I think Tina Fey is probably the closest thing I have to a role model. Actually, it’s more like Liz Lemon is my role model, because she’s geeky and awkward and unfashionable but she’s still successful because she’s a good writer and knows how to manage personalities that are bigger than hers. (Infer from that what you will.)

Yet, as much as my love for Tina Fey and Liz Lemon is tremendous, it’s starting to get exhausting. I don’t know if it’s the election or the Emmy Awards, but I’m starting to feel like we’re friends who are nearing the end of a weeklong vacation together and, while the trip wasn’t friendship-ending or anything, we’re both looking forward to going home and no longer sharing a hotel room.

Maybe it’s because I keep reading about the details of her $6 million book deal.

Maybe it’s because I see her American Express commercial every time I go to the movies, which is often.

Maybe it’s because even people like Art Spiegelman are name-checking her in interviews. (No wonder New York magazine predicts backlash.)

Maybe it’s because I hear that her Sarah Palin impression is single-handedly reviving SNL’s ratings.

Speaking of Sarah Palin, did you know that the Michigan Democratic Party is actually trying to get Tina Fey to campaign in the state?

All of this, and 30 Rock hasn’t even returned yet!

My advice to Ms. Fey: Slow it down. You’re awesome. You’re going to be awesome for a long time. You don’t need to do everything at once. Go home, sack out on the couch for a few days—take a real vacation, even. Just don’t do anything newsworthy for a while. We’ll still be here when you get back.

I realize that, week to week, the number of segments on SNL do not change dramatically. In fact, this season’s first four episodes have all operated in the twelve-to-fourteen segment range (counting music and Update; not counting opening or closing credits). But this week’s installment felt unusually packed with short and funny, if sometimes insubstantial, sketches. The Lawrence Welk sketch, in which an old-timey singing family contended with a misfit sister (Kristen Wiig playing a derivative but funny cross between Rachel Dratch’s Angelina Jolie lovechild and those non-SNL “baby hands” sketches online), set the pace: quick set-up, hammer a central joke, garnish with optional side jokes, and get out.

Not surprisingly, this strategy tends to work best when the central joke is somewhat inexplicable, as with Welk or the dancing courtship between Bobby Moynihan and host Anne Hathaway. A later sketch, withHathaway as Mary Poppins explaining the meaning of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to Moynihan and Casey Wilson, was a less successful of echo of Moynihan’s Of Mice and Men sketch from the James Franco episode a few weeks back. You can picture how these sketches probably came about, with writers riffing on pop-culture obsessions and eventually writing it out. But the Of Mice and Men bit somehow avoided sounding like a “what’s up with that?” observation, while the Mary Poppins sketch went on autopilot almost immediately (or maybe it just paled in comparison to the episode-long Simpsons version of the source material).

But the pop-culture-debris approach worked more often than not: I loved Casey Wilson’s caricature of Katy Perry (hawking a CD of her “less provocative” songs). Thin political impressions can grow tiresome, but sometimes the simplest celebrity skewerings work best. Every blog covering politics and/or SNL will probably link to the VP debate sketch, so let me shine a spotlight on something far less zeitgeisty yet still hilarious:

Andy Samberg has never fancied himself an impressionist — he’s appeared in several sketches flaunting his supposed total lack of facility in this department — but damned if he doesn’t do an absolutely spot-on Mark Wahlberg. Between the above sketch and another excellent digital short, Samberg owned several of the night’s best moments. He started his tenure on the show as an overhyped next-gen Jimmy Fallon; somehow, though, he’s since wound up one of SNL’s most underrated talents.

While the non-political sketches were pitched as goofy and efficient throwaways, the two political bits were by far the longest of the night; the writers seem to be emboldened by the suggestion that they’re contributing to the political conversation, even when the material isn’t really there. The VP debate sketch was fine, of course, a better synthesis of obvious and semi-obvious jokes than its presidential counterpart (helped immeasurably by Tina Fey’s version of Palin). But the bailout press-conference sketch felt muddled; once again, the writers seemed to be satirizing “all sides” more out of obligation than inspiration.

If I haven’t said much about Anne Hathaway’s work as host, it’s because she often wasn’t in the spotlight, as screentime was doled out with unusual equality this week. Just about everyone (save Darrell Hammond, who routinely sits out most of any episode that doesn’t require him to impersonate an older political figure no one else in the cast can handle) found strong moments: Will Forte singing on Weekend Update; Bill Hader’s mincing fake gay walk followed by a manly stride; Fred Armisen’s muppety Barney Frank. This evenness extended to Hathaway, who seemed happy to blend in (the monologue, her one solo showcase, was about a minute long). Scarlett Johansson still (somewhat inexplicably) sets the gold standard for recent starlet hosts, but Hathaway was clearly game, sending up her relationship problems (in that brief monologue) and her Disney heritage.

The Killers were okay; they seem to have dialed things back from their inadvertent empty-grandeur phase, back when they made the mistake of trying to release a Springsteen-esque album within a few weeks of the Hold Steady. But their acceptable, well-oiled song machines fit right in with this solid, well-crafted episode.

