Chris Rock’s Risky ‘SNL’ Monologue Shows Weekend Update How It’s Done

Chris Rock’s latest Saturday Night Live monologue wasn’t the funniest he’s ever done, but it didn’t need to be. Comics like Rock want to make us laugh, but they also want to provoke, spilling uncomfortable truths that generate nervous titters along with outright guffaws. Take note, Colin Jost and Michael Che — Rock just proved topical jokes can have teeth.

Take the recent murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, an event as shocking for public sentiment endorsing the vigilante act as for the killing itself. Weekend Update — for two weeks in a row now — has sidestepped the bigger picture for squishy punchlines around the story’s edges. “After police arrested suspected shooter Luigi Mangione, they found a note on him expressing anger at corporate America,” noted Jost this weekend. “Yet he went to Starbucks before the shooting and then was caught at McDonald’s. So perhaps his greatest crime was hypocrisy.”

Other Jost joke topics: Who would play Mangione in a Netflix movie, people who leave Yelp reviews for McDonalds and his high school yearbook photo suggesting he’d be a killer someday.

It’s not that Jost's jokes didn’t get laughs — they did. But Weekend Update’s focus on the story’s irrelevant details feels safe and tepid, especially compared with what Rock did in his monologue.

First, Rock set up his bit with misdirection about Mangione. “He actually killed a man. A man with a family. A man with kids, man. I have real condolences for the healthcare CEO. This is a real person, you know?”

Then the comic twisted the knife hard. “But you also got to go, ‘You know, sometimes drug dealers get shot.’ I mean, you’ve seen The Wire, right?”

Boom. There’s the joke that reflects the public’s collective anger about a broken healthcare system, the kind of pointed punchline that Weekend Update gingerly avoids. Is that segment afraid of pissing off show sponsors? It’s a fear that Norm Macdonald never had.

Rock continued to fire away in last night’s monologue:

• On the Dignity of the Presidency: “Come on, man. This is not the most dignified job in the world. You know, we've had presidents show up to the inauguration with pregnant slaves. And I’m just talking about Bill Clinton.”
• On Jake Paul: “He’s a 27-year-old punching a 60-year-old man in the face. Is this what the white man has reduced himself to? Stop it! Who’s he going to fight next? Morgan Freeman? I hate Jake Paul. I got landlord hate for him. I hate him. I hate him like cocaine hates monogamy.”
• On Shameful Leaders of the Past: “You know how many rapists are in my wallet right now? A cup of coffee in America costs seven rapists. And Trump's going to get it down to three.”

That joke that someone recorded last week that caused Rock to storm out of a billionaire’s birthday party? Here’s the whole bit about Trump deporting Mexicans in context. “He's working with the number one African American in the world, the richest African American in the world, Elon Musk. That’s right. He is African American. Elon got more kids than the Cleveland Browns. Nobody knows how to get rid of people like a South African. Trump is not playing. He got Elon. They’re going to put them in a rocket ship and call it SpaceMex.”

Compare that to Michael Che’s Trump joke: “Amazon is planning to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration. It makes sense because Amazon and Trump both want to ship stuff out as fast as possible.”

Same topic. Even a similar take — just with the edges sanded off. Rock was the one landing punches with immigration jokes like this: “A lot less immigrants would come into America if you stop paying them $700 million to play baseball. That’s right, Steve Cohen bought one Dominican for $700 million. Used to be able to get a whole bushel for that much.”

Lorne Michaels should make Che and Jost watch Rock’s monologue as a homework assignment. It’s great to get laughs, but there are bonus points for daring to explore edgier territory.