Over the past few weeks something incredibly strange and unexpected has happened: people are actually talking about Saturday Night Live. Why, you can't pass the A.V Club water cooler without hearing someone say something along the lines of
"Hey, didja see Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live last night?"
or
"Man, did that Sid Caeser top himself on the last You Show of Shows or what?"
or
"Who shot J.R?"
Yeah, we're a little behind the times. Normally, I'm able to crack everyone up with the old "Saturday Night Live? More like Saturday Night Dead routine but at the start of its eighteenth century on the air, the venerable, oft-derided comedy institution is showing signs of life and, more shockingly, relevance. There is a sense that Saturday Night Live actually matters.
Much of this is attributable to the peculiar rise of Sarah Palin, Tina Fey's gift from the Comedy Gods, a woman so inherently ridiculous she makes caricature and spoofery seem redundant. It's a measure of Tina Fey's rocketing popularity that she's easily the most popular performer on Saturday Night Live even though she left it years ago. Fey recently made headlines when she snagged a six million dollar book contract for a tome she chillingly promises will be along the lines of Nora "comedy anti-Christ" Ephron's I Feel Bad About Dominating The Best-Seller List With My Whiny Twelve-Page Wisp of A Book While Genuinely Talented Authors Die Penniless And Unknown.
To capitalize on the show's heat, NBC is unveiling a short-lived half-hour long Saturday Night Live spin-off entitled Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update Thursday. Alas, viewers waiting for another dose of Fey's Palin had to settle for an awkward cameo from William Murray, a man with a movie to plug and a divorce he wants everyone to forget about, as one of the questioners in an opening sketch about the Presidential debates that seemed to last as long as the event it was spoofing.
The debate offered plenty of raw meat for satirists and the writers generally went for the easiest targets, from McCain's condescending, contemptuous attitude towards his opponent (in a particularly dire moment Darrell Hammond's McCain calls Fred Armisen's Obama "pee pants") to his bizarre, erratic meandering around the stage (The Daily Show had a much funnier bit about McCain absent-mindedly searching for his dog Mr. Puddles). Saturday Night Live still hasn't figured out how to satirize Obama effectively and the sketch dragged on endlessly.
It was followed by a super-sized "Weekend Update" that was sporadically funny but hampered by Amy Poehler and Seth Myers' "deliver joke, smirk, then awkwardly pause for laughs" routine. The show was at its sharpest and funniest during a recurring bit called "Really?" where the anchors addressed the engineers of the 700 billion dollar bailout in tones of irritated mock-exasperation. There is an appealing rhythm to these bits, a tightness otherwise lacking from this thoroughly O.K but largely undistinguished footnote to Saturday Night Live's long, mixed legacy. I'll probably watch again next week but that's probably just because I'm lazy and it's on after The Office. And also I'm assigned to review it for The A.V Club. Duty first, then country. Or country first, then palling around with my good buddy Bill Ayres, then duty. Or something like that.
Grade: C+ Stray Observations–
–I haven't caught much Saturday Night Live this year for various reasons. How has it been?
–During the debates I found myself thinking, "wow, that moderator guy is really overdoing it with the Tom Brokaw impersonation. Tone it down, buddy. You don't need to play to the cheap seats. Then I realized that it actually was Brokaw. My bad.
–Fucking Comcast. Never sent me the goddamned DVR I ordered twice. Oh well. I'll show them. I'll totally abuse my online soapbox to whine about their sub-standard customer service.