SNL Was Laughworthy Despite Low Ratings

I watched “Saturday Night Live” last weekend for the first time in a great while. It isn’t that I’ve been avoiding SNL, but, as I get older, I find that I watch less television. There are just more interesting things to do than sit in front of the tube. This past weekend, however, I was waiting up for my teenage son so I decided to watch the season premiere of SNL. My reaction was that it was a funny show.

The season premiere was hosted by Woody Harrelson and the musical guest was Billie Eilish. I’ve enjoyed Harrelson’s work off and on since “Cheers.” As for Eilish, I can honestly say that I don’t recall ever hearing of her before, but I have always primarily viewed the musical interludes as an opportunity to go the bathroom and/or refill my drink.  She did fine though.

As you’d expect, the show started with a dig at President Trump. I mean, honestly, how could a show like SNL avoid taking on the biggest scandal of the week that features a president that is a ripe target for satire? Alec Baldwin reprised his role as Donald Trump in an amusing cold open skit that featured everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Ray Donovan (who I also didn’t know but the context was easy to figure out), Kim Jong Un, and Kanye West.

But, despite the claims that SNL only targets Republicans, the show also skewered the Democrats with an “impeachment town hall” skit that hit the presidential candidates. Beto spoke “eighth grade Spanish,” Corey Booker left early “to beat the traffic,” Marianne Williamson planned to trap Trump in a crystal, Buttigieg waffled on pronunciation of his name, and Elizabeth Warren described herself as a “school librarian” with the “energy of a mother of five boys who all play different sports.” Maya Rudolf drew acclaim for her portrayal of Kamala Harris as an actress shilling for a television crime drama and repeatedly exclaiming, “That was me.” But that isn’t the best party. Larry David returned as Bernie “I’m back to ruin things a second time!” Sanders, a curmudgeon who cannot program his television remote.

Harrelson stole the skit with his portrayal of daffy Joe Biden, however. One of my favorite lines of the night was Harrelson’s complaining in Biden’s persona, "I'm like plastic straws. I've been around forever, I've always worked, and now you're mad at me.”

After enjoying the show, I was surprised to learn today that the SNL premiere came in a bit lower in the ratings than the show’s premiere last year and below average for last year’s episodes. It was, however, a higher rating than for last year’s season finale for 18-49-year-olds.

My guess is that there are several reasons for this. One is our tribal political environment. SNL has become identified as a liberal show and now conservatives are apparently supposed to root for bad ratings and the show’s demise. It seems that we can’t laugh at our own side anymore even though our own side is eminently mockable at the moment.

Sometimes that’s understandable. Comedy has to contain a grain of truth to be funny. Often these days, comics take the low road and simply go for applause and moral superiority by making political statements instead of jokes, i.e. “F-ck Trump” or “Trump is a racist.” That’s not funny. However, the cold open on Saturday night was different. It did caricature Trump and others, but it did so in a way that was close enough to the truth to be funny. The same treatment was applied to the Democrats.

Both sides seem to have lost their sense of humor. The left is comprised of humorless scolds who police jokes for biases and stereotypes that must be atoned for. The right venerates Donald Trump to a degree that it cannot see the humor in a man whose Twitter feed often seems to be more of a caricature than the SNL script.

For another thing, American culture and society are so drenched in politics that we need a break. When a political lens is applied to every issue under the sun, viewers might not want to hear another hour-and-a-half of political humor late on Saturday night.

Maybe it was just a factor of unseasonably warm weather that made it attractive to be outside rather than in front of the television.

I hope that the rest of the season is as funny as this weekend’s episode. I grew up watching SNL and laughing at the political jibes. The show was especially relevant in election years with its mockery of debates on both parties. For some reason, whenever I think of SNL politics, I think of Democrat Paul Simon thinking, “I think I really scored big with the bow tie” back during the 1992 election.

For much of the time that I’ve watched SNL, it has been trendy to say that the show isn’t as good as it used to be. Maybe that’s true. Adam Sandler, Dana Carvey, and Mike Myers were hard to beat. Not to mention Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, and John Belushi. But I’ll bet that most of the people who say that probably never watch the show. The skits have always been hit or miss with some that flop and some that turn into comedy gold. One of my favorite SNL skits, “David Pumpkins,” came from the 2016 season.

