SNL's Marathon "Weekend Update"

Anyone else notice that SNL's "Weekend Update" was neverending this week? I say "neverending" in a good way because there was lots of good stuff, but man oh man was that long! It went from 12:16:07 - 12:32:14, which makes it almost as long as an actual newscast. It featured not one, not two, not three but FOUR special features: Darrel Hammond as Lou Dobbs ragging on Canada (yay Loonie supremacy and Labbatts!); Keenan Thompson and Fred Armisen as the NY Mets Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya, Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler ragging on Senator Larry Craig in a promising new feature called "Really" (not unlike "The Word" on The Colbert Report, if I had to make an analogy), and a special guest appearance by Chevy Chase, who still is and you're still not. Yes. Sort of a lot of a good thing. Maybe it's because we're on record as not following much baseball, but we would have killed the Mets bit in a heartbeat (even though it was pretty much Keenan's only screen time, and oddly one of the sketches they chose to feature on the YouTube page), and maybe would have tightened up the rest of it, just because the Lou Dobbs segment was almost three minutes long itself. Here's a condensed version, in honor of our shared citizenship with Lorne Michaels:

It was wonderful to see Chevy Chase on SNL again, and we assumed that if Lorne allowed him back that he's mellowed somewhat. We also pulled some highlights — relevance: He's SNL's "Political Specialist" — and, further to our point above, during the editing process I discovered that by cutting out the unfunny bits, the material was much stronger. But it's Chevy Chase, so you don't complain when he sends it back to Seth with "Back to you, Fred." It's cool. Maybe he still thinks it's the 70s and was flying on coke.

In any case, we'll take our own advice now and wrap this up, but just note that if this is an early indicator that SNL is planning to aggressively pursue news parody in this election year. Lots of material; looks promising. This may have been an elaborate excuse to run the Canadian video.

Comments

[comatoast]

Treating Chevy Chase with reverence and respect? My god, I really must be getting old...

[TheShoveler]

If only we could have Walter Cronkite back too, TV news would be in fine form.

[kellygrrrl]

I think it's a great idea for SNL to go heavy on the news parody this season. Many weeks it's the best part of the show, and this season will be chock ful'o material.

[DanOregon]

Seeing Chevy Chase was like seeing the uncle you idolize move in with your family because his wife left him, and you soon find out why. Either that or the college kid who still attends high school parties. It was kind of pathetic.
He was also one of the funnier offerings of the night.
My question is that it seems like the show is treating Rudy with kid gloves.