Worst TV Moments of 2016: Special Trump Edition
Jimmy Fallon and Donald Trump’s Hair, Sept. 15, 2016 For the purest example of the cluelessness of TV entertainment to understand what was going on during the campaign of Donald Trump, look no further than this stomach-churning moment when Jimmy Fallon treated Trump like he was just another celebrity to be giggled at and fawned over in what is now the official Tonight Show style. (That sound you hear is Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson spinning in their graves.) “I wonder if there’s something we can do that’s not presidential,” said Fallon, as if he or Trump would go on to do anything “presidential.” In the prearranged bit, Fallon reached over and mussed Trump’s hair. In a way, Fallon was prescient: This is what I imagine occurs every time Trump interviews a new potential Cabinet member in Trump Tower.
The Cancellation of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore I’m not saying that Wilmore would have committed any satire that would have influenced the nation one way or the other. I’m just saying that it was extraordinarily cynical of Comedy Central to look at two shows — The Daily Show, where Trevor Noah was failing to come up with sharp commentary, and The Nightly Show, which was sharp as a knife but suffering in the ratings at least partly because of its flailing lead-in — and cancel Wilmore’s. Another, rarely spoken reason for jettisoning Wilmore: ageism. Dude is 55! The kids can’t relate! You can bet Wilmore would have had Tomi Lahren on his show and he would have kept it 100.
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Saturday Night Live’s Trump Sketches In a recent New York Times interview, SNL guru Lorne Michaels says in defense of his election and postelection programming, “We’ve actually tried to make SNL a safe space across the political spectrum.” But it’s actually less safe than it is willfully misleading. Surely Michaels, writer Jim Downey, and the rest of the staff know that Trump is not the buffoon they instruct Alec Baldwin to play him as, or that Kellyanne Conway is not the long-suffering, unheeded voice of reason that the show asks Kate McKinnon to play?
The Debates Every one of them — from the primary-season cattle calls to the ones opposite Hillary Clinton — was an open invitation to Trump to hector, wheedle, and bully his way past not only his opponents but also the moderators.
The Commercials for The Celebrity Apprentice Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face is crumpled, collapsed into itself. It’s as though he doesn’t know how to react now, taking the place of the guy who will be the president. He seems to know that joking around with Jon Lovitz and Boy George is a fool’s errand, and that as of Jan. 2, he’s now part of the project that will continue to be monitored by Trump as an executive producer. The phrase “not what he signed up for” comes to mind…
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