Fred Armisen’s Obama impression needs to be removed from office

in TV by griffn — October 23, 2009 at 8:00 am | 0 comments

NUP_132889_0001 Okay, Saturday Night Live fans, it’s time to face the truth. Fred Armisen’s Obama impression sucks. And I mean really, really badly. I’m not just talking about the fact that he’s completely given up trying to sound or look at all like Obama. I’m talking about the fact that Armisen hasn’t said or done a single funny thing as Obama in two years.

I realize President Obama is harder to spoof than the deliberately slow President Bush or the slick, fun-loving President Clinton. But Armisen can surely do better than just talking straight to camera in his regular speaking voice and spouting recycled Daily Show punch lines. Armisen’s skit on Obama’s Nobel Prize was about the millionth bit of worldwide commentary to point out that Obama won for not being Bush. (Seth Meyer managed to score some originality points later in Weekend Update by stating that, in other premature awards, a nine-year-old had just been named People’s Sexiest Man Alive.)

Will Ferrell and later Will Forte both managed to find quirks in Bush’s personality (wild overconfidence and childish whininess, respectively) without it turning into just a guy with a Southern drawl saying dumb stuff. Darrell Hammond could draw huge laughs from his Clinton character with just a smarmy bite of his lip. I find Fred Armisen to be generally hilarious, but it’s clear that he has no idea how to make Obama funny. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Obama is significantly funnier in real life than Armisen’s impression of him onstage.

And what makes it all worse is that not only is Saturday Night Live sticking with Armisen as the Impersonator in Chief, but they’re determined to trot him out at the beginning of every show to do an Obama skit, regardless of whether or not Obama had actually made any significant news that week. This became clear last weekend, when the Balloon Boy hoax had been the entire national buzz for two straight days, complete with a cornucopia of spoof-able moments such as anything Richard Heene had said or done in the previous 48 hours. So of course SNL kicked off the show with a skit about Obama turning into the Hulk in order to get health care passed. And of course, the skit wasn’t funny until after Fred Armisen’s Obama turned into The Rock’s Obama. Even then it fizzled pretty awkwardly.

I’m guessing SNL’s emphasis on Obama is a continuation of last year, when their hilarious election season skits (thanks mostly to Tina Fey’s Emmy award winning portrayal of Sarah Palin) were the talk of the town. But unless they’ve got something funny and semi-original to say about Obama, and someone funny to deliver it, they’re just turning the opening of every show into an uncommonly accurate advertisement of the next 90 minutes of uninspired comedy.

Tags: balloon boy Barack Obama Fred Armisen George Bush Saturday Night Live Seth Meyer Will Ferrell Will Forte