Meet Your Second Wife!

By now, I’m sure that everyone has heard of and probably seen a Saturday Night Live clip. Saturday Night Live has become one of my weekend musts and it’s great to watch with my family. Saturday Night Live is probably my primary form of satire and they address and variety of issues that can be extremely serious and political or carefree and humorous. Often, SNL utilizes a combination of the two to send progressive messages to the public. I’m going to focus on a skit that is more socially political than political political and is a few years old.This skit, called “Meet Your Second Wife” is from 2015 and was a game show where three married men were able to meet their second wives.

In the video, the first man’s second wife is an eighth grade girl and the wives become progressively younger, the next one being five, and the last one being conceived three months ago. In this skit, SNL used a strong combination of parody, hyperbole, and irony to send a message about society and its views on marriage between people of very different ages. The skit is a parody of a common game show. There is an upbeat audience that contains each of the men’s three wives, two cheerful hosts with cue cards, and contestants that, in the beginning, are excited to be there. The use of parody is primarily for comedic effect, the use of hyperbole provides the bulk of the critiques of society. One of the uses of hyperbole was when the first contestant met his future wife, an eighth grader. At the end, he said “I guess I’ll see you again in twenty years” to which one of the hosts replies, “actually, it’s seven.” SNL uses hyperbole to exaggerate how young some women are getting married to much older men. The hyperbole continues as the future wives decrease exponentially in age. The use of hyperbole is even heightened further because despite the alarming age differences, it is not completely unrealistic in today’s society. I believe that it makes the hyperbole even more powerful in the context of the skit. Finally, the skit also uses some irony to increase the comedic effect and the message as a whole. One example is when the first man, Brian, is introduced, his wife is shown in the audience saying “yay Brian!” Now, we would not typically expect his wife to show any positive emotions as the show is essentially telling her that at some point, her husband will be leaving her for another, younger, woman. This section could also be seen as verbal irony or sarcasm, but based on the context, I believe that she is fairly genuine and it is part of the character.

Saturday Night Live is a very satirical show and with almost every skit, a message can be immediately drawn from it. “Meet Your Second Wife” is a bit more complex. It is fairly simple to deduct that the topic that they are discussing is marriage, specifically between an older man and a significantly younger woman. The skit criticizes those who might leave their wives in pursuit of younger and supposedly “more beautiful” women. Although we do not learn of the reason as to why the last couple ends up separating, the rest of the skit implies that it is something that the man, rather than the woman, does. I think that with this skit, SNL was attempting to enforce I guess what we would call "traditional" marriage views where the two people are faithful and supportive of each other and ultimately remain together. I don't think that SNL was saying that all marriages with significant age gaps were bound to have faults, but rather that they are risky and most people are not prepared for them. Each man is uncomfortable and surprised by the fact that they will have second wives until a reason is given as to why. This is one of my favorite SNL skits because it addresses a more serious topic, but has a lot of fun doing so.