Saturday Night Live recently aired a sketch where Jon Hamm and Bowen Yang played gay parents who recently took in a baby as other cast members demanded to know where they got it from. Is SNL’s willingness to question this, as well as mock personal pronouns, a sign that they’re abandoning wokeness? Or is it just an attempt by SNL to normalize surrogacy? Glenn and Stu debate.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: It's amazing.
STU: It's funny. It's actually a funny sketch.
GLENN: Very funny. So is this a sketch that is opening up comedy to do things?
Is this a sketch about a gay couple being able to -- the -- how do I say this?
Is this a sketch that shows us that things are changing. And that political correctness is going away.
Or is this a way to mainstream gay couples having a baby and adopting a baby? That's the argument, that I've read.
STU: Really?
GLENN: And I think it's more of the first. But there are people that are saying, no, no, no, no. No, don't be fooled.
STU: Oh, my God.
GLENN: John Roberts has a plan.
STU: No one has any fun anymore. Can we just laugh at a sketch.
GLENN: I know. That's very funny.
STU: Honestly, it makes much of a point either way, to encourage or discourage gay parenting, or anything like that.
GLENN: No.
STU: What it is, it's pointing out a very obvious thing. Which is, there is tension around saying something blatantly obvious. And there shouldn't be. And, by the way, one of the guys in the sketch, is gay. In real life. John Ham. The other guy is gay.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh. I didn't see the marking on his clothes.
STU: I know. It's shocking.
I don't know why they allowed John ham to culturally appropriate the gay role.
GLENN: Why he couldn't.
STU: Just pointing that out.
GLENN: Maybe he slept with somebody. To justify --
STU: Maybe he did, to justify the appearance.
But like, all that is, we -- this is an uncomfortable thing to say. And it is a -- a thing that society has made uncomfortable.
GLENN: That is --
STU: They're saying it out loud.
That's the basics comedy.
GLENN: And they're saying, you can't say that happen.
STU: Right. They're noticing how bizarre it is. That you can't question it.
When every single person on earth is aware, that asking, hey. Where did the baby come from, from two men?
Is a reasonable question. Because, of course, two men can't produce a baby by themselves.
GLENN: Especially when you didn't have one or talk about it the night before.
STU: Yeah. Two gay men cannot have a baby by mistake. That's a really good point.
GLENN: So I don't know. You think that's signaling a change?
I think a lot of companies put all of their chips on the table, betting it's going this way. I think Donald Trump -- I think you'll see, if Donald Trump is successful and you keep the Republican Congress and the Senate and a Republican is voted in as president, in the next election, I think you're going to see massive change.
Right now, I don't think you look at any of the changes like this. And think, it's anything, but hedging your bet.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: Just, it's not -- I don't think anybody has woken up and went, oh, my gosh! We were so wrong!
We were canceling speech, and that's not what comedy is.
I don't think anybody is waking up to that.
I think, at best, maybe some did. But at best, it's the group saying, this is not going to work. And we don't want to be on the wrong side of which way this falls out.
Let's just -- let's just go make fun of things that we made fun of.
No harm, no foul. And without articulating this. If it turns around, we're right back, where we were.
STU: Yeah. And I don't think you're going to start seeing all these conservative things going on, on Saturday Night Live. The point is, that can you find comedy wherever it is? We went through a period I think through the Barack Obama era, and into the woke, you know, Biden era. Where basically, you weren't allowed to find comedy in things that were funny.
GLENN: Oh, no.
STU: And that's always been the way that comedies worked.
GLENN: It went for clapter for years!
STU: Yeah. And still is like that on a lot of shows.
GLENN: Oh, I know. It's for over a decade. Over a decade.
STU: Yeah. Jimmy Kimmel is doing that still. Seth Myers.
GLENN: Still. And they will be in the dustbin of history. Those guys will be --
STU: I don't think that's going away, per se.
GLENN: No. But it's not going to be as mainstream as it was. Or tolerated as it was.
STU: It's boring.
GLENN: Look, you see what's happening to Snow White. Disney is still doubling down. So Disney is still going, we're going that way.
Okay. Well, go ahead.
Here's what I find fascinating about this. Is that the left, those like Disney. Who are continually doubling down, Disney is -- I mean, Disney has always been the number one storytelling company. Right?
STU: Sure. Yeah.
GLENN: And what is it that the right does horribly, for -- forever in my lifetime?
Tell stories.
We're not good storytelling people.
We -- you know, just conservatives.
They capture the heart. We try to capture the mind.
And you've got to go to the mind through the heart.
And so that's how they can move so many mountains, that we just can't seem to move.
Because they're good at storytelling.
What are they doing now?
Look at the Christian movies, and how good they are.
Okay?
They're fantastic now. Not all of them.
But some of them are really because they're just telling a story.
Have you seen House of David? Have you been watching that at all?
STU: No.
