost had the nerve to read this one:
This has got to be the first debate in history where afterwards people were genuinely asking “Were THEY on drugs?”
THEY? Are you fucking kidding me?
What makes political humor funny is when it rings true. That joke just shows ignorance.
Jost then used a pretty funny wrestling analogy, with Chris Christie holding the chair, but chose to finish with a joke about Hillary using James Brown’s I Feel Good at a recent rally. The joke being that Brown died of Pneumonia… Major problem with that joke is that it’s already a month old. We heard it from other late night hosts in real time while SNL was still on vacation.
Kind of sad, weeks and months to prepare and it all just seemed stale…. If you want a post debate wrap up that’s funny AND dead on, watch Samantha Bee. She killed it….