Episode Grade: B

As we move into the final month of the presidential campaign, SNL seems to be ramping up its political content a bit, offering two political sketches in opening half-hour or so. It began with another killer Fey-Poehler Palin sketch, in which Fey again played the VP candidate as a grinning plain-folks yokel whose sunny incompetence flummoxes Poehler, this week playing Katie Couric (the dynamic is a neat reversal of the stars’ chemistry on Weekend Update and in Baby Mama, where Fey typically plays down-to-earth to Poehler’s more outsized personality). The Palin sketches must more or less write themselves, but Fey and company always manage to find the right point to veer into absurdity, as when Fey’s Palin earnestly asked for a lifeline to assist with an interview question. Somehow they made a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? joke work.

The debate sketch fared less well, not only, I imagine, because it had to be created within about twenty-four hours, but because the Obama-McCain debate itself lacked any easy satirical hooks: few goofy turns of phrase and little embarrassing body language to allow Darrell Hammond (McCain) or Fred Armisen (Obama) the opportunity to really focus their caricatures of the candidates. Neither impression ranks among the performers’ finest, and so the debate sketch was essentially just a compendium of mostly-mild campaign-related humor.

A common charge against Saturday Night Live is that its sketches go on too long, and that could certainly be selectively leveled against the James Franco episode. A mildly amusing (if deeply obvious) riff about “Agent 420″ seemed to go on forever, with two separate, elaborate sets employed for James Franco’s tuxedoed stoner. Occasionally, this level of detail is sort of funny in and of itself, but about eighty percent of the time, sketches with the most elaborate sketches are also the clunkiest of the night, which makes all of the effort even more dissonant.

But in recent years, for every overlong, overdesigned sketch, the show has been adept at bringing out several snappier, sillier bits. This week’s OJ Simpson jury-selection sketch could’ve been overlong and repetitive, but each juror’s bit cycled through within about thirty seconds:

The final sketch, with Willem Dafoe (Bill Hader) trying to goad Franco into killing Any Samberg, Green Goblin-style, was a perfectly executed throwaway, spoofing a familiar pop-culture moment without, you know, just plugging in a recurring character or something. In a similar vein, I enjoyed the goofiness of “The Looker,” which plugged Fred Armisen’s heretofore unknown talent for imitating Penny Marshall into a parody of The Closer. Even a relatively uninspired digital short, “Murray Hill,” was notable for its pitch-perfect approximation of bad teen-show dialogue in the first few minutes. As with “Space Olympics,” the Lonely Island crew really knows how to set up a gag even (or especially) if takes some extra time; in “Murray Hill,” that set-up was a lot funnier than the simplistic payoff.

So the show continues to excel at short-form, culture-based absurdities. But no one much talks about those bits; everyone (by which I mean the young, hip minority of viewers who create the illusion of the show’s main target audience) just wants to see the political stuff on blogs. In that area, the episode fell perversely short. As usual, the cold open was a political spoof, an amusing-enough bit with John McCain (Darrell Hammond) approving various slimy campaign ads aided by the most sarcastic political voiceover guy in the business (Bill Hader, naturally, who probably could’ve had an actual career as a voiceover artist). But that was it as far as sketches went, until that interminable New York Times sketch about effete Manhattan-dwellers who know nothing of Alaska. Will Forte’s polar-bear-related contributions made me chuckle, but the endlessly repeated central joke felt more like a sop to anyone who might’ve complained about the show’s relentless mockery of Sarah Palin last week (did anyone actually complain about this? Sub-question: why should we care if anyone did?). There must be funnier ways to rib the left — or even New York journalists, for that matter.

The writers still seem to be doling out political material at a deliberate pace — one to two sketches per week. I’m assuming this is due to the atypically grueling schedule that’s only just begun: four shows in a row, a week off, followed by another three in a row (typically the show does two in a row most months, and three in a row during sweeps), with several prime-time specials on Thursday nights throughout October; in short, there’s still plenty of airtime left. Even so, the paucity of election material so far is a little bizarre; the idea behind this SNL saturation was to get in as much material as possible before (a.) the election and/or (b.) Amy Poehler gives birth and leaves the show — which, judging by the end-of-show goodnights, should be sometime in the next fifteen to twenty minutes.

As far as the weekly variables, Franco was a serviceable host, though his cue-card-reading was at times approached Christopher Walken levels. Oh, and Kings of Leon were okay. I realized last week that I never commented on Lil Wayne, who was a bit better than I had assumed he’d be based entirely on his scary, scary appearance, and still kinda sounded a lot like everyone in his genre. Anyway, I’ll attempt to offer my amateur opinion on the musical guest from now on, because they’re often overlooked. From the outset, it looks like Season 34 probably can’t out-indie Season 33, where the strike-curtailed season resulted in a crazy percentage of the musical guests with some kind of indie cred (Feist, Spoon, Wilco, Vampire Weekend, Gnarls Barkley). But let’s all cross our fingers for a Jenny Lewis booking before 2008 is out.

