Has there ever been a worse impersonation on "SNL" than Pete Davidson's complete failure even to attempt to seem the slightest bit like Tom Homan?

Look:

I guess they just hoped the audience didn't know Homan, but if you've ever seen him talk, you know he has an especially funny way of talking. What a treat for a comedian to be invited on the show to do a long Homan impression in the cold open. Maybe they thought we'd just be so thrilled to see Pete Davidson again that it would be okay for him to do Homan as just some guy in a bald wig.

Davidson, you lazy bum, compare your Homan to Jim Carrey's brilliant Broderick Crawford:

Ever since I first heard Tom Homan, he's reminded me Carrey's Broderick Crawford. I watched that in real time, some 30 years ago and I've always remembered it as one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.

"I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tattoos. But they should have meaning. Not just that I was high watching Game of Thrones...."

"It’s a six-week healing process each time you get one removed. So each tattoo is 10 to 12 sessions. That’s 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo."

Said Pete Davidson, quoted in "Pete Davidson is losing his tattoos. I removed mine — it hurt/Having spent $200,000, the comedian has described the experience as ‘horrible’. It’s not just the cost that’s painful, says Esther Walker" (London Times).

"I’d be sitting in the back watching the cold open and — the cold open [is] topical, political humor, whatever’s in the culture. And then, making fun of you."

"Then you’ve got to walk out and do a sketch next and hit your mark and the show just made fun of you... Like, they just dogged you in front of everyone. And you’re like, 'I’m a fucking loser, man.' These are the people I’ve been with for almost a decade. I grew up in front of these people. They’ve watched me through the most difficult time in my life, and they’ve been there for me.... The nature of entertainment is the nature of this business. At the end of the day, that’s what it is. This was a really difficult thing to do. You feel small. You feel super insecure.... Suddenly you’re in this zeitgeist and that has nothing to do with the work. And that’s a really shitty feeling. I became more known before the work was there, but I was always working."

Said Pete Davidson, quoted in "Pete Davidson Says 'SNL' Jokes About His Dating Life Made Him Feel 'Like A F—king Loser'" (Decider).

You might find that hard to believe, considering that he was made fun of for his amazing success with one beautiful woman after another, but who are you to say? How do you know how much that hurts? Maybe he's bullshitting, but consider that the jokes were premised on the idea — presumably widely shared — that he is ugly. The extrapolated belief that he's well-endowed eliminated the possibility that he could be loved as a person. That made him think: "I’m a fucking loser, man." It could be. Or he's bullshitting. 

Why is it funny to ask pro golfers what they think of the breakup of Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson?

Last night, I linked to this TikTok video (as one of 9 TikTok videos that amused me).

The commenter Wilbur politely requested an explanation:

AA, if I may directly pose you a question: What was it about the pro golfer TikTok that you found amusing? Not criticizing your choice, just curious as to what I missed. 

I'm not a KK hater, although I've never heard of Pete Davidson. It came across as wholly mundane to Wilbur, not even sarcastic. I suspect the question would elicit the same reactions from people across most segments of the population.

Because the request was so respectful, I decided to try to spell it out what had been, for me, an instinctive reaction:

Here are 9 TikToks to amuse you this evening. Let me know what you like best.

1. A vertiginous walk.

2. Groundhogs.

3. A bird talks.

4. A bird sings.

5. Failing to account for the full length of the wind turbine rotor.

6. What do pro golfers think of the breakup of Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson?

7. Does your boyfriend really fit into your family?

8. What would you do with a $6,000 slo-mo camera?

9. "What exactly can a female provide in a plutonic relationship?"

Did "Saturday Night Live" do something good with the Will Smith incident?

I've reviewed the clips from last night's show — hastily, I admit — and I think the only really entertaining thing was this long rap about the unwillingness to put up with lengthy movies:

"I never would have made that Nazi comparison if I’d known everybody was going to be such a Nazi about it."

 

"SNL" lampoons Britney Spears, Ted Cruz, Andrew Cuomo, and Gina Carano. There's some good enough stuff in there. The best is Pete Davidson's Andrew Cuomo impersonation.

A perfect storm of gender privilege + celebrity privilege.

We just saw Pete Davidson on the highway and my daughter and I stalked up until we could sidle up next to his car and screamed we love u Pete!! He obliged with a slightly strained smile- Pete hope someone tells u that the crazy lady was only me and we meant it! @nbcsnl

— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 23, 2020

1. Celebrity privilege — Sorvino openly states the belief that she is different from other ladies: If only Pete knew she was Mira Sorvino, a famous person, he would get how sweet and kooky and funny it was for her to "stalk" and "sidle" up to him in a car.

