Amy and Seth at the Desk.

Is anybody going to try to get to see this one.

I was going to try, but I had the opportunity to make plans with an attractive lady person...so I chose having a personal life over SNL (For once).

-Nick

Wow, so did anyone watch?

It was just okay. There were some technical difficulties and everyone seemed a bit shaky.

You Lie - Exactly what a cold open should be. The sketch gets rolling along immediately without the need for a setup. Throw in a nice twist with the missed direction and we have a sketch that fires on all cylinders for a quick hit. The subject was easy fodder for lampooning and the writers and performers did a good job with it. Grade: A+

Weekend Update - Amy's back? Just for Thursday? Anyway, Seth and Amy immediately fell into their old routine without missing a beat. Due to the extended length of WU, there were more guests than usual. A quick rundown:

• Hader as James Carville - Hader was very good, but Carville is not too relevant. His profile was much higher a decade ago.
• Hammond and Thompson as Jimmy Carter and Michael Steele respectively - A decent piece lampooning the racist assertions made by Carter.
• Wiig as Madonna - - Not funny at all. Easily the weakest segment of the night.

As usual the Really?! segment was the highlght of WU with bad behavior of celbrities as the target. Grade: B-

Overall - Good to see SNL partially back. The opener was great and WU kind of fizzled out. Trimming out 5 minutes of WU and adding one more sketch would work wonders. Grade: B+

I completely agree with Farley on this one.

Was the Madonna segment in reference to something she's recently done. I kept feeling like I was missing something. I'm not sure if getting the reference would have helped, especially because it was less Madonna and more "Kristen Wiig Presents: Madonna." It was just painful, especially because she didn't seem to commit too strongly to the established premise of slow, dramatic blinks.

The Really?! segment was not their best, but it was definitely the highlight of the episode. They always tend to be a bit better, I feel, when they are more focused. Jumping from who they were discussing got in the way of the flow just a tad.

Seeing how strong WU tends to be when they use a Really?! segment, makes me feel like maybe they should create more title segments within WU. Things like Weekend Update's Person of the Week, Weekend Update Awards (Giving out fake awards based on the news, and possibly riffing on what the person's acceptance speech might be), etc could easily be added. I just feel that Seth does so well when he has a definite direction and flow, like he does during Really?!, and, although he's improved, is still a tad awkward when delivering the news.

It's a thought...whether it's a good thought, who knows?

-Nick

i thought the madonna thing was hilarious. it was a parody of madonna at the MTV VMAs. madonna gave a speech about michael jackson in which she listed their similarities. and kristen's parody was actually pretty accurate.

Wiig as Madonna. Nuff said. That was by far one of my favorite performances by Kristen ever. Spot on impression. God, Madonna really was boring at the VMA's but this made it all worth it. I know what my beef is with Kristen. I love her impressions, but I hate her characters.

~ On a side note, I'm being naughty and am totally typing this at school right now. That'll show these fascists to send me to school on Rosh Hashana.

I thought this episode was great, not the strongest episode i have seen though. Did anybody get a glimpse of the writers

The show was decent probably because how hard is it to satire the crazy nut jobs in our leadership and our country. That being said, there was a bit of insensitivity on the writers part in piling on Caster Semenya who clearly, through no fault of her own, has been traumatized enough already, getting life changing information for the first time about a gender disorder in display of the whole world. SNL doesn't need to get a very short cheap laugh off of a young person's very personal public tragedy.

She probably has what is called AIS or Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome in which the person's body does not assimilate testosterone into development which in turn stops the body from acquiring the standard male sexual characteristics while still having an XY chromosome and testes. I am sure she has lived with this syndrome without knowledge of the diagnosis since she was born and will now have to deal with this and many other issues in a tabloid atmosphere.