Amber Ruffin and friends make schadenfreude fun, as Candace Owens and others get owned

Mocking the hell out of the misfortunes of bad people might not be the noblest of pastimes, but, since The Amber Ruffin Show spent her monologue raging against Texas’ new rootin’-tootin’, bounty huntin’ anti-abortion law, host Amber Ruffin is allowed to blow off a little steam. (Especially since she’s already spent a minute of fury on pal Seth Meyers’ stage this week concerning Republicans’ ongoing war on women.) And what’s a little pleasure derived by someone from another (loathsome) person’s misfortune if you can’t share the fun with friends, as Amber did with Amber Ruffin Show writer-performers Tarik Davis, Corin Wells, and Jeff Wright on Friday.

In a blissfully mean-spirited segment called “DAAAAAYUM!,” Ruffin introduced a recent public comeuppance, followed by a round of serious schadenfreude riffing from her four friends, who popped out from all sides of the screen like they were on The Muppet Show. (Davis, flailing his arms in exuberant delight, is clearly the Kermit of the situation.) Did the people in question deserve such treatment? Well, one such figure was Fox News’ go-to one Black friend and sneering COVID conspiracist Candace Owens, so we’ll allow it. Ruffin recapped Owens recent snubbing by a COVID testing company who publicly shamed the misinformation-spewing conservative COVID henchperson, telling Owens that anybody “who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse” can take their hypocritical, test-seeking butt elsewhere.

Cue Davis, Wells, and Wright, who joined Ruffin in slamming Owens’ humiliating rebuff (which, naturally, Owens turned to a victimhood fantasy) with lines like Wright’s “Hippocratic oath? More like Hippocratic-NOPE!” Daaaaayum. Same went for reporter Owen Jensen, of the all-Catholic, all-the-time Eternal World Television Network, who made the predictably disastrous choice to press White House Press Secretary and bad-faith question-slayer Jen Psaki about President Joe Biden’s support for a woman’s right to choose, and bringing up Biden’s Catholic faith. Even while Jensen nurses the burns Psaki gave when affirming Biden’s respect for women to control their own bodies (“You’ve had plenty of time today”), Ruffin and company piled on, with Wright once more nailing things home by noting, “It’s a woman’s right to choose, and she chose to shut you the fuck up!”

Then it was the turn of everyone daring to come for “best gymnast in the history of life” Simone Biles, as Ruffin, Wright, Davis, and Wells raucously joined in on Biles’ own clapback (she can’t hear the haters over her medals jingling). Got to give it up to Wright again, as he pointed to Biles’ collection of bronze, silver, and gold, while noting that those mocking Biles’ decision to prioritize her own mental and physical health at the Olympics just have “paper or plastic?” Daaaaa—you get it. And if mocking those Republicans still denying climate change while the country is currently split between bailing out subway tunnels and stamping out never-extinguished wildfires turned out to be a little less fun (since, as Davis admonished, that’s going to kill all of us), well, you have to take your ugly but restorative yucks where you can find them. Damn.