Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Alec Baldwin Addition

Saturday Night Live was off to a decent start this year, largely avoiding unpleasantness while providing a perfect platform for Alec Baldwin's suburb comic timing and decent impressions.

Other than a nod to Michele Bachmann's extremely closeted husband - which I gave a pass to - the show largely avoided both homophovia and rape-themed humour, despite the fact that during their hiatus gay marriage became legal in New York and Don't Ask Dont' Tell was repealed. Maybe they'll get to all of that next week?

The only questionable sketches were one of their 'audition reels', this time for Top Gun, featuring Harvey Fierstien making a series of inaccurate observations about the script, and a game show about determining who would be the dominant one in a sexual relationship between two random men. This later sketch, which also delved into a rape reference, is interesting, since it's a perfect example of comedy writers trying to get out of actually working by not creating plots, stories, or characters, and instead simply transcribing the conversations they have among themselves while procrastinating. Other examples of this include the Cavemen vs. Astronauts conversation from Angel, and literally everything that Seth Macfarlane has ever produced.

Now, the numbers!

Rape references - 1
Homophobia references - 2

See you back here next week for Melissa McCarthy!

Criminal Minds 212: Profiler, Profiled

Like the unabomber episode before it, this one opens with a bang! Although it’s much less impressive. It’s just Reid impressing the girls in the office by making a simple rocket. How simple? It involves putting baking soda and vinegar in a plastic film case, then snapping it shut and turning it upside down.

You may remember this ‘experiment’ from the first grade. Or episodes of Mr. Wizard aimed at the under-5 set. Yet it’s portrayed as something neat or weird that Reid is able to do.

I mean, jeez, it’s not like this is even a weird fun trick, like the match in the upturned glass creating a vacuum. It’s just baking soda and vinegar, like everyone’s paper mache volcanoes.

Is there anything more ridiculous than the way ‘smart’ people are depicted by television?

Anyhoo, let’s get to the actual story. Derek’s in Chicago for his mother’s birthday, and he’s both being followed by someone with a camera and menaced by gangsters.

It’s also mysterious because he’s standing over someone’s grave in that shot. But whose grave, and why? And who does he have to see at the local youth center? One of the kids, or the hardbitten coach? Derek breaks up a fight in the street between a couple of kids, who’ve heard of him because of his time playing football at that selfsame youth centre. Yup, he’s a local hero, right up until the cops show up to arrest him for the murder of one of the fighting kids?

Is Derek a murderer? Does his love of murder come from the fact that he and his sisters were adopted by white people? I guess we’ll find out after the opening credits!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Jennifer Lopez Edition

J. Lo.’s triumphant return to the stage at SNL proved to be one of the cleanest episodes of the year – not only were there no rape jokes of any kind, but even the two gay jokes were largely harmless!

This relative cleanliness gives me a golden opportunity to mention one of the other recurring sketches I have a problem with: ESPN Classic. If you haven’t seen the specific sketch I’m talking about it doesn’t matter, because they’re all exactly the same. Two guys fail at describing women’s sports, and make crude jokes about women’s hygiene.

I find these sketches so unpleasant that I’ve been tempted to add a ‘MisogynyWatch’ to the regular posting – but I haven’t yet because of the overt misogyny of the show is so far restricted to just this one recurring sketch. Like how I wouldn’t have started the RapeWatch if the only time rape came up was the despicable endlessly returning ‘Scared Straight’ sketches.

I am weirdly fascinated by this sketch, though, because of its similarity to a great moment from Alan Partridge, which, thanks to the magic of Youtube, you can see embedded below.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Galfinakis Edition

It’s time for the glorious return of the Saturday Night Live RapeWatch, which has been on a hiatus due to my depression with the overall terribility of the show, save for the Jon Hamm edition, which featured all of the brilliant comedy we’ve come to expect of him, and not enough objectionable material to warrant me getting angry enough to write about.

We’re back now, though, so let’s take a look at Zach Galfinakis’ first outing as a host of SNL!

