SNL

Sabrina Carpenter, who will for the first time this week be hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live, continues to be a cause of controversy. Over the summer, the five-foot, honey-voiced singer revealed the cover for her newly released album, Man’s Best Friend. It shows her wearing a black minidress on her hands and knees, while a faceless man holds a handful of her hair. The image immediately stirred outrage online. Those who usually find themselves on the side of unfettered female sexual liberation called the cover regressive, degrading, and submissive toward the male gaze. Some fans defended the image, arguing that Carpenter was clearly satirizing incompetent and controlling men as well as her portrayal by the media as a “sex obsessed” pop star.

The 48th season of Saturday Night Live premieres tomorrow, and this one should be its last. The show has never felt more out of touch — a stale, punch-pulling iteration marked by a dim vision of what comedy can achieve in a politically and socially divisive moment. This is a target-rich environment, but SNL seems firmly of the opinion that taking shots against our current feckless leadership class is verboten. At a time when online comedy is exploding and hilarious sketches and specials abound on YouTube, SNL operates as if they have no competition. This offseason saw the show's biggest staff turnover in almost thirty years. This might have been an opportunity: if Saturday Night Live wanted to be relevant, the talent is obviously out there.

Give Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw another medal! The Texan, an eye-patch wearing veteran who nearly lost his sight in Afghanistan, managed to stay dignified during last weekend's major outrage over Saturday Night Live, when Pete Davidson said looked like ‘a hitman from a porno movie.’ Crenshaw did not over-react. But he say, of ribbing people about their appearance, that: ‘it has to be original, it has to be witty, and it has to be actually funny, alright, and this wasn't funny.’ Last night, SNL gave Crenshaw his chance to take revenge on Davidson and, boy, did he take it well. ‘Here is Pete Davidson. He looks like, if the meth from Breaking Bad was a person!’ Excellent. That’s a better quality of gag that you often get on SNL.