Even by the standards of Michael Jackson’s shocking jokes, it was a shocking joke. “Michael Jackson did nothing wrong,” said Michael Che, co-host of Saturday Night Live“Weekend Update,” it said during last night’s episode. “He was right to abuse all those children.” This was met with great surprise at the words coming out of his mouth, but Che continued: “They were lucky. I would pay him to do it. And I did it! That’s right, when I was 10 years old, Michael Jackson molested me, and the only thing he gave me was magic for middle-aged white women.” Then he smiled and said, almost as an aside, “That’s not why I have that.”
Che, of course, wasn’t saying what he thought of the late pop star or his personal sexual preferences. He was participating in a tradition where he and co-host Colin Jost each write material for “Weekend Update” that the other man has to deliver coldly, not seeing the joke ahead of time. The goal is to make their anchor look as offensive, offensive, and stupid as possible, and Jost had designed a real doozy for Che to read. But the joke wasn’t just about shocking the audience or innovating in the seemingly used field of Michael Jackson’s jokes—it also showed how the right context can make great comedy sing, by turning a joke’s awkwardness into a real stutter.
In interview with comedian Mike BirbigliaChe said that the play was inspired by the “Update” jokes they had written that were blown up during a dress rehearsal. (Che recalled how one prankster was greeted by a woman who loudly said “no.”) But for one episode, Che and Jost decided to bring back the same jokes for another man to say. To Che’s surprise, the act of telling the audience that they knew the jokes were not in bad taste “made them laugh out loud.” Jost pushed them to do it again, but without knowing the jokes ahead of time; Che admitted that he was worried that Jost would surprise him, “so I wrote new ones that were scary.”
This has since turned into an annual tradition—and one of the best parts of the last decade SNL. Highlights include Jost getting Che to call Kendrick Lamar “the biggest bitch of all” during the height of his feud with Drakeand Che making a joke about Jost’s wife, Scarlett Johansson, that was beyond color. he later apologized to her on air.
The tradition has endured in part because of the joke’s high shock value, which almost guarantees it will go viral, but also because it’s so sweet, so weird. After working together for a decade, the two men understand each other on an artistic and personal level. For Che, writing his own jokes means relying on Jost straight-laced vibe and idea that he it seems as a boy who would enjoy racist material, such as this line he was made to recite about the Oscar-winning film. Sinners: “A Black Vampire is like a White Vampire, except the only thing that drains you is a sense of well-being.” On the contrary, Jost likes to make Che look like some kind of sexual pervert, as evidenced by Jackson’s jokes.
It all comes down to the painful delivery of two men, which itself becomes a joke. In an interview with Birbiglia, Che noted that people worry that they will “get in trouble” for laughing at jokes they know are wrong, so the secret is to give them permission. This is how a comedy that on paper reads like sexism and racism is about two friends trying to make each other really uncomfortable.
The latest exchange of jokes came on the heels of Kevin Hart’s recent Netflix episode, which was filled with awkward, not-so-flattering exchanges between the featured comedians. Take a really bad one here and there Shane Gillis and Chelsea Handlerwhere Gillis talked about Handler’s party with Jeffrey Epstein and Handler fired back by bringing up Gillis’ history of telling racist jokes. The environment was not that brotherhood Maybe everyone was in on the joke, but the event certainly seemed like it was full of people who looked down on each other, and who wanted to show that they were the harshest and most ruthless people in the room.
In contrast, Jost and Che’s union clearly comes from a place of deep love. At times, Jost was made fun of Ye’s new album (formerly Kanye West): “Please try to separate the art from the artist, and remember that Ye can make terrible music and still tell the truth about Hitler.” At the end of “Weekend Update,” she said to pay for this special segment, “I’d like to sacrifice the most important thing in my life: my beautiful, award-winning, world-famous hair.” A barber entered the set from the back, pulled out his blades, and covered Jost in a black hood.
But just before the clippers could make contact, Che eagerly intervened No! “Would you really do it?” he asked, looking disbelieving. “Man, you’re the greatest joker of all time,” he added, pausing for a second to simply tell his friend how much he loved her.
