Many sketches from the early seasons of Saturday Night Live wouldn’t fly on television today, but constantly complaining about comedy’s ever-changing relationship with culture at large won’t make the new episodes any funnier.
If anyone is an expert on weathering the shifting tides of audience tastes in comedy, it’s Jim Downey, the Saturday Night Live writers’ room legend whom Lorne Michaels once famously described as “the best political humorist alive.” As the writing partner of the late, great and fired “Weekend Update” anchor Norm Macdonald, Downey knows how to push boundaries and cause controversy with his humor, but, even as that dreaded, uncrossable “line” in comedy continues to encroach on subjects that comics once mocked with impunity, you’ll never catch him crying about “cancel culture” or audience sensitivity on some annoying podcast.
Following the release of the Peacock documentary about Downey’s career, titled Downey Wrote That, the comedy giant spoke to Variety about how he feels Saturday Night Live, along with comedy itself, has changed since he first started writing. While Downey acknowledged that much of what went on during his early years on SNL would be considered unacceptable to put in front of today’s audience, he doesn’t believe that fighting the public’s sensibilities when it comes to sensitive subject matter is the right way to react to change.
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Handling change and adversity with grace is an important life skill, and raging against the taboos and morals of modern culture will get you nowhere – just ask Downey’s friend, Jeff Epstein.
“In the beginning, almost everything we did — whether it was truly new or not — felt new,” Downey said of Saturday Night Live‘s early seasons, having joined the series as its youngest writer in 1976. “It was like walking into a virgin forest and cutting down 200-foot trees. There was so much uncharted territory. But 40 or 45 years later, a lot of that ground has been covered.”
However, Downey doesn’t bemoan how SNL is no longer the wild frontier of entertainment – instead, he holds those stars who came after the forest was cleared and still succeeded in high esteem. “That’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for the last group I knew well — Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson and that whole crew,” Downey explained.
“Comedy had evolved by their time,” Downey said of the SNL all-stars from the top of the 21st century. “They could do certain things we couldn’t have done in the ’70s or ’80s, simply because audiences were more innocent back then,” Downey continued, “There were sketches we did in those early years that wouldn’t even make it out of a read-through today.”
Said Downey of today’s SNL audience, “Sensibilities have changed — tightened, in some ways. You can say audiences have become too politically correct or too sensitive, but arguing about it doesn’t really help.” Downey pointed out, “What matters is not just what people find funny, but what they’re comfortable being seen laughing at. In a live audience, that’s a big factor.”
No matter how brilliant and boundary-pushing a comedy writer may believe their non-PC, non-woke sketch to be, if the audience doesn’t feel comfortable laughing at it, then the joke is a dud. Especially at SNL, lecturing the audience on how they should stop being so sensitive and appreciate the performers’ genius simply wouldn’t work – it’s not Real Time with Bill Maher, after all.
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