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To host its first show after the 2020 presidential election, “Saturday Night Live” chose Dave Chappelle, who hosted (and won an Emmy for it) the first show after the 2016 presidential election. As a first step, many viewers would have gone to the show out of pity, for the kind of perspective that only comedy can offer. (I can’t swear that “SNL” viewership is largely political left, but given the content, it would be weird if it wasn’t.)
This year, viewers would have presumably turned to NBC’s nighttime mothership to cap off a day of celebration – though Chappelle was no more ready to simply celebrate in 2020 than he was to simply castigate in 2016, when he closed his opening monologue by saying, “I wish Donald Trump the best of luck, and I’m going to give him a chance, and we, historically disenfranchised, ask that he give us one too. .
This Saturday’s show started late – due to a college football overtime – was frustrating that day, even for an irregular viewer. Comedy has been the filter through which many of us have been able to digest news for the past four years; anticipating what “SNL” will have to say about the week is, for many, a way of getting through it. By continuously bringing new blood – by exchanging its blood – the series has managed to stay relevant over the years. It’s not always funny, but it continues to matter.
The typically topical cold opening, which played on President-elect Joe Biden’s victory speech, opened with Beck Bennet as CNN host Wolf Blitzer (“I’ve been awake so long that my beard bald odd finally makes sense ”) and Alex Moffat as John King, fingers worn down to the heels of“ 85 hours ”on the touchscreen.
Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Biden, featured by the actor and debuting at the show’s season opener, appears to be based entirely on Biden’s idea of a sharp, flint tough badass, though a lot of jokes talk about him. (“I’ve never felt so alive, which is ironic because I’m almost dead.”) You get a lot more of Carrey here – the Carrey that tends to assault, that is, rather than whoever can actually act – what do you do Biden; other than an excellent hairpiece, identity theft is not like him at all. It’s not strictly necessary, of course, but I find Carrey’s performances tiring – which isn’t entirely tiring.
Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris, on the other hand, captures the sound and look and cool sass of the Vice President-elect; she appeared on Saturday in an outfit so miraculously close to the one Harris had worn hours earlier that one suspects there may have been some communication on the point – and if not, well done to the customers. (Well done anyway.) To interrupt the cheers, she announced herself as “the first woman, the first black, the first Native American and the first biracial vice president – and if all that terrifies you, well, I don’t.” don’t give a fuck. Addressing ‘all the little black and brown girls watching,’ she said, ‘The reason your mom is laughing so much tonight is because she’s drunk, and the reason she’s crying is is because she is drunk. Your mom will go from laughing to crying and dancing most of the night. And just because she’s crazy, she’s drunk.
Jim Carrey as Joe Biden and Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris in the post-election episode of “Saturday Night Live”.
(Will Heath / NBC)
Rudolph’s Harris (especially that night) is a celebration with a personal resonance, unlike, say, Alec Baldwin’s sour and crinkling Trump – also present in the open to deliver a victory speech which, facts being facts, finally found him singing on the piano. a sad, slow chorus of “Macho Man” in a clear call to Kate McKinnon’s beautiful and contemplative performance of “Hallelujah”, much like Hillary Clinton, in the post-election cold 2016 that opened several lifetimes ago. With two unpredictable months to go until opening day, this was definitely not the last time Baldwin donned the orange wig, but no one (including the actor, apparently) will be sad to see her in a box or in a trash can.
The Weekend Update, which typically falls somewhere after the midpoint of the 90-minute show, is in some ways its purest – and by definition, most current – moment – although unlike its early days. absurd, Francisco-Franco-is-still-dead. , at a time when the absurdities of the world trump the craziest ideas in the writers’ room, the segment has become something more pointed and political; Michael Che, in particular, approaches the Anchor post with a sort of happy editorial anger. (“Trump reportedly told his allies he will have to be dragged out of the White House screaming and kicking… Good!” He said on Saturday, and had a drink.) Narrative limits of a sketch; This Saturday gave us the demonic Rudolph W. Giuliani of McKinnon, describing Trump’s challenges with the election results:
“First, we’re going to be mailing fake ballots … these ballots, they could come from March!” McKinnon’s Giuliani said. (“It’s a real thing you really said,” co-host Colin Jost interjected, meaning the real Giuliani.) “So we’re going to demand that we look at all the names… if the name is Meep Thorp Xandar and the the address is March, we’re going to throw those ballots…. We have no idea if these are really ballots, maybe they are tortillas; we’re going to eat them and see if they’re tortillas.