A good part of the rating slump may be that Republicans don’t want to tune in to watch Donald Trump being ridiculed. If they can’t stand to see Trump roasted, that is their choice, but if they don’t watch, they’ll miss more really funny stuff that mocks the left as well, such as the faux ad for Levi’s “Wokes” jeans from two years ago.

My advice would be to not take your politics so seriously that you can’t laugh at people who should be laughed at. Maybe laughing at ourselves as well as the opposition can help bring us back together as a nation.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Gays On Film Flop Despite Increased Presence

Have you heard of ABC’s epic miniseries, When We Rise? Neither have I, but LifeSiteNews says that the eight-hour show detailing the rise of the gay rights movement was heavily promoted during the Oscars. (Come to think of it that might explain why I missed it.) Nevertheless, the miniseries bombed and placed last among shows on the big four networks and next-to-last overall, coming in just ahead of Jane the Virgin on the CW.

LGBTQ shows were the hot new thing last year. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage across the country, networks bet that the time had come for gay television shows. CNN reported last year that there were more gay and lesbian characters on television than at any time in the past. Overall, 4.8 percent of regular characters fell under the LGBTQ umbrella.

The push for gay characters shows no signs of abating. Earlier this month, Disney introduced its first gay (or at least questioning) character in the new version of Beauty and the Beast. A gay romance has also been confirmed for the new Star Wars movies.

If it seems like homosexuality is more prevalent on television than in real life, you are right. Only 3.8 percent of Americans identify as LGBT per Gallup.

In spite of this, The Advocate bemoans the unpopularity of gay television and movies like When We Rise. Even though Moonlight, another movie that I had never heard of about a gay black boy in Miami, won the Academy Award for best picture in an upset over La La Land, “it had the lowest box-office numbers of all the nominees,” writes Daniel Reynolds.

Reynolds also notes that CBS recently canceled Doubt, “the first network TV show to feature a trans actress (Laverne Cox) in a regular, main-cast trans role.” Reynolds says, “If Doubt were still on the air, viewers on CBS — a network with real red state reach — could have seen Cox’s character, an attorney, strike up a romantic relationship with a cisgender man and help defend a trans victim of violence.” That is not exactly must-see TV for red state viewers.

Polling shows that Americans are increasingly accepting of both homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Pew found that 63 percent now believe that homosexuality should be accepted. Resistance to homosexuality among both Christians and conservative Republicans has declined in recent years. Gallup now shows 61 percent in favor of same-sex marriage with only 37 percent opposed.

How then can we square the flop of gay programming with the increasing acceptance of homosexuality? A clue can be found in Reynold’s lament over the cancellation of Doubt. He seems to view the show as evangelism to red states rather than entertainment.

Americans typically have a live and let live, libertarian attitude to issues like homosexuality. “Let them do what they want behind closed doors if it doesn’t affect me,” seems to be the prevailing attitude. This laissez-faire attitude towards personal sexual relationships does not extend to watching shows and movies about gays that are not entertaining.

There have been two unquestionably successful shows featuring main characters who are gay. Will and Grace, which ran from 1998 through 2006, and Modern Family, which debuted in 2009, were both mainstream hits. These were funny shows that succeeded on their own merits as entertainment and not because they pushed a gay agenda.

With gay viewers representing only a tiny slice of television viewers, producers and writers must be careful not to turn off straight viewers with gay characters and plots. A New York Times list of the most influential gay movies and television shows reveals that most of the entries that were memorable and successful were gay characters and episodes on otherwise straight shows such as the lesbian wedding episode on Friends or the lesbian kiss on Roseanne. Many of the “groundbreaking” shows and movies were notable only as footnotes in gay film history.

Due to the proliferation of cable channels and internet television shows, it is easier than ever before for a show to become successful while appealing to only a small segment of viewers. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a reality show in which gay men gave straight men fashion makeovers, was successful on Bravo for five years. Girls, a series on HBO, catapulted Lena Dunham from obscurity to minor celebrity status. Even a hit show like Modern Family draws only about 8 million viewers each week out of a nation of 350 million. In contrast, I Love Lucy drew 11 million viewers each week when there were only 15 million TV sets in the entire country.

The lesson for networks is that while Americans are increasingly tolerant towards gays, they don’t necessarily want to tune in to gay romances or shows that preach a gay political agenda. While movies like Moonlight and When We Rise may achieve critical acclaim, it’s the shows that make us laugh and offer an escape from day-to-day life that get us to tune in. 

Originally published on The Resurgent