On Wednesday, October 7, 2020, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris met for their first and only VP debate of the 2020 presidential election. The Brookings Institution declared the meeting “The most important of its kind since VP debates began [nearly] 40 years ago.”
Then, midway through the monumental showdown, a fly landed in the snowy pasture on Pence’s head… and stayed there.
Even people on the edge of their seats trying to pay attention to what these two still little-known people were saying could only look at that totally relaxed insect and wonder if Pence realized it was there.
But if you’re looking to wring humor out of a consolation-prize contest between two typically obscure pols without much personality, a fly just might be the best thing that could ever happen to you. In Pence’s case, the scenario was so ripe with comic fodder that even after it dominated late-night monologues starting that very night, it still managed to be the funniest sketch performed on Saturday Night Live three nights later.
A big reason: the show cleverly transformed the fly into a teleported Joe Biden (Jim Carrey) with a fair Jeff Goldblum impression onto Pence’s (Beck Bennett) head.
After all, there’s no reason an event that otherwise struggles for substance, relevance, or import can’t sit up and take some comic punishment, right?
Surely late-night hosts and writers, and especially the creative team at SNL, will be rooting for another unexpected creature visitation during tonight’s VP debate. Or a confrontation with a moderator. Or an even halfway memorable line that doesn’t sound like it was composed by the one person on the debate prep team who only thinks they’re funny.
Because if nothing like that happens, it looks like the current debate season could come to its conclusion by without a whiff of sweet comedy to remember her by. That is, unless Donald Trump decides at the last minute that maybe he has to take on that scary lady again.
It’s been a while since SNL hasn’t gotten at least one presidential square-off to ruthlessly parody. With past as prelude, starting its season at the end of September should have allowed access to at least one top-dogs debate. But the candidates’ decision to open the proceedings in late June—when almost every late-night show was dark—and then come back in early September with the one showdown between Trump and Harris, seems to have left SNL with just the undercard.
Of course that didn’t stop the show from having some fun with the presidential candidates in the cameo-filled cold open of its Season 50 premiere, with Maya Rudolph (as Harris), Andy Samberg (as Doug Emhoff), and Dana Carvey (as Joe Biden) all returning to Studio 8H.
But even if the VP showdown is the only debate SNL overlaps with this year, fun can still be had.
That was certainly the case in 1992, when the vice presidential debate produced a signature SNL sketch. How many people would even remember who Admiral James Stockdale was if that running mate of third-party candidate Ross Perot had not responded to the first question in his debate with Dan Quayle and Al Gore with the unforgettable line: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
While his intention was to solidify his outsider status, Stockdale said it with just enough of a hint of confusion to open the floodgates. On SNL, the brilliant Phil Hartman played Stockdale being driven off to be abandoned in the woods by Carvey’s George Bush while blurting out: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
The truth is there haven’t been a whole lot of yuks between the Admiral and Pence’s pet fly. One other memorably funny VP debate sketch was really about something totally different. The debate was between Sen. Tim Kaine (anyone remember he was paired with Hillary?) and Pence.
It took place on a Tuesday. Whatever idea there was for that sketch early in the SNL week was blown to flyspecks by Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape, which broke Friday. The debate parody was only two jokes in before it was interrupted by Alec Baldwin, offering his take on Trump’s famous non-apology for the crudeness of the tape.
All of which proves you don’t even have to have something happen at the actual vice presidential debate to milk the premise, at least, for laughs.
Of course, Walz vs. Vance does offer some tantalizing possibilities. Not so much for the debate to affect the election outcome—not that that won’t still be discussed by phalanxes of pundits and assemblages of still-undecideds (where do they find them? Mars?). But virtually no respected analyst who has studied VP debates can make a serious case that any of them tilted the result. (Sen. Lloyd Bentsen squashed Dan Quayle like a bug in 1988, yet he and Michael Dukakis got drubbed while Quayle became vice president.)
Again, that makes no difference in comedy. It’s a television event. That itself makes it worthy of skewering.
Besides, as someone will surely announce in some learned political volume: this one is the most important of its kind since VP debates began 40 years ago.
