“Saturday Night Live”‘s middle ground problem

“Heated Rivalry” star Connor Storrie’s “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut generated a rare level of excitement during this 51st season, sparking conversation days before he took the Studio 8H stage. But by the time he got there, his monologue had been transformed from a pure celebration of his overnight success into an exercise in damage control. Leave it to “SNL” to bungle what should have been a slap shot straight into an open goal. 

Days before Storrie’s episode, The Athletic announced that Minnesota Wild defenseman Quinn Hughes — fresh off besting Team Canada to win Olympic gold with the U.S. men’s hockey team in Milan — would join Storrie on the show before heading over to appear on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Monday.

In another reality, Hughes’ cameo would have been viewed as a nice tip of the hat to the world of “Heated Rivalry,” a romantic drama about hockey players from rival teams – one Canadian, one American – falling in love. But in this darkest of timelines, Hughes and his brother, Jack, were caught in a widely circulated video showing them partying with FBI director Kash Patel and laughing as Donald Trump made a dig at the U.S. women’s hockey team, who also won gold.

“I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that?” Trump said after inviting the men to visit the White House. If he didn’t, he added, he’d “probably be impeached.” At this, America’s hockey dudes laughed dutifully and dude-ily, unaware of how disgusting people would find this tidbit of locker room talk.

None of this should have been Connor Storrie’s problem. But the “Heated Rivalry” of it all provided an opportunity for reputational laundering nobody at NBC or with Team USA could pass up.

So on “SNL,” as Storrie’s monologue winds down, we see the Hughes brothers take the stage to polite applause and a few hoots. A little banter ensues, making way for the real surprise guests: fellow Olympic hockey champions Megan Keller and team captain Hilary Knight. The audience roars as Keller and Knight flank Storrie before Knight jokes, “It was gonna be just us, but we thought we’d invite the guys too.”

“We thought we’d give them a little moment to shine,” Keller adds.

See what “SNL” did there?

An uncritical viewing designates this as another “all’s well that ends well” gag. Whether it came together after producers took stock of the rising fury or was planned all along is irrelevant; we’re supposed to appreciate that “SNL” made a show of giving all the gold medalists their deserved spotlight. Regardless of the media’s outsized focus on the men’s victory (“The Boys of Team USA,” crows a Free Press headline prominently featured on CBS News’ website) and this brazen example of how women’s sports accomplishments are relegated to a lower status that men’s, Lorne Michaels is once again here to remind us that the whole mess is laughable and all things are equal.

After all, this is men’s hockey’s first team gold since 1980’s “Miracle on Ice.” And the women? “The last time we did that was two whole Olympics ago,” Knight deadpans.

So yet again, Michaels and the “Saturday Night Live” producers placed an up-and-coming performer in the role of scandal laundering.

I’d argue Ayo Edebiri got a rawer deal in 2024 when she was pressed into setting up former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who opposed marriage equality and transgender rights, with a joke about Haley’s refusal to cite slavery as the Civil War’s primary cause. Even so, Storrie has to figuratively shine up a team of athletes who probably never watched his show in front of the millions of fans who ardently do.

(Will Heath/NBC) Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie on “Saturday Night Live”

Michaels has long responded to criticisms about “SNL” being left-leaning (which it has been, historically) or humanizing odious far-right figures (which it does more often these days) by claiming that his show is politically neutral.

If neutrality equals toothlessness, I have no rebuttal to that assessment. “Saturday Night Live” has never demonstratively risen to the challenge of satirizing Trump or any of the treacherous absurdity he’s foisted on us. Even when Alec Baldwin capitalized on his celebrity to poke at Trump’s orange peel during his first presidency, it wasn’t up to the task. The show has offered even less of a challenge during this more unhinged second administration.

But the Olympic hockey incursion on a night that should have entirely belonged to Storrie is an apt metaphor for the show’s constant slips and stumbles on what it thinks of as political middle ground. Keller and Knight were rewarded with proximity to Storrie and the best punchlines, but neither Quinn nor Jack Hughes had to indicate in any way that they had joined America’s president in slighting them.

