Should ‘SNL’ Ditch the Political Cold Open?
Donald Trump, if he were not the president of the United States, would be a fraudulent developer who yearned to host his own daytime television show. Vile, but mostly spending his days calling in to HLN to give his opinions on what should happen to whichever murderess is making national headlines.
But Trump is the president of the United States, and he’s using the executive branch to terrorize immigrants, threaten political enemies and cover the Oval Office in a truly tacky amount of gold. It’s heinous, and it’s becoming impossible to laugh at his antics. There’s no meme or one liner from him that can obfuscate his cruelty.
Even the late-night shows are struggling to create comedic material out of Trump’s increasingly volatile behavior. The hosts (other than Jimmy Fallon) all take a mocking approach, but the man is beyond parody. The only solace with the Colbert/Kimmel/Meyers jokes is that Trump getting made fun of every night genuinely bothers him.
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But with Saturday Night Live restarting this week, it is worth considering if James Austin Johnson as Trump every weekend might be running the risk of being more stale than subversive. On a post in the r/LiveFromNewYork subreddit, one user posited that the show should opt for fewer political cold opens.
“Some people may or may not like this opinion, but to be honest, I kinda hope they do less politically focused cold openings this season,” the poster wrote. “I don’t know about you, but having multiple Trumplouges for MULTIPLE WEEKS IN A ROW as cold openings can REALLY test a person’s patience, can make some of the jokes more stale than they already are, and can take away any impact for some of the ones with POTENTIAL to be a classic.”
The post continued, advocating for more topics that are not directly tied to the Oval Office. “There are a lot of topics and concepts that AREN’T about ‘you know who’ with potential to be pretty dang funny that are RIPE for the picking for them to do. I know this has a 00.001% chance of ACTUALLY happening given the show’s tendency to bank on current events for clicks, but hey. A fan can dream.”
The idea wasn’t entirely unpopular. “More show-centric ones would be welcomed too, like Not Gonna Phone It in Tonight,” another Redditor added.
“I’ve been saying this for years: stop humanizing the guy,” another commenter chimed in. “Even if you’re mocking him… none of what’s happening is even remotely fucking funny anymore. Hasn’t been for like 9 years.”
Again, we’re past Trump being a laughing matter. Mocking him, making incisive commentary about his policies, criticizing his hypocrisies and failures, reminding the American public that what is happening is both abnormal and wrong — these are worthy objectives of comedy about our rotund aspiring dictator. But a simple impersonation where the joke is meant to be found in the absurdity of our circumstances just doesn’t feel funny anymore. And with Lorne Michaels’ casting choices seeming to suggest he’s catering to a “both sides” audience, it’s unlikely these political cold opens will all of a sudden really try to take a meaningful bite out of Trump.
No one needs middle-of-the-aisle parodies right now. Leave that shit to Jimmy Fallon.
