SNL embraces its new-found relevance
The best sketches in the Trump era aren’t about politics, they’re about race
Last weekend, SNL led by example with a sketch that was legitimately boundary-pushing — and hilarious. The episode’s strongest bit, Mid-day News imagined staffers of a daytime Florida newscast enthusiastically guessing whether the alleged criminals in their news reports were black or white. The antics began when an anchor played by Ego Nwodim reported that a gas station had been robbed earlier that morning.
“And we’re told the suspect remains at large, but authorities now believe they have a credible description of the perp,” said her co-anchor, host Phoebe Wallerbridge. “The suspect, described as a white male ...”
“Woo!” Kenan Thompson interrupted. “Love it!” Nwodim shouted. Waller-bridge and another co-anchor, played by Alex Moffat, looked confused. “I’m sorry, what are you two celebrating?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing. We’re just glad that we know what the criminal looks like,” Thompson replied. He leaned toward Nwodim, dropping his voice to a hushed tone: “And he ain’t one of us.”
Moffat’s anchor then reported on a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme targeting wealthy Miami residents. “That’s one of y’all, for sure,” Nwodim said as Moffat detailed the “egregious white-collar crime.”
“It’s right there in the name,” Nwodim teased. But her glee turned to disappointment when the screen flashed to a picture of the suspect. “And look at that,” Moffat said smugly. “He’s black.”
The competition escalated from there. Even the station’s weatherman (Chris Redd) got in on the game while tracking the path of a hurricane dubbed Chet.
“Now that’s a white man’s name if I’ve ever heard one,” he said.
The kicker, which found Waller-bridge and Moffat conceding defeat after a report about “a man dressed as the Joker,” concluded the sketch with a timely chef’s kiss that added Mid-day News to a roster of sharp racial send-ups from SNL’S increasingly diverse writing staff. (In a tweet, senior writer Bryan Tucker credited Redd, Nwodim, and SNL co-head-writer Michael Che — the first black person to hold that title — with writing Mid-day News.)
As Saturday Night Live incorporates new voices both onscreen and off, the show’s ability to subvert racial stereotypes in unexpected ways has led to some of its strongest sketches, often overshadowing — or elevating — SNL’S political humour.
One obvious example is Black Jeopardy, the recurring sketch that quizzes characters, played by carefully chosen guest hosts, on black culture. When Tom Hanks hosted ahead of the
2016 presidential election, SNL tweaked the sketch’s typical clueless white person format, instead tapping Hanks to play a MAGA hat-wearing conservative who knew a surprising amount about black culture — because he related to it.
Black Jeopardy, created by Che and Tucker, pushed its racial humour to a new level last year, tapping host Chadwick Boseman to appear in character as Black Panther.
When comedian and former SNL scribe John Mulaney hosted in March, the standout sketch was Cha Cha Slide, a four-minute masterpiece that looked like it would riff on the inherent awkwardness of a white guy attending a predominantly black wedding. Instead, the sketch revealed that Mulaney’s character, “a software engineer from Indianapolis,” may have been the blackest person at the event, at least in spirit.
The sketch, penned by Tucker and writer Sam Jay was made even funnier by the fact that it cast Mulaney as a Howard University alum who pledged a black fraternity. Jay, one of seven writers who joined SNL in 2017, told Vice News that year she wanted her work on the show to incorporate themes the show had overlooked in its four-decadeplus history, such as the “urban culture stuff that they may not necessarily have their pulse on, gay culture ... just who I am,” she said.
Bowen Yang, the gay, Chinese American comic who was hired as a featured player after writing for SNL last season, has already brought queer culture to the show in memorable ways.
As the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump builds, the pressure is on for SNL to smartly lampoon the chaotic state of American politics. That these sketches find longevity amid a continual onslaught of forgettable celebrity guest stars points to an audience wanting more than just regurgitation of the week’s news.