Digital Spy presents Remote Patrol - the weekly column from New York-based TV critic Bruce Fretts, taking a look at what's hot right now in US television.
Bruce is a veteran of both Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide Magazine, where he penned the wildly popular 'Cheers & Jeers' column for ten years.
Remote Patrol: Saturday Night Live and Key & Peele's black humour
A year ago, Saturday Night Live was in crisis. After adding five white guys to its roster, NBC's long-running skitcom came under fire for its lack of female African-American cast members. To his credit, exec producer Lorne Michaels held auditions to rectify this situation and hired Sasheer Zamata as a featured player and Leslie Jones as a writer and sometime performer.
Historically, SNL had been a bastion of white male comedy. Though women from the underrated Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman to the late, great Gilda Radner and Jan Hooks had scored big laughs, it wasn't until the Tina Fey Era that ladies like Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig began to set the show's tone.
In more recent years, Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant have emerged as powerful comedic voices, yet SNL still hadn't fully addressed the under-representation of minority viewpoints that had led to the creation of
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In SNL's current 40th season, that's changed. Three of those five white guys are no longer in the ensemble, and Zamata has proven a solid addition. Plus, Michael Che has taken a seat at the "Weekend Update" mock anchor desk beside the sly Colin Jost - displacing Strong, though she seems happy to play a wider array of characters.
Che's sharp presence and cutting wit has allowed for more pointed racial humour, while Kenan Thompson (in his 10th and likely final season) has become the new "glue" - a nickname given to the legendary Phil Hartman when he appeared in virtually every sketch, thus holding the show together. And Jay Pharoah has made a name for himself as SNL's best impressionist since Darrell Hammond with dead-on imitations of President Obama, Denzel Washington, Jay Z, Kanye West and more.
But SNL's real breakout star this season has been Jones. She was only added to the opening credits a few weeks ago, but she's already slayed the audience in "Update" segments as well as such sketches as "Black Annie" and filmed pieces like the uproarious "Back Home Ballers" rap video.
I recently saw Jones (and SNL castmate McKinnon) do stand-up as part of host Cristina Cote's 'Hersterical' showcase at Caroline's comedy club in NYC, and she is a force to be reckoned with - Richard Pryor and Sam Kinsion rolled up in a woman's body. With a scene-stealing part in Chris Rock's new movie Top Five, Jones is on fire, and SNL was wise to hitch its wagon to her shooting star.
As America continues to grapple with racial tension in the aftermath of the Ferguson decision, it's more necessary than ever to seek comic relief about these issues. And that makes Comedy Central's selection of the incisive Larry Wilmore as Stephen Colbert's successor especially welcome, even though he had to surrender the working title Minority Report to Steven Spielberg's lawyers.
But even with the generic moniker The Nightly Show, Wilmore promises to bring his refreshingly specific point of view and the intelligence that has infused his work from The Bernie Mac Show and Eddie Murphy's cartoon The PJs to ABC's new hit Black-ish and his own invariably insightful commentaries on The Daily Show.
He's not alone on Comedy Central as a gifted purveyor of racially charged humor. In their fourth season, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have perfected the formula for their self-titled sketch show. The camaraderie between the MADtv alums in their improvised interstitial segments spills over into their filmed pieces, which parody pop culture without playing as over-the-top spoofs.
The key to Key & Peele is their ability to find the pathos in even the silliest of characters, which they also demonstrated as seemingly hapless but ultimately heroic FBI agents on FX's Fargo. Freed from the tyranny of a live audience (or a laugh track), K&P can explore the psyches of, say, 1980s jazz-fitness competitors or undercover Black Republicans with a depth that gives the satire even more resonance.
Although it's filmed months in advance, Key & Peele remains timely: President Obama's 'Anger Translator' Luther must be even more pissed off after the Democrats lost control of the Senate in the recent mid-term elections. And while the First Lady briefly got her own Anger Translator last season, maybe K&P should follow SNL's lead and hire a full-time female cast member. Or at least do a Comedy Central crossover: Key & Peele Visit Broad City.
