Don Ray King | Whoops! I Married a Lesbian! / 2015 [TV (SNL) episode]

the vacuum of lesbian love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Colin Jost, Rob Klein, and Bryan Tucker (head writers), Don Ray King (director) Whoops! I Married a Lesbian! / 2015 [TV (SNL) episode]

 

On the May 16, 2015 episode of Saturday Night Live Keenan Thompson playing the TV host Reese D’What takes us back in memory lane to a 1950s situation comedy that lasted only one episode, “Whoops! I Married a Lesbian!” In true “I Love Lucy” style,  Kate McKinnon suddenly announces

to her husband Louis C. K. that she has become a lesbian, and moments later Aidy Bryant, her lesbian neighbor, married to Bobby Moynihan moves in.

 

    As in many a Lucy episode, the hubby (C. K.) doubts his wife's (McKinnon) ability to suddenly to make such a switch, whereupon, in this instance she bets she can prove she truly has the hots for Bryant.

     As D’What reveals in a break, the unfortunate thing about this series is not only the bad acting and lack of believable characterization, but none of the white male writers had even met a lesbian—although one claimed to have met a lesbian only to discover “she” was a cigar-store Indian.

     Back to the series, the girls vacuum the floor together, woodenly smooch one another, and generally cause trouble for the boys. C. K. has an answer: he puts itching powder all over their beds, presuming they will soon be out, scratching and rubbing their ways back to heterosexual love. Turns out they haven’t been in bed and realize what he’s up too. Moynihan even tries a bit a drag to see if he can woo back his wife, while McKinnon realizes, once she’s proven her point, that she loves the man she’s married to, ending the skit with a big smooch.

      Unfortunately, the skit is as inane and uninteresting as the 1-night sitcom series it pretends to satirize—perhaps the problem of SNL’s mostly male comedy writing team itself. Or perhaps this simply proves the enduring belief that when you’re satirizing bad comedy your own comedic instincts have to match it.

 

Los Angeles, May 31, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May