By the show’s hit-and-miss standards, this show was more hit-and-miss than failed. Chappelle was involved in some effective sketches, the first with Rudolph as Aunt Jemima and Kenan Thompson as Uncle Ben fired from their job (Chappelle played “the Allstate Guy” – Dennis Haysbert – while Pete Davidson wore an elaborate make-up by Count Chocula). Another sketch, which depicted Trump escaping the White House in a parody of the slow pursuit of OJ Simpson, chose Chappelle to host a morning show. “You hate to see it,” he said, “but you love to see it.”
Chappelle was of course mainly there to be himself – a lot of the work of his career has been to define who exactly that is – and he did it exactly in a 16-minute opening monologue. Dressed in a slim suit, with a lit cigarette and an ashtray perched on a handy stool, he cut out the figure from a comic book from an earlier era, despite the white sneakers. (His own career, surprisingly, spans nearly three decades.) Partly because of how he’s been prepared to walk away from success – although success always awaits him when he returns – he’s as much of a hero. of culture than an actor, storyteller of hard truths like Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce. He is both familiar and off-putting.
Chappelle’s disparate impulses can make it difficult to assess the level of irony of a joke, or whether a joke is even a joke. But he’s never less than interesting, and I say that as someone who finds the non-professionally obsessed “not funny” Bruce as compelling as the more professional funny. No one familiar with Chappelle’s work would have expected a simple series of happy election-themed jokes. And no one understood it. The world might have changed on Saturday, that was his general theme, but maybe not that much.
“This morning, after the results, I received a text from a friend of mine in London. And she said, “The world feels like a safer place now that America has a new president. And I said, ‘This is great. But not America. ”
Maya Rudolph as Aunt Jemima, Kenan Thompson as Uncle Ben, Dave Chappelle as “Allstate Guy” and Pete Davidson as Earl Chocula in a sketch for the Saturday edition of “Saturday Night Live”.
(Will Heath / NBC)
He seemed a little happy to be there, sort of not, ready to push against any walls that might threaten to lock him in just by being himself. (He admitted to being nervous.) His monologue traveled all kinds of places, for better and sometimes for worse; passages about his white farming neighbors in Ohio, complaining about the noise of the comedy shows he put on there, delivered more pique than perception and raced toward stereotyping in ways he generally scorned. There was a difficult comparison between Trump’s case of COVID-19 and Freddie Mercury contracting AIDS. A line on Dr Deborah Birx appearing to seriously listen to Trump’s nonsense about the coronavirus – “I saw that, I said, ‘Oh that’s why, that’s why women are doing halfway'” – elicited a moan from the audience, which in turn caused a weak feedback: “Did I trigger you?” … I’m sorry, Lorne, I thought we had a comedy show.
But Chappelle was solid on the president. “A helicopter took him to Walter Reed Hospital … I’m from DC And I have to tell you that Walter Reed isn’t close to the White House.” But you can walk. There was a team of doctors waiting for him, doctors came over, gave him experimental drugs and everything. I took him home in the helicopter … Then he went straight into the house, killing four other people. I said, “$ 750.50 in taxes, that goes a long way, doesn’t it, sir?” “
As in 2016, comedy gives way to contemplation.
“I would beg everyone celebrating today to remember, it’s good to be a humble winner,” said Chappelle. “Do you remember when I was here four years ago?” Remember how bad it felt? Remember, half the country still thinks that way today. Remember this. Remember that for the first time in American history, the life expectancy of whites is dropping. Because of the heroin, because of the suicide. All these white people out there, those who feel that angst, that pain, they’re crazy, because they think nobody cares. Maybe not.
“Let me tell you something. I know what it feels like … you are a policeman. And every time you put on your uniform you feel like you have a target on your back. You are appalled by it. ‘ingratitude of people when you would risk your life to save them … Believe me, I know what it feels like. Everybody knows what it feels like. But here’s the difference between you and me. You hate yourself for it. And I don’t hate anybody. I just hate that feeling. That’s what I’m struggling. That’s what I suggest you fight. You have to find a way to live your life. You have to find a way to forgive yourself. I have to find a way to find joy in your existence despite this feeling.
And then it was Sunday.
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