Nate Bargatze’s joke about reading on SNL was really nice for 2 reasons
He went from dumb to smart to dumb – in the best way possible.
Nate Bargatze did something really clever during his SNL monologue.
He misdirected the audience – then confused them – then paid off the confusion by resolving it with a joke quickly. It’s wonderful writing worth borrowing. I’ll explain. But first, the joke:
Near the end of his monologue, he says:
“I don’t read any books. I don’t do it.”
“And I think that matters. I do think that matters.”
“Reading, I believe, is the key to smart.”
Pay attention to lines two and three here, that’s where the confusion and pay-off happens.
Plenty of comedians and people joke about not reading. It’s not up there with doing kids jokes, spouse jokes or airplane jokes, but it’s somewhere in the ranks of popular premises because it’s so relatable.
You get the sense Bargatze might be going down the “reading sucks” road for a split second when he says the first line: “I don’t read books. I don’t do it.” Pretty standard. But it’s what he does in the second line that puts the audience on its heels.
After saying “I don’t read books,” you might expect someone to go in on them and trash reading in general. Maybe they’d go hard on how boring it is, how lame it feels compared to other things. Instead, Bargatze pivots.
When he says, “And I think that matters. I do think that matters,” it’s apparent he’s not going to go in on reading. In fact, it feels like he might defend it a bit. For the audience, you’re on your toes here. It’s a bit of a step backward, a misdirect. It’s confusing. You don’t know where he’s going. It sure seems like he may say something more high-minded, maybe about how not reading plays out in his personal life or how it’s held him back somehow. Maybe he’ll turn to how someone close to him reads and how that makes him feel inferior.
But then he resolves it by offering a purposefully dumb, plainly obvious observation that “Reading, I believe, is the key to smart.” That line gets a laugh not only because it’s such a simple answer, but mostly because it whiplashes the audience back to the World of Dumb.
The laugh from the crowd is actually the result of them going from “I think he’s about to make some grander, intellectual point about reading” to “Nope, just another guy who doesn’t like reading.”
You can almost label the lines to see the shifting play out:
“I don’t read any books. I don’t do it.” - Dumb
“And I think that matters. I do think that matters.” - Smart
“Reading, I believe, is the key to smart.” - Dumb
Bargatze’s folksy delivery does a lot of work here, but mostly it’s the writing that makes this joke work. Bargatze’s switch from dumb to smart, then back to dumb, is what a lot of good writing does; just replace dumb with storylines, characters and topics. It’s that construction combined with the fact he did it all quickly that makes for a beautiful joke.
Spending too much time on the smart second line risked distracting the audience from his first point. So he needed to get in and out, because the rest of the joke lives in the World of Dumb.
“I don’t do it because every book is just the most words. It doesn’t let up. I mean, every page is more words. It’s like, what are you talking about?”
In writing, we should borrow tricks and constructions we hear, no matter where it happens. Bargatze offers two big ones here:
Sometimes misdirecting and confusing the reader is a way to engage them because getting intellectually jerked around is a feeling – and making the reader feel feelings is engaging writing.
But, if you’re going to misdirect and confuse, resolve it quickly so you don’t stray too far from your point.
Footnote: It’s crazy that no one (at least in my recollection) has ever made this joke about reading before.