“Saturday Night Live” will always be a safe space for politicians who don’t mind laughing at themselves. That includes objectively horrendous people. Anyone lampooned with a scintilla of brutality knows that an appearance can temporarily inoculate against accusations of humorlessness. In the worst cases, it gives the audience one last chance to laugh in someone’s face before they vanish into obscurity.

For this reason, one of the smartest moves Sarah Palin made was showing up during one of Tina Fey’s dead-ringer impressions to mark the end of her time as a vice presidential candidate. This season, Fey dropped by to impersonate freshly ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Who knows, she may reprise that role this weekend when Ryan Gosling hosts.

But I wouldn’t put it past Michaels to persuade Noem herself to pop in and lay a few aw-shucks jokey-jokes on we, the people. Like everyone else in Trump’s circle, she is just human after all . . . of those Immigration and Customs Enforcement kidnappings and killings she oversaw.

Olympic athletes, in contrast, are meant to be apolitical figures representing their home nation’s highest ideals. The circumstances leading to this PR black eye for the men’s hockey team are anything but – and a sharper, braver comedy show would have done a smarter job of acknowledging that while moving the biscuit across the ice.

“Saturday Night Live” hasn’t been that show for some time – probably not since the last time the men’s hockey team won gold. But its ineffectual japing, and Michaels’ inability to help himself when it comes to normalizing repugnant behavior in the name of chasing the zeitgeist, makes it a popular stop on the image rehab express. Since Quinn and Jack’s mother, Ellen Hughes, did her part by dropping by “Today” in her capacity as a USA women’s hockey player development consultant, so must her sons make the NBC rounds.

Despite their enthusiastic appearance at the State of the Union address – the women’s team was also invited but declined, citing scheduling conflicts –  I’m guessing the men’s team does not want history to remember them as Trump acolytes. Some have offered their version of repentance for their behavior, while Jack Hughes, a center and alternate captain for the New Jersey Devils, could only muster a “You’re in the moment” excuse when The Athletic asked him about the situation. “It is what it is now,” he said a couple of days before his “SNL” appearance, “but we have so much respect for the women’s team, they have so much respect for us. We’re all just proud Americans and we’re happy that we both swept the Olympics.”

Others have asked for the public’s grace, including women’s hockey champion Abbey Murphy, who addressed the controversy on a recent Barstool Sports hockey podcast episode by saying, “We never felt anything bad from them . . . it’s sad they even have to apologize for anything.”

Regardless, the U.S. men’s hockey team became synonymous with the standardized misogyny from which “Heated Rivalry” offers a refuge.

Bringing Keller and Knight onstage somewhat sweetened the awkward position in which the show placed Storrie, but it doesn’t entirely ameliorate the White House’s intrusion into both hockey teams’ Olympic glory. Instead, the bit reduced a palpable slight to just another funny slip-up.

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last. Sign up here

Did any of this take away from Storrie’s “Saturday Night Live” debut? In the main, not so much. “Heated Rivalry” stans applauded the actor’s good-natured handling of the situation and flipped over the unannounced but entirely expected appearances by his co-star and best friend, Hudson Williams.

Not much else about the episode was as memorable as these treats, which means “SNL” successfully washed the dirt of another scandal out of our newsfeeds yet again,

The part that continues to stink is that the show used both an actor who portrays a queer hero and women’s excellence to scrub away our indignance without requiring their male counterparts to lend any muscle at all. That Quinn and Jack Hughes agreed to be the butt of the joke by simply standing there is enough in the show’s non-partisan judgment. But without their presence, the audience would have understood that Olympic gold shines just as brightly when women hockey champions are wearing it, especially in the pleasing glow of a much-adored star like Storrie.

“Saturday Night Live” airs at 8:30 p.m. PT/ 11:30 p.m. ET Saturdays on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.