The season premiere of Saturday Night Live aired this evening with guest host Megan Fox and musical guest U2. After last year’s heavy dose of election humor (Tina Fey’s and Amy Poehler’s Palin and Clinton impersonations were highlights), there was nary a mention of politics this evening aside from a lame Moammar Gaddafi UN speech bit to open the show.
Consider that SNL’s writers have had all summer to prepare for the this evening and they elected not to use any of the following as skit fodder:
The Health care debate, townhall protests, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Speaker Pelosi’s swastika paranoia, Glen Beck, Van Jones and the other czars, Sen. Al Franken (D-SNL), tea parties, bailouts, or the ACORN sting videos.
They’ve managed to do a reverential Obama bit in their half hour prime-time Weekend Update show on Thursday’s, but if the plan is to make Saturday Night’s a politics free (or Obama safe) zone they’re going to very quickly find themselves in a viewer free zone like other down periods in SNL history.
Last year SNL’s viewership, and more importantly their buzz was way up. This year is shaping up to be an unmitigated, Titanic-style disaster coming down off of last seasons highs. It used to be that if there was something interesting in the news you could count on seeing a topical humor piece about it on SNL that week. In the new, Obama friendly, SNL that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. When milquetoast Jay Leno beats you to the punch on the ACORN videos perhaps it’s time to close up shop…
There’s plenty of material out there, but if SNL insists on ignoring it week in and week out viewers will find something else to watch.
Really about the only thing interesting (aside from Megan Fox’s hotness) was an accidental F-bomb drop.
Even that wasn’t very interesting…
