Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too.
Saturday Night Live long ago crossed over into the status of institution, which cemented all of the longtime criticisms leveled against it and simultaneously made them beside the point. I’m not sure how often anyone still bothers to drag out the well-worn lament about the writers’ lazy tendency to default to game show and talk show parodies. It’s probably a little less now since one of the best, most pointed recurring sketches current running falls into that category.
And then there’s simply the pesky detail that sometimes the familiar format of a game show, in particular, provides the best entryway to truly inspired comedic commentary. I believe that’s the case with “Common Knowledge,” easily one of my favorite sketches in the program’s multi-decade history. Practically any other conceivable method of mining the same sad truth about U.S. culture for laughs would be sure to end up didactic and mean-spirited. Instead, “Common Knowledge” makes its points with sly deftness, helped by the patience that holds back its motivating premise until almost two full minutes in, giving it a touch of happy puzzlement.
Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag.
Coffee for Two 