I couldn’t think of anything really captivating for today’s post, so thought I’d briefly give my thoughts regarding the SNL program “Thursday Night Live” that premiered last night. If you haven’t heard, SNL has decided to do three episodes in a new 30 minute format to cover all the latest political events and other news. Consisting of a cold open and followed by a “Weekend Update” segment, despite it being played on a thursday, I was somewhat surprised by the show’s opening but less than enthused by the “Weekend Update” segment.
Opening with a parody of the last Presidential Debate, Fred Armisen and SNL veteran Darrel Hammond took the stage as Barack Obama and John McCain respectively as former cast member Chris Parnell donned the role of moderator Tom Brokaw. Now I haven’t really been a fan of the show for awhile now but I’d rather liked some of their political segments lately, so I gave it a shot and I actually thought it was pretty funny. The exaggeration of the limited response times was pretty clever and the impressions were pretty spot on. Though Fred Armisen has been in the past all over the place with his Obama impression, he’s definitely the rhythm of Obama’s speech down even if his voice isn’t quite low enough. Darrel Hammond is master impressionist and has managed to slip into John McCain like a leather glove and with his perfection of McCain’s mannerisms and portrayal of McCain aimlessly wandering around the stage he was probably the best part of the sketch, though I did rather like McCain and Obama answering questions simultaneously to save time. Chris Parnell did his part just fine as did others and it was pretty neat to see Bill Murray pop in for an appearance. So all in this was a pretty solid sketch with the kind of classic humor SNL’s certainly been lacking these days.
As for the rest of the show it was pretty much same old, same old. There may have been a couple mildly amusing jokes here and there but it was mostly pretty dry and I just can’t stand that insufferable twerp Seth Myers. Weekend Update has been pretty weak for awhile now, I haven’t actually been a fan since Norm Macdonald hosted it, but whatever it was kind of fun getting a political satire SNL on a weeknight and I look forward to the next episode.
I believe you can find the whole episode all over the internet. Last time I checked they had it up on IMDb.