When big news splashes its way across the American cultural landscape, especially if it involves politics, it’s like July 4th on Coney Island and everybody in the late-night comedy world is ready to gorge themselves into a frenzy.
Imagine all the hunger pangs last week, after comedy writers coast-to-coast witnessed the geriatric traffic accident that was the first presidential debate—yet had nowhere to unleash whatever inspiration filled their brains when Joe Biden couldn’t get out a coherent sentence and Donald Trump seemed to be chasing the land-speed record for lies per second.
It’s summer. It’s Fourth of July week. And the late-night shows are all dark as their hosts and writers loll on a beach somewhere while visions of sugar punchlines dance in their heads.
Has there ever been a more garish display of low-hanging comedy fruit that may go almost thoroughly unpicked?
If there is one thing Biden might be thankful for in the wake of his great-grandpa fog out on the debate stage last Thursday, it’s that Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver et al. are all on vacation at the moment. So they can’t compound the president’s misery with multiple nights of comic skewering.
Even more fortunate: the first debate of the election season could have taken place in the fall, as every previous presidential face-off has. In that case, Saturday Night Live would have gotten a crack at presenting its own version of the event.
Maybe Lorne Michaels was somewhere last Thursday picturing how it might have gone this time:
Mikey Day as Biden, entering stage right, looking like a lost cast member from The Walking Dead. James Austin Johnson loping in from stage left, dressed as a serving of Orange Julius.
Until this year, when both candidates surprisingly agreed to a June bloodletting, the SNL debate sketch has been as much a tradition in the waning weeks of a presidential candidate’s campaign as daily polls (and disavowal of daily polls by the candidate losing in them).
The essence of an SNL debate sketch is finding some element of the real event that can be exaggerated to a point of slap-shtick. Like Trump (Alec Baldwin) stalking Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon) in their 2016 Town Hall debate; or George Bush (Will Ferrell) summing up his 2000 campaign in one word: “Strategery” (alas, it was a mock Bushism; not something the 43rd president ever actually said).
The mockable moments may have been plentiful in last week’s debate, but surely Biden’s vacant expressions, gaping mouth, and fumbling responses would have dominated. Maybe SNL‘s writers would have simply repeated, word for word, Biden’s nearly incomprehensible answer on national debt and child care that included a bizarre reference to COVID and, after a full-on stall, somehow ended up with: “We’ve finally been able to beat Medicare.”
It was such a head-slapping moment it might have lived on for subsequent episodes. That was sort of what happened to Admiral James Bond Stockdale, who made it into debate (and SNL) history with his memorable self-introduction at the 1992 vice presidential debate: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
Saturday Night Live managed to keep those two memorable questions going with a sketch featuring his running mate, Ross Perot (Dana Carvey), seeking to abandon an addled Stockdale (Phil Hartman) by the side of the road.
Biden’s debate implosion, especially if it starts to tank his chances at winning a second term, might have been fodder for ongoing parodying. Maybe Biden (Day) could have asked why he doesn’t get a pass for public embarrassment the way Trump did with his Access Hollywood tape. Biden’s character could wonder: “Why couldn’t this be my locker room talk, or ‘Yoga for Seniors’ studio talk in my case.”
Even if the debate doesn’t linger as front of mind—though it may come to rank as the “Debate of Infamy” if Biden loses—the late-night hosts will almost surely have to address it when they return, especially the ones who have been pretty obviously pro-Biden (and very obviously anti-Trump).
That would include Colbert and Meyers (Kimmel is gone for the summer and Jon Stewart has already weighed in). Though anti-Trump material has dominated, it’s not like these hosts have put Biden under a cone of silence.
It’s just that when they have joked about him, it has almost exclusively been based on Biden’s most prominent characteristic: he’s old.
But suddenly jokes about him losing his place, walking the wrong way off Air Force One, or getting the president of Mexico confused with the president of Egypt might carry much more sting. They might not even win many laughs among the audiences for those shows, which have tended to be among Biden’s strongest constituencies.
So maybe the debate won’t get as long a run as you might otherwise expect in the late-night monologues.
Still, funny is funny. If jokes work, comics almost invariably decide to tell them.
Here’s something to look for: If Biden starts dominating the late-night monologues, how long before Trump decides he has to do something especially egregious to steal back the attention of the hosts Trump usually excoriates, wants to sue, and/or promises to imprison when he returns to power?
Trump may hate it when those guys pick on him relentlessly, but possibly not as much as he would hate a rival getting more attention than he does. You can foresee the social media posts now:
UNFUNNY JIMMY KIMMEL, SETH MEYERS, AND STEPHEN COLBERT ARE TANKING IN THE RATINGS BECAUSE THEIR MONOLOGUES ARE ALL ABOUT SLEEPY JOE, WHO IS ABOUT AS FUNNY AS A WET ARMY BLANKET—MADE FROM GOATS. WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO REALIZE JOKES HAVE TO BE ABOUT TRUMP OR THEY AREN’T REALLY JOKES AT ALL. NOT THAT JOE ISN’T A JOKE. HE IS, A HUGE JOKE THAT NOBDOY IS LAUGHING AT, OR WITH, I MEAN. OK MAYBE, AT. I MAY HAVE TO COMMIT A FEW MORE FELONIES!
