When Colin Jost welcomes viewers to “Weekend Replace” subsequent week, it’ll make his tenth 12 months behind that desk—a outstanding feat given that the majority Saturday Evening Dwell followers didn’t suppose he’d final a season.
In Jost’s 2020 memoir A Very Punchable Face, he writes about an encounter he had with Chris Rock within the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, proper close to the tip of his first full season on SNL. Rock mentioned, “Hey! You’re nonetheless right here!” in a tone that Jost couldn’t assist however interpret as an incredulous, “They haven’t kicked you out of the constructing but!”
There’s probability that wasn’t what Rock meant, but it surely is sensible that that is how Jost would interpret it. By Could 2015, Jost’s tenure as a “Weekend Replace” anchor had been a catastrophe. He was stiff, awkward, and got here throughout as smug. A lot was constructed from critics of Jost’s “permanent smirk,” which was notably infuriating to those that thought of him the “epitome of white-male mediocrity.”
What does this man, a boring comic who acquired this dream gig regardless of little or no on-camera expertise, must smirk about?
The reason for Jost’s unearned confidence is that he wasn’t truly assured in any respect. “I’d get nervous and my response was to smile or giggle on digicam, which was unnatural and possibly got here throughout as smug,” Jost wrote. It was a tragic misunderstanding, emphasised by his unrelatable Ivy League background, his aforementioned punchable face, and his middling jokes. “Each summer season for the primary three years of doing ‘Replace,’ I used to be satisfied I used to be getting fired,” he wrote. And so was everybody else.
Issues picked up for him with Leslie Jones’ first look on “Weekend Replace” in Could 2014. It was controversial resulting from Jones’ materials seemingly making mild of slavery, however its most influential second turned out to be a throwaway line early into the phase. Jones flirtatiously calls Jost “a delectable caucasian” as Jost blushes with discomfort.
This was the beginning of a years-long operating gag of Jones hitting on Jost with growing aggression. She’d name him a “little salty oyster cracker” or a “creamy slice of provolone cheese.” These have been not often the principle level of Jones’ segments, however they turned an anticipated, ingrained a part of Jost and Jones’ dynamic. If Jones went on “Weekend Replace,” viewers knew she’d be on Jost’s aspect of the desk, and she or he’d be giving him no less than one racially, sexually charged remark that might make him blush.
Relationship knowledgeable Leslie Jones, Colin Jost, and Michael Che throughout “Weekend Replace” on Feb. 13, 2016
Dana Edelson/NBCU Picture Financial institution/NBCUniversal through Getty Pictures through Getty Pictures
Jost credit Jones essentially the most for his survival in these earlier years. He wrote, “I used to be so in my head, overthinking each joke—however when Leslie got here on ‘Replace,’ she would actually shake me out of my head and into my physique.”
However though she helped him really feel extra snug, half the enchantment of them as a duo was simply how uncomfortable she made him look. In between her sexual advances she’d neg or yell at him in a method that gave Jost no well mannered method to reply. Jost’s fashion had been generally criticized for coming from “a place of centrist, dispassionate pragmatism,” with Jost attempting to place himself as a cool, above-it-all determine dunking on anybody outdoors his small window of acceptable public opinion and conduct. Jones minimize straight by way of that persona; she carried out as a borderline-crazy particular person with no considerations over politeness or normalcy, and Jost had no alternative however to take a seat there and take it.
The trick of purposely making Jost uncomfortable went far past Jones. There was additionally Cecily Sturdy’s Decide Jeanine Pirro, who made Jost break more durable than he’d ever had by repeatedly spilling her drinks throughout him. At one level in her closing look, Jost expresses aid that Pirro has nothing left in her drink to spill, just for his mischievous co-anchor Michael Che to supply her one other glass.
Cecily Sturdy as Jeanine Pirro, Colin Jost, Michael Che throughout “Weekend Replace” on Could 18, 2019.
NBC
The joke is that Jost’s supposed ally is scheming in opposition to him and quietly reveling in his depressing predicament, however common viewers of SNL know that Che’s not the one one with an obvious grudge in opposition to him. On one of many uncommon events the place Jost appeared outdoors of “Weekend Replace,” the digital quick ends with Kyle Mooney shooting him in public. “I don’t often assist castmates capturing one another,” showrunner Lorne Michaels says within the quick, “However Colin can be annoying.”
The sequel to that sketch ends with Jost getting repeatedly punched within the face by Kyle Mooney, then Beck Bennett, then host Tiffany Haddish, then Lorne Michaels, all whereas the remainder of the forged watches unmoved.
