What Lorne Michaels wants, Lorne Michaels gets.  Saturday Night Live is an exhausting show to produce, and never in its three-decades-plus history has a cast had to work as hard as the current one has this month.  Never, not even close.  Putting on a weekly 90-minute sketch comedy show is hard enough.  Adding an extra half-hour each week is even more taxing, but when you add in the extra pressure of extreme media scrutiny and the expectation of constant hilarity, the work that this Saturday Night Live cast has done is astonishing.  The fact that Tina Fey, who already works extremely hard on her own show 30 Rock (which she stars in and is the head writer for), has now portrayed Sarah Palin on four separate occasions, you know that Lorne Michaels has some pull.  Fey does owe Lorne a lot – he made her SNL's first ever female head writer, and brought 30 Rock to the air.  Still – SNL is squeezing every last bit of juice from the Sarah Palin phenomenon that they can.  And, what can I say?  It's been a lot of fun.

Sarah Palin/Bush Endorsement Video

More SNL Palin Videos:

Sarah Palin and Alec Baldwin
Amy Poehler's Sarah Palin Rap
Tina Fey's Sarah Palin Sketches


Last night's Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday Special (that's a freaking mouthful) wasn't spectacular, but it did produce more laughs than you can reasonably expect from a half-hour show.  The big surprise guest this week was none other than Will Ferrell, who returned to Studio 8H as George W. Bush.  Ferrell was always SNL's best Bush impersonator, though it may not be the best pure impersonation.  It is the funniest, however, and Will reminded America of that last night.  The opening, which featured W. giving John McCain and Tina Fey's Palin an unwelcome endorsement, was solid.  It could have been better, but with only three days time to prepare, I'd say the Cold Open was funny enough.

The rest of the half hour was your standard Weekend Update fare, the highlight (for me) being Fred Armisen playing with one of the fancy electoral maps that all the cable news networks employ these days.  While they have their purpose, it was nice to show how much the cable news pundits take advantage of their fancy toy, often to unnecessary lengths.  Andy Samberg's Jam the Vote video was a silly little time-filler, but I liked it, if only because I'm a sucker for people vomiting.  Comic gold, I say. 

In conclusion, I think we need to all give props to the great Amy Poehler, who has endured this insanely rigorous schedule while eight and a half months pregnant.  From last Saturday's Palin rap to simply being able to read the fake news, what she's done has been incredible.  It's going to be sad seeing Poehler leave the show after the election season.  She's going to go down as one of the best female SNL cast members ever, if not the best.


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