Saturday Night Live & Political Satire

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Here is a very bad idea for a SNL opening skit:
bring all the comics who had played a Republican
President Candidate during the primary season and
showcase all their impersonations in a single bit.
The show tried just such a skit last night, and the
result was very revealing.

The sketch itself wasn't terrible in a television and
primary season which has featured a lot of terrible
political satire on SNL, but seeing all the faux
candidates together made it abundantly clear that
not a single one of the cast members had taken a
candidate and made the part his or her own.  Not
one had done something special with the opportunity,
which is especially regrettable given the heights to
which Tina Fey and Darrell Hammond had taken
their political characters in recent years.

Still the main responsibility for the dearth of political
satire on Saturday Night Live can not be laid at the
performers' feet.  Recent Weekend Updates make it
abundantly clear that the writers on the show don't
know much about politics, or at least don't have
anything interesting to say about it.

Very little on Weekend Update is political.  Even
when the topic is nominally political, usually the
humor is not.  

It's not difficult to imagine why SNL might have
trouble attracting a political writer or two:  The
Daily Show and The Colbert Report have become
where the action is for political satire.  If you're
interested in politics and you're a comic writer, those
are the shows you'd want to write for.

So what should Saturday Night Live do?  I think
they have two choices.  One is to drop Weekend
Update.   The Daily Show and The Colbert Report
have raised the standards so high, that in comparison
SNL's  current efforts are an embarrassment.  The
other is to return to the Dennis Miller model.

Lure a hip young political satirist to Saturday Night
by giving him the news.  Sure he still has to make
room for the zanies who round off the bit, but the
anchor should be guaranteed 5 or 6 solid minutes
which are all his own.  He writes, he produces,
he delivers.  It's his own show within a show,
and that's his only responsibility during the week.

This seems the only way to save Weekend
Update.  Yes, Seth Meyers has been honest to
point out that SNL is not a political show,
but without any political content, there is really
no good rationale for Weekend Update, so
either find a political comic to save it or throw
another digital short into the mix.

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What's Wrong With Saturday Night Live?

:{(

Every four years as the election rolls around Saturday Night Live
commands a significantly larger audience of viewers who tune in
wanting to see the candidates satirized.

It's in effect a test to see if SNL can still deliver high quality political
satire.  This year they are failing miserably.  If you can't get laughs
out of The Newt & Nitt Show, you are seriously in trouble comedically.

I'm afraid SNL is on life support again. 

The Emperor (Jon Stewart) Needs New Clothes

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No one wants to speak of it, but the sad truth is that as
The Colbert Report has gone off on its brilliant satiric
attack featuring real money on American campaign
financing, The Daily Show has slipped into slow decline.

The viewer can still count on the opening segment being
cogent, funny and satirically engaged either with current
politics or the media's - almost always in this case cable
news's - inept or biased attempts to turn out 24 hrs/7days
a week's worth of news and analysis.

Still even here, Stewart spends an increasing amount of
time milking his material using techniques which used to
be more the style of his correspondents than himself.
Congratulating himself with fake slam dunks after jokes
that misfire or hit just right or dropping into a character
to challenge himself to a duel:  these are all necessary
parts of a comic's repertoire; but they shouldn't play
too big a role.

As to his correspondents, only John Oliver consistently
engages with politics.  Tonight's round table on the
President's State of the Union featured a bit of shared riffing
on whether Biden had a public hair in his jaw during the
speech.  Jokes about public hair sticking to peanut butter
are, of course, de rigeur in this situation, but political satire
it ain't. 

It all smells a bit of desperation.  Stewart  and his staff
must be aware of the shift in quality, the transitional
moment when the protege eclipses the mentor.  The Daily
Show still features some of the best political satire on tv,
but it needs to take a hard look at itself, stop relying
on the enormous good will Stewart's audience feels towards
him and start looking for ways to regenerate.

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