15.2.09

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch! Alec Baldwin Edition!

Alec Baldwin was hosting SNL tonight, and it wasn't one of his more stellar outings. His performance on 30 Rock this week was above and beyond, though, so I'm willing to give him a pass.

As for the questionable content, it was fairly light this week, with just two instances of homophobia, and a single of rape.

The rape joke came in the 'Cougar' talk show sketch, in which the characters told hilarious stories about how they were so desperate to pick up younger men that they wound up hitting on 12-year-olds in a McDonald's. Again, statutory rape counts.

The homophobia started off in that sketch, with Alec portraying a Cou-Gay, a fifty year old man ogling hot twentysomethings. It continued into the Vincent Price sketch, with Fred Armisen once again playing Liberace - quick note: Just having Liberace in a sketch isn't enough to get counted as homophobia - he's a real historical figure who actually talked and acted like that, so it's a grey area. If you only have him in the sketch so you can make a series of gay jokes about him, though, it counts.

The tally for this week:

Rape: 1
Homophobia: 2

The high point of the week was (as usual) a digital video in which Andy Samberg asked the Jonas Brothers if they were 'Highlanders' after discovering a video documenting their 1983 stint as a hair metal band.

The low point was a seemingly 3-year-old sketch that equated playing the Nintendo Wii to masturbating.

Seriously, SNL, if you're going to be this far behind the cultural curve you might as well be writing for the Simpsons.

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