2. Gender privilege — Switch the gender around. It's easy to see how terrible it would be for 2 males in a car to "stalk" and "sidle" up to a female in a car and yell "We love you" and say her name. What male would tweet that he'd done this and think that it was cute? If a famous man did this to a famous woman, it's more likely that the woman would call him out with accusations that could wreck his life.

By the way:

1. Pete Davidson has a very serious mental health condition — borderline personality disorder — so doing something that confuses and intimidates him when he's out in public alone is particularly bad.

2. Mira Sorvino — though she often plays a ditsy character (see "Might Aphrodite" and "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion") — is one of the most intelligent, educated actors in the U.S. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard.

"But if you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that like the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan? I don’t really see the difference, except for one’s music is significantly better."

That's a joke, told by Pete Davidson on "SNL," quoted in "Pete Davidson made a joke on SNL about the Catholic Church. Now officials are demanding an apology" (WaPo).

Definitely not amused was the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Brooklyn, which on Monday released a lengthy statement condemning the joke and seeking an “immediate public apology” from the sketch comedy show and from NBC, the network that airs it. “The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions,” the statement reads, in part. “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”

Here's the lengthy statement from the Diocese of Brooklyn. Excerpt:

Apparently, the only acceptable bias these days is against the Catholic Church. 

Oh! You're the victim.

The faithful of our Church are disgusted by the harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions. The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.

It's the Era of That's Not Funny, but has the Catholic Church ever had a sense of humor? It's a "difficult time" for the Catholic Church because the Church actively closed off our view of the problem. If you'd been open about it all these years, would our jokes about you have had a "purpose"? What is the general principle that the Diocese of Brooklyn is trying to state? It seems to be: It's wrong to react with jokes when we get news about X because the news is already hurting X — X is the victim and we, the jokesters, are the bullies. That's rich!

The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably....

And by "victims," you mean the Church? Because that's the only target of the joke. What's the general rule here? If X victimizes Y, it's wrong to joke about X, because it makes light of the entire situation and that hurts Y. Maybe, but if it's X who invokes the rule, can we at least laugh about that?

It is likely that no other institution has done more than the Catholic Church to combat and prevent sexual abuse. 

Oh, now you're making your own joke? Or... the only way I can understand this is as a confession of the vast, horrific scale of the abuse. It's not that you've done so much in proportion to the problem, but that you've got such a huge problem.

The insensitivity of the writers, producers, and the cast of SNL around this painful subject is alarming.

Ridiculous. The reason SNL's joke hurt so much is that it directly provokes your adherents to get the hell out. I'm sure that is alarming.

"Was I really outraged by SNL? Really offended? Or did I just think the comment about losing my eye was offensive?"

"There is a difference, after all. I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn’t outraged. Why start now? So I didn’t demand an apology and I didn’t call for anyone to be fired. That doesn’t mean the 'war . . . or whatever' line was acceptable, but I didn’t have to fan the flames of outrage, either.... How, then, do we live together in this world of differing ideas? For starters, let’s agree that the ideas are fair game. If you think my idea is awful, you should say as much. But there is a difference between attacking an idea and attacking the person behind that idea. Labeling someone as an '-ist' who believes in an '-ism' because of the person’s policy preference is just a shortcut to playground-style name-calling, cloaked in political terminology. It’s also generally a good indication that the attacker doesn’t have a solid argument and needs a way to end debate before it has even begun.... When all else fails, try asking for forgiveness, or granting it. On Saturday, Pete Davidson and SNL made amends. I had some fun. Everyone generally agreed that a veteran’s wounds aren’t fair game for comedy. Maybe now we should all try to work toward restoring civility to public debate."

From "SNL mocked my appearance. Here’s why I didn’t demand an apology" by Dan Crenshaw (WaPo).

This might be the first example I've found of a call to civility that I'm not going to immediately categorize as civility bullshit.

"SNL" makes it up to Lt. Com. Dan Crenshaw with Crenshaw on the show mocking Pete Davidson's looks.

This begins with an apology from Davidson, has some good retaliatory jokes in the middle, and ends with some serious Veterans Day thoughts.

(What Davidson did last week was include a photo of Crenshaw in a bit where he gave his first impression of other people's looks, and what he said about Crenshaw focused on his eye patch. As Davidson acknowledged in last week's episode, Crenshaw lost an eye in the war.)