John McCain made his appearance on Saturday Night Live last night.  He did a fine job, taking good-natured jabs at his campaign and looking a lot more like the guy who hosted Saturday Night Live in 2002 than the angry campaigner we've seen these last few months.  John and wife Cindy appeared on the show's Cold Open in a mock QVC infomercial.  Later, McCain appeared on Weekend Update in a piece lampooning his Maverick persona and his desperate campaign tactics as the election nears.  John McCain's appearance helped SNL garner its second-highest rated episode in the last decade, trumped only by Sarah Palin's episode a couple weeks back. 




John McCain Saturday Night Live Videos:
QVC Cold Open: John and Cindy McCain
Weekend Update: John McCain


Watch More SNL Videos:
Will Ferrell and Tina Fey as President Bush and Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin on SNL
Best Tina Fey Clips


John McCain's appearance was a ratings hit, and I suppose that is all that matters for NBC, Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live.  However, the bigger question will be whether it did any good for John McCain.  I'm not so sure it did.  He was funny, because the writing was good, and he was certainly good-natured about the whole thing.  But, it felt to me like a defeatist cameo, and I couldn't help but feel slightly embarrassed for the man during his two stints on the episode.  Saturday Night Live made fun of him while he was on-screen, not brutally so, but enough to make it clear that they weren't going to play nice just because McCain was in the building.  What did you all think?  Was it a flattering appearance or not?

Besides McCain, I thought the episode last night was quite good.  Ben Affleck always gets a bad rap, maybe somewhat deservingly so (the man made a ton of terrible movies before learning how to say “No”), but he's a funny guy.  His Olberman sketch was great, and it had me rolling with laughter the entire time.  The lone bad sketch was Kristen Wiig's Target Lady.  Oh, how I hate the Target Lady.  It needs to end.  The funniest skit, however, came from the most surprising source.  Kenan Thompson as old man Grady Wilson giving sex advice was one of the better sketches of the year.  Explaining it cannot do it justice.  So, watch it here:

Grady Wilson's Put the Fire Back


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image Courtesy of NBC)