A Jimmy Carter joke SNL dropped with Timothee Chalamet recently. Not only was it unfunny, but insensitive too.
Videos by Wide Open Country
Really, SNL hasn't done anything funny for a while. Their humor tries to be edgy but ends up being shallow and humorless. It's a dangerous road to tread too, because if they're not intelligent enough to be funny, and they're being offensive, then who's going to carry on watching?
Recently, in an SNL skit with Timothee Chalamet, they attempted to make fun of the recently deceased Jimmy Carter. But, yet again, they miss the point, and their dry and unintelligent joke falls flat.
The SNL skit shows Chalemet leading an exercise class where he calls out 'Jimmy Carter' as an instruction. Everyone then pretends to be dead. It's a cheap joke, and I am not sure who its audience was supposed to be. Either way, it predictably missed.
Too Soon, Or Just Too Stupid?
Poking fun of dead people absolutely can be funny if it's done well. But, the SNL bit wasn't. They simply named a dead guy and then imitated death. There was no depth or thought behind it. But, this is what we have all come to expect from SNL, the closest thing to satire allowed on US TV.
Unremarkably, audiences were unimpressed with what SNL made of Jimmy Carter. "Yea not funny at all from whichever wise crack "writer" on the show. So far the entire show has been a dud." They're not wrong.
Rather than thought-out and astute writing, the whole show seems to be more focused on crude sex jokes and outdated slapstick humor. It's what you would expect to see from high school drama class, not an established group of comedy writers.
I feel like the problem is less about it being offensive, which it hardly is, and more about shoddy writing. If they have to try that hard to stay relevant, I think SNL should probably give up. Pulling in a Jimmy Carter joke of that banality just because it's in current news makes the SNL writers look desperate.
Surely they could have come up with something a little more original than that. The man has been alive 100 years, there is plenty of material.
