2021 arrived with some very important questions: Can we beat the COVID-19 pandemic? Will the economy recover? Is the nation able to heal its dangerous divisions? So, of course, there was the biggest question of all: what would the dawn comedy do without Trump?
“Saturday Night Live” answered the last of them, at least in part, with its first episode of Joe Biden’s presidency. And the future looks … uninspired.
After a month-long break, the show struggled to find its balance and seemed woefully outdated by a world that has changed dramatically since the venerable skit comedy, now in its 46th season, last aired in December. Despite all the burdens – an astounding Capitol insurrection, the separation of Kim and Kanye, the meme of Bernie Sanders’ opening gloves, idiots of QAnon in furs, vaccine launch errors, idiots of the Game Stop on Wall Street – presenter John Krasinski and the cast received little to work with the “SNL” writers.
There was a parody of “Ratatouille”, in which the precocious rodent of the film was reimagined as a mouse that controlled Krasinski’s movements in the room. There was a dull version of “Supermarket Sweep”, a weak “Weekend Update” with jokes about transgender people “doubling” in the military and other crude and lazy jokes scattered in sketches that I have already forgotten.
If Trump had a victory in the last month, it may be that “SNL” suddenly seems lost without him. The big orange lighthouse of ridicule has left the building, and where is the joy of mocking Biden (most recently played by Alex Moffat, who replaced Jim Carrey) or Vice President Kamala Harris (Maya Rudolph) when all there is to do it is now an aggressively normal opening and daily civil briefings to the press. The new team in Washington will certainly be parodied by embarking 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, because pulling the White House’s mood out will never be easier than in the past four years. The nation’s health depends on a boring POTUS.
When the returning series tried to deflect the mood from the news on Saturday, it rarely hit the mark. Outdoors, 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 congresswoman from Georgia who promotes QAnon conspiracies, endorsed the execution of Democratic leaders on Facebook and believes that the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, was staged. In the segment, Greene brings a weapon to the interview, boasts of threatening to kill Mayor Nancy Pelosi, and believes that California forest fires were started by Jewish space lasers.
The problem is that this is not satire: it is the truth. And the part doesn’t get better as you go … for several other “guests”. Among them was OJ Simpson (Kenan Thompson), who made an appearance to talk about the launch of the vaccine in what now passes for “SNL” for ironic humor. (Simpson was vaccinated against COVID-19, unlike much of the country.)
Why write jokes when the ridiculous nature of reality is hard to beat? There is no doubt that it is getting harder and harder to make headlines, perhaps even more so than it was when Melissa McCarthy turned Sean Spicer’s irritating boast into comedy genius.
But “SNL” built a 45-year-old comedy empire on culture, politics and anything else that happens to capture the zeitgeist. There is no doubt that he will do it again. But the program needs to get rid of an old presidency and look at the present and the future with new eyes – no matter how murky or injected it may be after Trump’s four years.