In defense of SNL's "over-obvious" sendup of Brett Kavanaugh

Vox

The Matt Damon cold open was criticized by critic Mark Harris for checking a lot of boxes and lacking teeth. But as Todd VanDerWerff argues, "sometimes, all that matters is that the show noticed all of the things you noticed, and then made jokes about them." He adds that the sketch "completely crystallizes a version of Kavanaugh as an angry, spittle-flecked a**hole who’s not accustomed to being questioned in the slightest. If you spent any time on Twitter during last week’s hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, this characterization of Kavanaugh is not going to seem like an especially original observation. Indeed, it’s an over-obvious takeaway from the whole ordeal. And yet there are a lot of people who didn’t spend their time during last Thursday’s hearing on Twitter, or watching it live, who might have only heard about it second- or third-hand well after it was over. And for that audience, SNL matters in a way that other late-night shows (which are typically more obvious in their partisan beliefs) just don’t. Nobody is going to accuse SNL of having conservative politics, or even particularly moderate politics. The show has always had a progressive lean, one that has become especially evident in the Trump era. And yet it’s not a series that takes bold political stances. It believes in itself as a big tent, and what it tends to notice about political figures are their most obviously silly traits, just like Lorne Michaels would want."