TNL Missed the Mark

So, I didn't catch "SNL: Weekend Update Thursday" this week since I was distracted by the surprisingly entertaining "Life on Mars" (which I'd been looking forward to during all the pre-season coverage -- and yes, I referred to the fall TV previews as pre-season coverage... because I don't follow sports, dammit, I follow television), but I just watched it on hulu.com, and I have to say I think they missed a lot of good satire opportunities in their opening debate sketch.

(Direct link to the episode HERE)

Although there were SOME good moments (the weird Joe the Plumber/imaginary friend thing made me laugh, but it was overdone, and the Crazy McCain lady was both entertaining and infuriating.  But props to Kristin Wiig, whom I am usually NOT a big fan of), I think there opening sketch was lacking, and here's how:

a)  McCain's crazy faces.  I mean, have you seen this picture?  They didn't really make any big jokes about this, and judging by many a YouTube video that was pretty much the biggest joke of the night.

b)  Obama points out that McCain's supporters threaten to kill him, then McCain called the people at his rallies "some of the best Americans," after Obama basically asked him to save face and denounce those threats.  Instead of riffing on what ACTUALLY happened, TNL went on a riff about Renaissance Faires before returning to Joe the Plumber and beating the poor guy to death (probably not hard, given that he's only 3.5 inches tall).

I liked their town hall debate sketch.  They made fun of stuff that happened, which honestly was mostly on the McCain side, and then, this is what appeared to happen:  they couldn't really think of anything to make fun of Obama for, since they're all Obama supporters and he did a pretty good (albeit not very EXCITING) job in that debate, so they decided "hmmm.... he talks a lot... what if he went off on the RANDOMEST TANGET EVER and it was just like everything else?"  So they came up with the alien abduction joke, which I enjoyed.

This week it was like they took that alien abduction joke and made that the whole sketch, instead of putting the actual political satire first.

I did like the joke about Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore, though.

But I'm still kinda pining for the Tina Fey/Jimmy Fallon weekend update from way back when (no offense, Amy Poehler, I still love you).  It was the one thing Jimmy Fallon did right.