Zoren: SNL hit all the right notes in debate parody
A fly has entered American history.
While I found several takeaways in last week’s debate between Vice Presidential candidates, incumbent Mike Pence
(R) and challenger Kamala Harris (D), enough to confirm my decision about how to vote Nov. 3, the most memorable and lasting element of the generally dull affair will be a fly that landed on Mr. Pence’s hair three-quarters of the way through and stayed there for two minutes.
The instance was so remarkable, and funny, it has given comedians more fuel than mimicking Sen. Harris smiling, pointing to herself, and emphasizing “I’m speaking” and serious commentators an opportunity for levity amid thoughts about the Senator joining ticket topper Joe Biden in refusing to say whether Democrats will pack the Supreme Court with additional justices if current nominee Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed or Vice President Pence attempting to rationalize the current administration’s response to the top story of 2020, the coronavirus.
The debate and the fly yielded so much prime material for satire, it led to one of the best skits NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has done in years, one that touched on every humorous moment, exuded wit, and made one nostalgic for the great “SNL” bits from yesteryear.
In a cold open, television’s best comic performer, Kate McKinnon, appeared as the droll, unimpressed moderator, USA Today’s Susan Page, who introduced a curtseying Beck Bennett as Mr. Pence, and a sneering, posing Maya Rudolph as Sen. Harris.
Immediately, Bennett and Rudolph captured the spirit of their models by dodging questions and launching into prepared campaign propaganda that blatantly ignored anything
Page wanted to know. Rudolph was funnier than Sen. Harris as she nailed the “I’m speaking” moment. Bennett droned on in Mr. Pence’s monotone but also caught the Vice President’s way of sneaking in salient differences in his and the Senator’s stand on fracking and other issues.
The best moment, before the fly was introduced, involved Rudolph’s Harris grabbing a martini, olive and all, to brace her through her ordeal at the same time Bennett’s Pence asks her point blank if she and the Democrats intend to pack the Court, causing Rudolph’s character to spit out her first sip of the cocktail.
This was comedy. This was satire. This was brilliant. “SNL” found and exploited the foibles of both candidates and spread its ridicule equally. Its writers showed they know the pulse and tenor of the 2020 campaign enough to supply their sketch with palpable zingers that hit their lampooning marks in a way that would make Mark Twain and Will Rogers proud.
Pence was shrewdly mocked when Bennett tells McKinnon’s Page that he is undaunted by being kept twelve feet apart from
Sen. Harris by a plexiglass barrier because that is the arrangement in his and “Mother’s” bedroom, “Mother” being Mrs. Pence.
Rudolph had and provided fun by pulling her face into all the incredulous expressions, including what she called “the Clare Huxtable side-eye,” Sen. Harris mustered during the debate. Her best line was “I’m going to stare at him as if he was a white woman at TJ Maxx who asked me for help.”
Rudolph also showed she does a great Philadelphia accent in a beat in which her Sen. Harris denies her and Mr. Biden’s intention to regulate or end fracking, a take that mentioned and appealed directly to Pennsylvanians.
And then came the fly.
And “SNL’s” master stroke. Rather than just have the fly randomly light on Mr. Pence’s scalp, “SNL” created a context for it.
No, it wasn’t a version of the popular social media meme that features the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying, “I sent it.”
It was more clever than that. Joe Biden, played by Jim Carrey, is watching the debate from
his Wilmington basement, Jill Biden (Heidi Gardner), and decides he need to go to the showdown’s Utah site to save Sen. Harris and “protect the soul of America.”
To make the cross-country journey in record time, Carrey’s Biden decided to use a “Star Trek”-style transporter. Against Jill’s protests, because the machine is not totally perfected,
Mr. Biden enters the contraption and is turned into….yes…the fly.
Not only does he reach Mr. Pence’s head, but he makes comments about the debate and soon morphs into Jeff Goldblum, star of the 1986 movie, “The
Fly,” bucked teeth, frenzied line delivery, and all. Typical of Carrey, the caricatures of both Mr. Biden and Goldblum are meticulous. Carrey even gets to mock Goldblum’s role in a current real estate ad.
“SNL” upped the ante by adding a second fly with Kenan Thompson representing Herman Cain, who complains about going one of President Trump’s mass rallies, following the President and his crowd by not wearing a mask, and contracting COVID, which killed him.
In addition to the superb comedy, “SNL” offered a smart, concise review of the Pence-Harris debate.
