"Cougar Den" Skit Represents Everything That Is Wrong With SNL

Want to know why we stopped having an SNL Live Thread? Because it’s not quite worth it to stay up for skits like this mess from last night, with guests Alec Baldwin and Cameron Diaz.

We’re supposed to think this “Cougar Den” skit is hilarious, especially when Kenan Thompson, playing a middle aged man, insults the women repeatedly, reminding them how disgusting they are any opportunity he can. Because they’re middle aged women! Going through menopause! And that is so gross right? Ugh.

The cougar phenomenon is dumb and played out and needs to die a quick death, and yes, there is opportunity to mock it in a really clever way, but here, the women are just set up to be really foul, awful, pathetic people who seem to be chasing teenage boys, setting them up to be more like pedophiles than 40 year old women who prefer dating younger men. And then comes Alec Baldwin, playing a gay man who also likes younger men, and Cameron Diaz, who, from what I could tell, was playing Charo on speed.

The point is this: there are clearly talented women in the SNL cast, but crap like this is not showcasing their abilities and just seems to further this season’s choices to consistently make the women on the show the set up for everyone else’s hilarious jokes. When Molly Shannon was playing her “Leg Up!” or Sally O’Malley characters, she was lightly mocking older women, but in a way that was both hilarious and had a sense of affection to it. It was a goofy, exaggerated homage to the quirks of aging rather than a skit filled with clear disdain for the subjects at hand. Perhaps SNL needs to review some tapes from the Tina Fey years to remember that women can be funny, and a source of laughs, without the joke always being on them.