‘SNL’ sketch about the WNBA was lazy and painfully unfunny

Saturday Night Live is being rightfully criticized this week after a woeful sketch about WNBA players made fun of their pay and sexuality.

The sketch — which featured Idris Elba, Kenan Thompson, Chris Redd, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon — was about a group of gold-digging men infiltrating a WNBA party to pick up players. The idea was good enough that it got a decent laugh at the title card, but the sketch went downhill from there, quickly devolving into tired jokes about well-worn tropes that made fun of the WNBA’s comparative lack of pay and players’ sexuality.

When the sketch was done, WNBA players took notice.

Imani McGee-Stafford hit the nail on the head.

“The GoldDiggers of the WNBA” was uninspired, boring, and unfunny, and the reaction from the studio audience said it all — nobody really laughed.

Sketches bomb all the time. That’s the nature of comedy. But the astounding thing about this particular sketch is that nobody in the writers’ room paused for a second and thought that maybe it wasn’t cool to make fun of WNBA players’ pay, especially while they’re fighting to earn more. Or that a league that proves every day that stereotypes about it are bullshit deserved to have them brought the forefront.

The core concept of “skeezy guys picking up women” has been used time and time again in SNL history, from the “Wild and Crazy Guys,” to “The Ladies’ Man,” and “D*** In The Box.” However, in all of those cases, the men were as much the punchline as what they were lampooning. Instead of making any kind of commentary on the three men, the punchline became the fact that Leslie Jones’ character was gay.

There’s room to make fun of the WNBA’s problems, just as there is in every sports league — but this sketch wasn’t funny. It made fun of things in a way WNBA players didn’t find funny, the people watching didn’t find funny, and failed to say anything of substance.

In the end we’re left with a lazy, un-funny sketch that will hopefully never be revisited.

Perhaps having a WNBA player would have changed the tone of the sketch, or at least tinkered with it to not make it offensive to WNBA players. Normally when sketches are particularly pointed, the subject is incorporated as a way of communicating to the audience that it’s okay to laugh, that the person signed up for this — think Hillary Clinton or Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent appearances. SNL has used this to effect with political sketches and public figures in the past, but when it came to this one there was a notable absence.

What could have been a good sketch failed because the writers didn’t try to understand the people who were being mocked.