DAMMIT VS.DAMNIT SERIES
“Policin’,” the feisty series premiere, skewers the NYPD for gauche and tacky attempts to reform its image as a game of basketball is staged between cops and Black youth that concludes with an officer shooting the ball. Not quite a Louie and not quite a Chappelle’s Show, Che splits its time between exploring the strange sensation of intermediate fame, of being on television every week but unable to use your visibility to skip lines in any local club, and examining the ways the upheavals of 2020 have and haven’t changed the plight of inner-city communities in New York.Ĭhe’s humor seems pretty caustic on the surface, but its targets are fair and balanced to the extent that this fairness almost comes across as an insurance policy, the “But I hate everybody” response to criticism of a controversial joke. That Damn Michael Che blends topical sketches relating to current events with scenes where Che plays a version of himself, a Black man navigating the racial fallout from the pandemic and protests of New York City in 2020, as he seeks greater recognition beyond the prime-time gig to an audience that maybe thinks he’s a jerk. It’s not possible to tell just how much of this state of affairs is directly attributable to Michael Che, but That Damn Michael Che, the new HBO Max sketch-comedy series created by and starring Che, carries some of the hallmarks of the writer, actor, and producer’s comedy alma mater. SNL stirs the pot but often ensures it never boils over. Seuss books, but too hungry for cultural cachet among moderates and internet edgelords to count as leftist comfort food. It’s feel-good television, pure neoliberal pathos, not woke enough to incense right-wing outrage merchants desperate enough lately to pick fights over Dr. There’s not much appeal for conservatives, who feel the show has become “too political” (which is to say they’re not taking to being the butt of many of the jokes lately), or who feel indifferent because it’s rare for SNL to take a shot demanding a serious reprisal, Patchgate notwithstanding. SNL is the late-night institution your normie friends periodically lurk in bemusement, while your leftist friends bristle at the infantilization of political terrors like Jeff Sessions and Mike Pence.
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It’s tricky to get a deeper read on him than that good “Update” anchors need only allow the disorienting weirdness of current events, and the rogues’ gallery of wacky regulars and guests trying to get “Update”’s hosts to break character every week, to do the heavy lifting. Photo: Matt Wilson/Courtesy of HBO MaxĪs a comic and television personality - known to most as Saturday Night Live co-head writer since 2017 and, alongside Colin Jost, co-anchor of the “Weekend Update” segment since 2013 - Michael Che specializes in wryly deadpan punch lines, ironic distance, and weaponized liberalism.