Saturday Night Live Rapewatch: Taylor Lautner Edition

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Taylor Lautner Edition

Yeah, the rape jokes are back. It’s like SNL doesn’t want me to stop writing this frigging thing.

Taylor Lautner was a bland, enthusiastic host, eager to show off his acrobatic abilities, as well as his facility for reading aloud. Less capable of doing so was the rest of the cast, two members who had to pause and redo two line in a late-show Twilight-themed sketch after accidentally reading the wrong line off of a teleprompter.

But we’re not here to talk about the modern cast’s inability to perform to an even subterranean expectation of competence, we’re here to look at the objectionable content they choose to foist on the public.

So let’s do that!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Blake Lively Edition

Another light week here on the RapeWatch, with a completely 'clean', but still largely despicable show!

After an endless flat expanse of an opening political sketch, the show foundered the rest of its running time, hitting an obvious Tiger Woods jokes, a return of one of Kenan's horrible drag characters, and even a re-used commercial from a few weeks back. Which no doubt suggests that something played so badly at dress that it needed to be cut. Given the awfulness of the sketches on display, I have no idea what that could have been.

There were plenty of borderline sketches offering questionable points of view on 'edgy' subjects, like spousal abuse or women's health, but nothing I'm watching for, so nothing worth mentioning. The only time gayness even came up was in a Weekend Update sketch, and there it was a jibe at gay men's love of Marilyn Monroe - since it was a jibe directed at the men themselves, rather than referencing gay sexuality to make straight people uncomfortable, it doesn't count as homophobia-themed humor!

Way to go, SNL! Now keep it up another week or two and I can hopefully retire the RapeWatch as a gift to myself this Christmas!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Joseph-Gordon-Levitt Edition

JGL proved a competent host last night, comfortable live on stage, using excellent comic timing to avoid drowning amidst a sea of mediocrity. Yes, even with a competent host the writers of SNL couldn't manage to offer a decent program, making me wonder if this might well be the worst season in the history of the program.

But we're not here to chronicle SNL's slow descent into oblivion, that's what the rest of the internet is for. We're here to examine their insultingly cavalier treatment of objectionable subject matter, which is less exhaustively mapped out.

So, with no further ado, welcome to the RapeWatch!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: January Jones Edition

It was a depressing return to form tonight for SNL. Not the show was particularly rape-y or anything, but rather that it was just sickeningly mediocre.

Much of the failure was due to the utter unpreparedness of host January Jones to perform on live television. She giggled and stammered her way through the sketches, her demeanor vacillating between uncomfortable and deer-in-headlights. It was only during a pre-tape that she showed any capability at all, and even then she was just playing Betty Draper.

Usually the show’s writers have some facility for aiding inept hosts, keeping them out of most sketches, sidelining them in the ones that feature them – the George Foreman special. Apparently everyone on the show this week assumed that Jones was going to be able to handle herself and wrote her a series of big parts. This proved a critical flaw.

But we’re not here for a sketch-by-sketch review, are we? No, we’re here to chart the show’s ongoing trivialization of a horrific sexual crime!

So let’s get started!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Taylor Swift Edition

Oh, god damn it, SNL. Here we are, just one episode from me calling the whole thing off, and you go an resurrect the sketch that led me to start the thing in the first place!

Do you even want to turn into a less abhorrent mess?

So, time for the count- In addition to the horrible 'scared straight' sketch, where Kenan Thompson (and Taylor Swift in drag) recount the plots of films and then uses those plots as the basis for clever turns of phrase by which they threaten petty criminals with brutal gay rape, there was an offhand joke in the news segment about an adorable puppy being raped by another adorable puppy.

It was small enough a reference that I was going to let it slide had the rest of the show been clean, but that scared straight sketch just sickened me. So now I'm back chronicling just how low SNL can sink.

On the upside, it was a light wee for Homophobia, with just threatened gay rape in the Scared Straight sketch counting. Smuggy Smuggerson even managed to make a joke about the election's anti gay marriage referendum without taking a shot at gay people. Good for him.