The Jost-bashing ramped up even additional in 2021 when Sarah Sherman joined the forged. Sherman was solely a featured participant for six episodes earlier than she was roasting him on “Replace,” twisting his phrases round and turning them into unflattering newspaper headlines. At one level she falsely claimed there aren’t any Jewish individuals engaged on the present, and when Jost corrects her she fortunately pulls up the headline, “Native Moist Blanket Colin Jost is Maintaining Observe of the Quantity of Jews At SNL.”
The viewers is aware of that is dishonest framing, they usually’re very happy to associate with it. Sherman carried out the identical schtick two extra occasions that season, the third one escalating to her breaking into Jost’s dressing room and planting a bunch of embarrassing gadgets inside. Che ends all three segments by serving to Sherman pile on, to the viewers’s delight, making it clear to poor Jost that he has no allies right here.
The fixed sabotage from Michael Che is sensible, since nowhere does Jost endure greater than with the joke swap segments he does with him. Beginning in the 2018 Christmas episode, every of the 2 reads the opposite’s jokes stay on air—jokes they’ve by no means seen earlier than. Che first framed the thought as a Christmas present, but it surely rapidly turned clear this was extra of a sick competitors to see who might greatest break the opposite particular person’s repute.
Jost usually writes Che jokes that make him sound like a pervert, or the place Che has to take a tough right-wing stance on a hot-button subject. Che, in the meantime, merely makes Jost say a few of the most racist stuff you’ve ever heard.
It’s not a good struggle. Che is the extra ruthless of the 2. The construction of the segments displays this, because it’s all the time Jost who’s compelled to learn the final joke, which means that it’s all the time Che who will get the final giggle. The segments often finish with Jost’s face shiny purple, completely defeated but once more.
The joke swaps have turn into a convention for practically six years now, even bleeding into regular “Replace” segments. Jost will usually say a weird racial joke out of nowhere, and simply from his embarrassed demeanor and Che’s faux-disapproving response, common viewers will immediately perceive who actually wrote it.
Che’s pleasant cruelty escalated in final 12 months’s April Fools’ Day episode, when Che advised the viewers forward of time to not giggle at any of Jost’s jokes. Though the distinction in response between Jost and Che’s jokes isn’t that noticeable on TV (a small part of the viewers didn’t hear Che’s request, and the mics over-represented them), from Jost’s perspective the shortage of guffaws was deafening, and you’ll see the panic in his eyes rising the longer the prank went on. “I’m lined in sweat!” he mentioned, after Che lastly confirmed some mercy and let him in on the ruse.
This phase was one other huge success, one which immediately sparked the query of what would occur subsequent 12 months. Will Jost be pranking Che within the upcoming April Fools’ episode? Primarily based on the latest joke swap, the place Che introduced on a (fictional) civil rights activist to take a seat subsequent to Jost the entire time, it’s more likely to be Che stirring up bother but once more. Each anchors appear to grasp that their dynamic is funniest when Jost is the butt of the joke. Folks don’t tune in to the joke swaps to see Che sweat and endure. They wish to watch as Jost’s life flashes earlier than his very eyes.
The joke swaps are simply Jost’s hottest moments on SNL, his segments most certainly to get constructive consideration on social media even from non-fans. This have to be a blended bag for him, as a result of now essentially the most well-known jokes individuals know from him are those he himself by no means wrote. It’s Jost’s reactions which are making individuals giggle, but it surely’s Che who will get the credit score. Jost is undeniably an completed comic, serving as a author for SNL since 2005 and as a head author on and off since 2012. However that’s not what’s coming throughout on stage.
On the intense aspect, the joke swaps have efficiently destroyed that preliminary repute of Jost as a smug, aloof particular person. When Jost laughed at himself out of nervousness in his early seasons, it got here throughout as immodest, however when Jost laughs at himself now it’s inconceivable to not sympathize. We all know past a doubt the place that laughter’s coming from. When he breaks whereas compelled to inform just a few racist Superman jokes, we all know that ego’s acquired nothing to do with it.
It’s Jost’s willingness to let himself be repeatedly tortured on stay TV that makes him essentially the most improved “Replace” anchor of the entire present, in addition to the longest-running one within the present’s historical past. He’s understood that, on paper no less than, no person roots for a Harvard alumnus who acquired a comfortable author’s gig on SNL shortly after graduating, to not point out a man who’s inexplicably married to Scarlett Johansson.
To show him into the loveable underdog he’s at this time, he must endure, and endure he has. We’ve been watching Jost be lovingly tortured by his castmates for the higher a part of a decade by this level. With a bit of luck, that torture will proceed on for the foreseeable future.