Saturday Night Live: Scarlet Johansson / Wiz Khalifa

May 3, 2015 9:41 AM - Season 40, Episode 19

ScarJo hosts for the fourth time (and first in five years) and proves herself as game as usual, even poking fun at her corporate masters about how maybe it's just as well there hasn't been a Black Widow movie, but the show leans a little heavy on Uncomfortable White Men for the humor.
posted by Etrigan (6 comments total)

I didn't see the first half hour but I liked that Jost and Che mostly did not make fun of Bruce Jenner, or only did so very circuitously. That was sort of unusual for a late night show and I thought it was a step forward. I thought Johansson did a good job in the sketches I saw, too bad I missed the beginning. I HAVE wondered why no movies about the women superheroes, so the romcom version linked above was pretty funny. Wiz Khalifa was fantastic.
posted by onlyconnect at 1:08 PM on May 3, 2015

Breitbart is utterly tin-eared about the Bruce Jenner bit.
posted by Etrigan at 1:54 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm trans AND I'm no fan of Breitbart, but I'm not seeing how he misread the bit. To me it seemed like the point of the bit was exactly that, that they felt like they needed to make jokes but there were no jokes they could make that wouldn't be transphobic and get them in trouble. (I remember thinking there was something off about Che's transition into the next bit, though. Was the line something like, "And in even scarier news..."?)

Anyhow, it seemed like a bit about how they were desperate not to be offensive, which isn't hilarious but isn't offensive either. It was OK. I sure preferred it to Larry Wilmore's whole thing the other night, about how all this talk about gender diversity made his head hurt. I didn't think he was being an asshole about it, but it was a lot more heteronormative than I would've expected.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:35 PM on May 3, 2015

omg the comments on the Breitbart site give me the creepy sads.
posted by onlyconnect at 7:43 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm trans AND I'm no fan of Breitbart, but I'm not seeing how he misread the bit. To me it seemed like the point of the bit was exactly that, that they felt like they needed to make jokes but there were no jokes they could make that wouldn't be transphobic and get them in trouble.

I think Breitbart thinks SNL is on the other side of the line between being afraid to make jokes and joking about being afraid to make jokes -- "revealed" in particular was what seemed tin-eared to me. SNL isn't actually afraid of joking about Bruce Jenner, they just really love the "straight cis white guy is uncomfortable" humor.
posted by Etrigan at 6:46 AM on May 4, 2015

they just really love the "straight cis white guy is uncomfortable" humor.

I've never liked Jost particularly but at least he's discovered that this is his thing and he's able to run with it in jokes that mostly make fun of himself and less other people. Not my favorite joke, but better than I'd expect for SNL. I thought Johansson was better than I was expecting (she has that slightly unexpressive face and I wasn't sure she could do comedy) so it was a nice surprise and other than the "Ugh are they doing a song again" intro I thought it was a decent episode, not a fave but better than the last one. Wiz was really great.
posted by jessamyn at 5:44 PM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]