Much more civilized and substantial than the bout between Trump and Biden, the match between Pence and Sen. Harris contained some revealing moments during which both participants waffled, evaded, and lied but, in general, showed strength and made points that showed how separated our political parties while emphasizing 2020 gives voters a clear option to choose one of two paths. Contrary to the old saw, there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between Democrats and Republicans, this debate underscored how wide a gulf there is between the Trump and Biden campaigns.
This became abundantly apparent as Mr. Pence and Sen. Harris each reeled off some legitimate accomplishments and spoke cogently about intended policy while ducking commitment to some issues it might be important, and decisive, for American voters to hear.
Just as I defended Chris Wallace after the Presidential debate, I want to give a kind word to Susan Page, who is primarily part of the print world and not a television personality like Wallace.
Mike Pence and Kamala Harris are people of power who achieved enough respect to be chosen as their party’s nominee for Vice President. No matter what one thinks of the process by which Vice Presidential candidates are chosen, and no matter with how much esteem, or lack of it, one might regard the four leaders offered to us in this race, these people are accustomed to commanding attention and taking their time to say what they will.
Unless a sound effect, such as Beulah the buzzer, or a tactic like cutting a mike is employed, a moderator, whatever his or her commission from the agency in charge of debates, is talking to a President, Vice President,
or Senator. That moderator can try to be firm and maintain order, but the decorum of his or her side is to respect the office of the person before them.
Arguably, a government official of any rank in an employee of the public and should be considered lower in rank than citizen that sites on his or her Board of Directors.
In some ways, that would be nice, but it isn’t the case. There’s only so far Wallace or Page could have gone to discipline or silence someone who bears the title of President or Vice President, which three of the four debate participants do, even if
Mr. Biden’s status includes
“former.” Ms. Harris is a Senator vying to be Vice President. The candidates may not always behave in a way befitting their office, but it is important that a moderator regard that office. Joe Biden can mutter, in good Philadelphia terms, that Donald Trump should “shut up, man.” Chris Wallace and Susan Page do not have that luxury. They would seem rude and disrespectful.
Better the candidates should take that role. Wallace and Page did their best to say the campaigns agreed to a format and rules. They tried to manage time. A President,
Vice President, or Senator is used to talking at will. It would have been wonderful if either moderator had been able to maintain order, but they were up against tyros who, by
the importance of their offices, are not attuned to hear “no” or “stop.” Let’s credit Wallace and Page for their thoughtful questions, their intention to facilitate a genuine debate, and their modest and even frustrated attempts to get the participants to comply.
I think both Wallace and Page did admirable jobs under the circumstances. Only Joe Biden, mutters and all, gave the respect a moderator and the occasion are due. President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Sen. Harris were having no parts of that. Mr. Pence, of all of them, should know better about how to manage broadcast time. He was a radio host before venturing into politics. I can tell you from years of personal experience, when you are
on television or radio, you feel time and know how to fit your comments into it. Tell me something takes five minutes, and I, within seconds, will know when that five minutes is up and how to use that five minutes. It’s instinct. You do enough segments, with enough scheduled breaks, and time becomes automatic. Mr. Biden and Sen. Harris are not broadcasters. Donald Trump comes from edited television. Mr. Pence, as a radio veteran, should know and judge two minutes and be able to contain himself with that time.
Now, for one last visit to the fly that rescued the debate.
Why, out of courtesy, didn’t Susan Page say, “Mr. Pence, you may not realize it, but there is a fly on the right side of your
head?” Or Kamala Harris motion the way people do, for Mr. Pence to flick his scalp. On “SNL,” McKinnon’s Page makes an apt comment. Rudolph’s Harris lets you know she’s just sitting there and watching the farce play out.
“The farce.” There’s an interesting, and for me, defining characterization. To think those words, thanks to two debates, would dominate my attitude about what all and sundry are calling “the most important election in history!”
‘Fargo’ keeps hitting correct notes
Details on another occasion, but “Fargo,” with new episodes 9 p.m. Sundays on FX and a stream on Hulu, gives the new season with first program
with definite bite and total binging potential.
Politics play a bigger hand than in the first three seasons of the show. The humor is not as smartly dark or offhand as accustomed. There is no calming or heroic representative from law enforcement. Yet, ‘Fargo” entertains and keeps you absorbed in the tussle between Italian and Black crime organizations in
“50s Kansas City. The theme of what an outsider has to do to attain some wealth and status is more pointed, even when satirized, than you see in current reports of breaking news.
That’s one of the virtues of dramatic fiction.