Final joke tally:

Rape - 2
Homophobia - 1

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react to Californication

I tuned into this show a little while after it started, as I was curious to see what Mulder was up to these days. I was bored and more than a little annoyed by the show’s overwhelming tone of undeserved smugness and superiority. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good intellectual victory lap as much as the next guy, and have always appreciated scenes where a boor is put down with the absolute perfect rejoinder – but that’s not what Californication is. It’s a cut-rate version thereof. It’s a show about a smart person written by profoundly stupid people.

Okay, to be fair, they might not be idiotic, they might just be assuming that their audience is. How can I tell? Here’s a screenshot from the opening credits montage.

You see, they needed an image to establish that the main character, one ‘Hank Moody’ (Get it? His name describes what he is! It’s clever!) is a novelist. How can this be accomplished? By having him read a bizarre bigger-than-a-magazine-yet-smaller-than-a-newspaper thing with the words ‘Book Critic’ on it! Of course! Although he’s not actually reading it, he’s just holding it up in front of his face. Which is an appropriate message, because this really isn’t a show for ‘readers’.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Gerard Butler Edition

Last night’s SNL was definitely one of the season’s high points, although that surely says more about the season’s overall direness than the episode’s quality. That being said, Gerard Butler was a completely competent host, game for seemingly anything, and blessed with excellent timing. Most of the sketches were at least bearable, and it only one dipped into utter awfulness. Well, twice if you count Smuggy Smuggerson’s Weekend Update, but his eight minutes is always the death of laughter, so I’ve stopped counting it as an actual part of the show.

So, on to the objectability!

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Justin Timberlake Edition

Very light on the objectionable content front this week, with a largely clean show from perennial guest Timberlake.

In a sketch about Justin Timberlake’s great great grandfather imagining his grandson’s life. He refers to his grandson growing so bored with having sex with beautiful women that he’ll do a bunch of ‘gay stuff’. Of course, since the whole sketch was parodying the ridiculousness of Timberlake’s image, that’s not really born so much out of homophobia as the craziness of celebrity life. When making a joke about the legalization of gay marriage in Maine, he made a reference about ‘ass-less waders’ going on sale. Then there was a joke about child molesters hanging out around a Harry Potter exhibit at the museum of science and industry.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Seth Rogan edition!

The show headed straight into homophobia territory with a fake ad right fter the monologue for ‘The Fast and the Bi-curious’, the premise being that Seth Rogan and Andy Samberg work on cars while almost making out. I found this less offensive and much funnier than most of the HP jokes because I haven’t actually heard many jokes about the clear latent homoeroticism of the Fast and the Furious franchise. Based on the first two films anyway – haven’t actually seen 3 and 4.

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.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch! Neil Patrick Harris Edition!

It's a light week here on the rapewatch, with only two jokes rising to the level of being countable.

The Rape joke happened right at the end in a sketch about Burger King's series of 'Whopper Virgin' ads which are premised around the idea of people who have never eaten fast-food being given a big mac and a whopper and being asked to choose between them. One of the interviewees, a woman, explains (through a translator) that she's not a virgin (and that it was her uncle that did it).

Army of Two is the Gayest Thing I've Ever Seen

And I've seen 300. Sure, you could make the argument that since that was about gay soldiers, and Army of Two moves the homosexual themes of its protagonists into the realm of subtext, that 300 is the gayer of the two, but you would be wrong.

The primary reason for this is that while the Spartans were literally having sex with one another all the damn time, they actually took the whole 'war' thing seriously, and are remembered primarily for their fighting acumen, and secondarily for their child molestation.

Compare this to the main characters from the game Army of Two:

While I'm not saying that writing the word 'Merc' across the codpiece of your body armour is necessarily an advertisement for your services as a male prostitute, it certainly makes a persuasive impression in that direction, and I haven't seen anything in the game to suggest another interpretation.