SNL: A Stop on the Campaign Trail

• Mar 2, 2008 02:18 PM ET
• by Matt Roush

In only two weeks on the air, Saturday Night Live is back in its sweet spot, right where it wanted to be during the long strike hiatus: smack-dab in the center of today's political dialogue. Barack Obama made a cameo in the last episode before the strike, Mike Huckabee showed up for an aw-shucks appearance in the middle of last week's Weekend Update, and this week, in an opener that's likely to become part of the all-time SNL archives, it was Hillary Clinton's turn. She who inspired last week's classic Tina Fey slogan, "Bitch is the new black," which I've already bought as a T-shirt for a friend (not an endorsement, mind you, of anything but great comedy).

In a life-imitates-art moment, the real Senator Clinton gave SNL a shout-out during last Tuesday's debate in Cleveland, in an awkward attempt to piggyback on the show's parody of media bias favoring her rival: "I just find it curious if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow." The lesson there is that she should leave the satire to the experts, which is why it was so gratifying to see her show up in person for an "Editorial Response" to this week's opening sketch, another spot-on parody of the most recent debate. Will Forte's polished Brian Williams and Darrell Hammond's bulldog Tim Russert played air violins when Amy Poehler's prickly Hillary (brilliant as usual) accused them of being more hostile to her than to Fred Armisen's Obama (a bit more caricatured this week, but still not as funny as the cartoon Obama in the Robert Smigel cartoon that would follow). Loved the bit where the anchors grilled Clinton on the names of foreign dignitaries, then fed the answers to Obama before asking him to respond.

Best moment: Poehler/Clinton exposing her strategy for taking down the special interests, by being "so annoying, so pushy, so grating, so bossy and shrill, with a personality so unpleasant, that at the end of the day the special interests will have to go, 'Enough! We give up! Life is too short to deal with this awful woman!'" Beautiful way to spoof her persona as a "fighter, not a talker."

Enter the real Clinton, beaming after the sketch wrapped, declaring, "I simply adore Amy Poehler's impression of me," which prompted Poehler to bounce into view at Clinton's side, in an identical outfit, hysterically aping Clinton's own booming laugh. An image no one will soon forget. While declaring "no politics," Clinton made one last pitch to Ohio and Texas (which will be no laughing matter come this Tuesday) before throwing to the opening credits. Bravo, all.

The show, which was otherwise hit-or-miss (mostly miss) in the sketches involving guest host Ellen Page, hit one more political home run in the Weekend Update segment, with an appearance by former mayor and GOP presidential also-ran Rudolph Giuliani, who blamed his loss on his SNL appearance in drag years ago: "The dress killed me." He also compared his recent campaign to an SNL skit: "Started strong, but didn't really have an ending." Zing!

SNL has wasted no time in becoming a player again in this historic political season. So does this mean John McCain is getting ready for his close-up?

For more on this weekend's SNL , read Erin Fox's sketch-by-sketch recap.