SNL Report: Druski Is Proof Women Aren't Funny

I've heard it said, mostly by men at bars who have never been funny either, that women aren't funny. I always assumed this was a lie, and Saturday night I finally found the evidence that settles it. The evidence is Druski in a wig. If that's what a woman is, the bar was right, and I owe a great many people an apology I don't intend to make.

The episode, which aired November 7, gets a Heckle Score of 21. That's not a typo, and it's not a temperature. Druski is the first online content creator to host the show, and he brought the content creator's great gift with him: the ability to make four minutes feel like a hostage negotiation conducted entirely in shouting.

The night opened with James Talarico, who won a United States Senate seat in Texas on Tuesday and was standing on a stage in Manhattan by Saturday. Now, his term doesn't start until January, and I'm sure his staff would like me to mention that. But I once took a job as a server, and I can tell you that if I'd shown up for my second shift and said, sorry boss, I've got to run to New York and do a bit with the Trump impersonator, I would not have been asked back for a third. Most Americans don't get to start their new job by leaving town. Most Americans aren't on the ballot again in six years.

Then came the Druski sketches, and every one of them had the same problem: you could see the writers pushing. The worst was Birthday Girl, where Druski plays Daniela, a diva with a tiara, fake nails and a beard he made no effort to hide, who melts down over a friend's fajitas. LateNighter called it the lowlight of the season so far, and the season isn't short. Somewhere in the middle Daniela says she wouldn't want another woman to help her in the bathroom because that woman might be gay. Which raises a question I'd like answered by someone at NBC: how come Saturday Night Live gets to do the gay joke and get a laugh track, and when a fellow at a bar does it he gets a statement from a publicist? I'm not asking for the joke back. I'm just asking who's allowed to hold it.

And it wasn't only that sketch. Washington in Focus was built on the idea that white politicians with names that sound Black are hilarious. The Dominican phone store sketch was mostly volume. The Golden Age of Hip Hop closed the night on a nerdy white host explaining Black culture, which is a premise, I suppose, in the way a pothole is a feature of a road. The wedding photographers sketch had a line about Afghanistan that LateNighter called the single worst SNL joke in years, and the audience agreed out loud. This is a show whose fans say they're tired of stereotypes, and Saturday they sat through an hour of them and clapped at the commercial breaks.

The proposal sketch, She Said Yes, is where a man's elaborate restaurant proposal gets turned down and becomes a musical number anyway. It's the sort of thing that's only funny if you've never been in love or near a restaurant. I can only assume everyone who wrote it deserves to be alone and has made their peace with that. Druski shows up as a hairy-chested crooner, singing with no shirt on and the confidence of a man who has never once been told no by a wardrobe department. The A.V. Club called this the best sketch of the evening, which is the nicest thing anyone said about the evening and also the most damning.

The internet's other complaint was the whiteface. In Dru Can See Everything, a parody of the Nathan Fielder film, Druski puts on whiteface to get back at Elizabeth Holmes, and the comment sections spent Sunday arguing about whether that's a double standard or just a Tuesday for Druski, who has made whiteface a regular part of his act online. Critics weren't kind either way: the A.V. Club gave the episode a C-plus and LateNighter gave it a D. His fans, to be fair, were thrilled to see their guy go from Instagram Live to Studio 8H, and I'm happy for them. It's a nice story. It just isn't a funny one.

The Strokes played twice, Weekend Update did its job, and Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes were the best thing on the stage in a three-minute Update bit. That's about all the good news. Saturday Night Live has spent fifty years telling us that live comedy is hard. On Saturday it finally proved it.