The News From WOUTR, all Outrage, all the Time:

I have Saturday Night Live on. This is mostly nostalgia, though I’m not quite sure what for; I started watching the show during the Dana Carvey/Phil Hartmann/Jon Lovitz years, which were not exactly a great epoch in the history of television comedy. If I have nostalgia, it is from watching the “Best of” shows that Nick at Nite showed in the very early years of its existence, which were culled from the work of the original cast.

But in any case, I’m home on a Saturday (outrage intereferes with your social life, and my boyfriend is located in a different timezone anyway) and awake in the early morning, so I have SNL on.

Not that long ago, “Weekend Update” had Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and was a bright spot on the show; now both have moved on to greener pastures, and we’re left with Seth Myers’ minor-league douchebaggery, which isn’t particularly outrage-inducing–or rather, it seems to be hard to pick out against the normal background noise of douchebaggery on television.

The guest this week is Tracy Morgan, returning to his old haunts. I was never a particular fan of his, so perhaps it’s odd that I’m dedicating the first real post of the blog to him.

Right in a row, there were three separate sketches:

  • A parody of “Big Love,” the show about traditionalist Mormons. Morgan played what looked to be a trans prostitute, picked up by the clueless paterfamilias to be the newest wife. (The character, played by morgan in a horridly bad blond wig, is seen shaving with an electric razor; which is so stupid–I mean, everybody knows you can’t get a close shave with one of those things! The Mach 3 is the pre-electro transpeeps’ best friend.) The closing credits for the spoof: “Yeah. It’s a dude.”
  • A fake commercial for a pill that would keep men from getting sexually aroused in inappropriate situations, like picking up your high-school aged niece and her cheerleader friends. I’m…not sure what to say, except, gross–the other example is a Santa worried about a stray erection costing him his job.
  • A short film where two guys go to a party and make disparaging comments about the people there–but here’s the catch!–their comments are shown to be literally true; so “look at those Jokers” cuts to three guys dressed as the Joker. You get the idea. One of the guys is described as a serial rapist; the cut is to a guy busily humping a box of cereal. Hy-larious! (To be totally fair, the bit ends with one of the guys saying, “look at those two douchebags” and the image is the two of them looking into a mirror.)

So: trans-shaming; a reminder that men! always get boners! whenever they look at anything female!; and a nice little dollop of rape humor. All right!

Yes, this is pretty much how this blog is going to go.