TV Talk: Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden pulls a Mister Rogers on ‘SNL’

It’s been a busy week for Latrobe native Fred Rogers in the pop-culture zeitgeist, beginning with social media reactions to a tweet Thursday night, which in turn inspired a scene in the cold open sketch on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

It all started Thursday night during dueling town halls between former Vice President Joe Biden on ABC and President Trump on NBC. Trump campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp tweeted that watching Biden’s town hall felt like watching an episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” though she misspelled his name as “Rodgers.”

Well @JoeBiden @ABCPolitics townhall feels like I am watching an episode of Mister Rodgers Neighborhood. https://t.co/bC8fIZPxHR

— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) October 16, 2020

This resulted in a spate of responses from social media users who questioned the attempt to slam Biden via a comparison with one of the most beloved children’s shows of all time.

I think I’ll take Mister Rogers over the guy who cheated on his 3rd wife with a porn star and then paid her to keep it quiet. https://t.co/YamZ47jQ9w

— Nathan H. Rubin (@NathanHRubin) October 16, 2020

...this is a Trump campaign person. She compared Biden to Mister Rogers when he is doing a town hall in Pennsylvania. Girl. Read the swing state. https://t.co/IfkxWHvacb

— Marylee “register to vote link in bio” Williams (@marylee_will) October 16, 2020

“our opponent is reminiscent of a widely beloved american icon,” is a bit of a strange attack https://t.co/lfGlg88fBq

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) October 16, 2020

Rogers’ son, John, embraced the comparison as a compliment, per TMZ.com. In September, Rogers’ widow, Pittsburgher Joanne Rogers, proclaimed herself a Biden fan while calling Trump “a horrible person.”

Schlapp’s tweet and the retorts prompted other social media users to post favorite Mister Rogers video clips, once again elevating Rogers in pop-culture discourse 17 years after his death from stomach cancer.

Of course, that’s become pretty common, particularly in the past two years through the celebration of the 50th anniversary of PBS’s “Neighborhood,” the 2018 release of the documentary biography feature “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and the 2019 movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” featuring Tom Hanks as Rogers.

The “SNL” cold-open skit recounted the dueling town halls with Biden (Jim Carrey) boring his audience while Trump (Alec Baldwin) was depicted as a professional wrestler tussling with “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie (Kate McKinnon) at “WrestleMania.”

At one point, the action shifted back to Biden’s town hall where he sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” while putting on a maroon sweater — it should have been red, but they were at least in the ballpark — as Rogers did on episodes of the “Neighborhood.”

Of course, Carrey-as-Biden-as-Rogers was meta in another way: Carrey recently finished playing a Rogers-like children’s show host for two seasons on Showtime’s “Kidding,” and Carrey had previously spoofed Rogers on “In Living Color.”

Another Western Pennsylvania reference came during the “Weekend Update” segment when Colin Jost recounted reports of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s wife, Gisele Fetterman, being called a racist slur at a grocery store.

“It’s the worst case of racism at the grocery store since every jar of Newman’s Own Salsa,” Jost said with an accompanying photo of the actual product featuring the image of a mustachioed Paul Newman wearing a sombrero.