If there was an SNL Golden Age, when was it?
I know that’s a bit of a cliche thing to say. People have been saying it for decades now, and it’s often been untrue, or at least misleading. The standard form is to say that these skits and actors today are a pale shadow compared to that first group — Belushi, Akroyd, etc.
In fact, even though I was the perfect age for the first-cast’s demographic, and enjoyed it very much at the time, I think the height of the show may been about 10-15 years later, with a stream of such bright lights as Eddie Murphy, Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, Martin Short, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and on and on. I think the slide started sometime after that.
By the turn of the century, most of the magic was gone. Most, but not all, by any means. When Tina Fey came back to do Sarah Palin (especially in the skit with Jason Sudeikis as Joe Biden) in 2008, we saw comic commentary reach the show’s highest peak ever. There were a few other funny bits in those couple of decades, but you had to wait for them, and the waits were long and sad.
Very sad.
I was reminded of this a couple of times today. I sort of forgot it after the first instance, but then a few minutes ago I saw this headline:
Canadian Prime Minister Carney rebuffs Trump’s push to make Canada the 51st state
… which of course brings up the main problem with doing political comedy in the age of Trump. How do you parody a guy who exceeds the comic sense of the absurd with everything he says and does.
Which took me back to the first thing, which I saw this morning on YouTube while working out:
My first thought when the still image appeared on my screen was, That guy again! The same guy who was such an awful Joe Biden!
I had to Google him to find out that he is James Austin Johnson. He might be acceptable in the role if I’d never seen anyone else do Biden or Trump, and actually be funny doing it — such as Sudeikis, or even Alec Baldwin.
Sudeikis was brilliant, and while his performance was chock full of flaws (and, if you’re a Trump admirer, unfair), it was still funny. And he didn’t even need the wig or makeup — if he started doing it on the street without such embellishments, you’d get it, and you’d laugh (unless you were one of those poor Trump admirers).
The thing is, the material in the skit embedded above wasn’t bad — some pretty good gags there. But the delivery was just so distractingly awful. It wasn’t the wig or the makeup. Think about Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford — there was no wig or makeup, and he didn’t even try to sound like him. But it was funny. Which, I think, should be the point on a comedy show.
Maybe Mr. Johnson wrote some of those decent gags. If so, he should probably stick to that, and leave the funny to funny people.
And he’s not the only one that this could be said about, but I’ll stop with the meanness now…
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