GLENN: Oh, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And I don't feel preached at. I don't feel anything, except that's a great story. Okay? And you don't have to believe the Bible to look at it and say, it's a great story. It's not screaming at you.
And this is true, and I'll burn in hell, if you don't buy every single word of it.
You know, it doesn't do that. That's what Christian movies used to do.
It's so fascinating to me, that right now, we're learning the lesson that no matter how hard people screamed at Christian movie making people. They never seemed to get it.
I want to bring my friend to go see this.
I want my friend to experience a moment, where they're just filled with the love of God!
But it -- if you -- if you beat them over the head with it, they're never -- how many times did you ever take a friend to a movie, because you really wanted to see them. And you were trying to help them find a path, or whatever. And everybody said, oh, you've got to bring your friend to this. And so you did.
And then you're sitting like five minutes in, and you're like, oh, dear God. And you just want to look at your friend and go, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Because this is so transparent, that it is just trying to make these guys look bad. And that's -- you might actually hold that point of view.
But you're not like that. You're not like that.
And all the people that believed differently. Don't believe in God. Are not all of a sudden, working for Satan.
You know what I mean?
And we just beat people over the head. And now suddenly, we've gotten it. And we've learned how to tell great stories.
And so now, what's -- what's growing like crazy. God stuff.
Religious programming. And it's just because it's good!
It's a good story. And they've left the preaching for Sunday.
And what's happened?
Look at Snow White. It's all about a message. You don't even think about Snow White anymore.
You think about what everything -- what everything means, in that movie.
Don't you understand what that means? Well, I know. You probably missed it. That's why Snow White tells you exactly what that means, off-screen and on the screen.
And they just beat you over the head with it. And they're failing. I find it fascinating, that we've switched places. Because for them, it should be easy to see.
Somebody should be sitting in a boardroom at Disney going, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Wait. Wait. Remember all those Christian movies that we used to make fun of, because they were so bad, because they were just about messages.
And they made -- they made decent people who just disagreed, look like they were in league with Satan?
Remember that? And we used to make fun of it. Has anybody noticed here at the table, we have become those people?
STU: And do those conversations even happen? I wonder. You would think --
GLENN: You would think.
STU: -- it would happen. I think there has to be people who agree with those types of questions. Whether they have the bravery to say it in those meetings, is another question.
GLENN: Because, look, what was it? The message was more important than money.
STU: Uh-huh.
GLENN: Okay? And that's the way Christians used to be. They would be like, no. We have to get this message out. And they would be like, but no one is going to come and watch this movie. Yes, but if we could only get one person to understand.
Wouldn't it be better to get millions of people to come in, and hope that maybe we could save a handful of them. Just open their minds a little bit. And the next movie, open their mind a little bit.
STU: Right. Maybe 25 conversations down the road, something good happens. Who knows?
GLENN: Yeah. Just plant the seed.
STU: This is, of course, one of the miracles of the market, by the way.
It doesn't require you to be a good person. It doesn't require you to have the best intentions.
Oftentimes, it leads to really good conclusions anyway.
And by the way, speaking of that. We've been talking about the King of Kings. The movie from Angel Studio, which is out right now.
GLENN: Yeah. How did that do?
STU: Number two in the box office, only behind Mindcraft, which is one of the biggest movies of all time.
Is going to wind up -- already 300 million in the box office.
King of kings. Already, they did 20 million in the first week.
Of course, this is Easter weekend. This is what I'm going to see this weekend with the kids.
GLENN: I'm going to see it, just to support.
I mean, I've seen it.
I just want to support it.
STU: Yeah. For sure.
And I think there is part of that. Right?
But like, they always try to demean some of these things. These are message movies. People are buying tickets. They're buying tickets for other people.
You can do that at angel.com/Stu. You can go there.
You can check. I want to pay it forward for other tickets. That's great, if you want to do that.
These are movies that people like, and they're interesting. And enjoy it.
GLENN: You don't get to be number two.
You might get to be number two. But next weekend, you would be off the chart, because the word-of-mouth would be so bad.
And the word-of-mouth, on King of Kings is great.
STU: Yeah. Still number two, even yesterday.
Increasing, because obviously, Easter helps. But it's a good movie, that people really like.
And that's much more important than, you know, some purity test. Where you're going to wind up wasting millions of dollars at a movie that nobody cares about.
GLENN: Look at. Look at what happened with the Melania Gibson movie. What was the one?
STU: Passion of the Christ?
GLENN: Yeah. Passion of the Christ. The whole thing was in Aramaic.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: Like four people on the earth speak Aramaic.
But it was such powerful story-telling. That it just cleaned house at the box office. And it wasn't just one week or two weeks. It went on and on and on and on.
STU: Uh-huh.
GLENN: It's interesting to watch and see how we're now finding ourselves in the driver's seat with storytelling. And they're still out in the parking lot, kicking rocks, going what the hell just happened?
Why did Snow White fail?
I actually hope that they don't catch on for a while. Let's get some space in between us before they catch on.