Episode Grade: B-

The weekend is here, so that means Saturday Night Live is coming. Which is a relief, kind of, because as genius as that Tina Fey/Amy Poehler opener was, it’s kind of played out at this point. One more “I can see Russia from my house” joke and I’m taking hostages.

But we’ll see if James Franco can win us over and provide something memorable. On that note, here’s one last look back at the season premiere where we can see interview footage with Michael Phelps and Tina Fey.

I know a lot of people react to Saturday Night Live with vague dismissiveness: oh, is that still on? I haven’t really watched it since [Tina Fey/Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler/Dana Carvey/Eddie Murphy/Bill Murray/Chevy Chase] left. So while you can find breathless, fawning recaps of Gossip Girl episodes all around the internets, I haven’t seen much in the way from episode-to-episode Saturday Night Live coverage (even the wonderful Onion AV Club has pointedly only covered the recent full-season DVD releases from the first few seasons, treating the current show with a passing shrug usually afforded to NCIS or The Tonight Show). But someone out there must be watching the show besides my comedy-nerd friends, because it’s routinely the highest rated thing on Saturday nights — an admittedly minor achievement, though still noteworthy given that it airs at 11:30, when people are supposed to be either out partying or falling asleep.

Saturday Night Live has become the go-to place as of late for political opportunity. Political satire, of course, but also opportunity.

Like The Daily Show, it’s where campaign advisors tell candidates to go so that they can really relate to the young people. They’ll use words like “viral” and hope that young people with polo shirts will put down their Wiis long enough to shuffle to the poll on the election day.

Now that John McCain has made his appearance on SNL, we can now say that the future president of the United States will have considered the show important enough to make an appearance on. (See Barack here, see Hillary here)

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s one of the two bits that John McCain did on the season finale of SNL.

I’m really tripped up, as you may guess, by the fact that he had to discuss gaydar. It’s a term that I’m probably pretty sure doesn’t get tossed around the McCain household too much.

When he says, “Now I don’t know if this is anti-gay, or pro-gay, or if such a device would even work. But I do know this — Jamming gaydar is not a federal responsibility,” it’d be funny if it was Darrell Hammond. Or funnier, at least.

But when I saw that, I remembered this.

No matter how many sketch comedy shows he does or even if he does a surreal drop-in on 30 Rock, I don’t think I’d be able get past it.

NBC has announced its schedule for the next year, and it kind of makes me want to puke.

NO: Why dilute the Office brand with a spin-off? Why not come up with a new idea instead? Oh right. That would be expensive. And take time. But the strike means there’s none of either available. Sigh.

NO: Practically no new shows at all, and definitely no definitive season openers like we’ve had in Septembers past. And the new shows that they’ve got are stale, stale, stale. A paraplegic psychic who solves crimes? A comedy import from Australia? GET OUT.

NO: Knight Rider.

NO: “SNL Thursday Night Live” — they do know that those initials mean something, and therefore the title is actually “Saturday Night Live Thursday Night Live,” right? Also: I don’t want any more political sketches than what we already have. And why Thursday? Why??

NO: Chuck has been renewed. I can’t quit it! If they air it, I will be forced to watch! And they’re following it with a spy drama starring Christian Slater. I quote from the description of his show, because its ridiculousness cannot be summarized:

Henry Spivey (Christian Slater, “Bobby”) is a middle-class efficiency expert living a humdrum life in the suburbs with a wife, two kids, a dog, and a minivan. Edward Albright is an operative who speaks 13 languages, runs a four-minute mile, and is trained to kill with his teeth. Henry and Edward are polar opposites who share only one thing in common — the same body. When the carefully constructed wall between them breaks down, Henry and Edward are thrust into unfamiliar territory where each man is dangerously out of his element. “My Own Worst Enemy” explores the duality of a man who is literally pitted against himself. And it raises the question: who can you trust when you can’t trust yourself?

What is this, written by Donald Kaufman?

MAYBE: I kind of like the idea of Merlin starring Anthony Head. Ditto for Ian McShane’s Kings.

That is the saddest slate of new shows I’ve seen in a long time. And this is not just because they’ve deprived me of my precious upfronts. I suppose I am resistant to change, even if it’s probably going to be good for me — in theory, I am all for year-round TV. In theory. But not if it’s going to be all diluted like this schedule.

This is kind of a propos of nothing, but I’m still reliving Tina Fey’s guest spot on Saturday Night Live. So good!

Pretty much all of the sketches were strong — even the ones at the end, traditionally the scrap ground for the half-baked, half-finished leftovers of the week. But I guess they had some time on their hands over the strike, because the whole episode was great.

One of my favorite sketches came at the end — Virgania Horsen’s Hot Air Balloon Rides. I think Kristin Wiig has really come into her own as a cast member, and although she’ll always be second banana to Amy Poehler (who is incredible and completely pulled off that Ghostbusters song in last week’s Weekend Update, if you happened to see it) she has some been demonstrating some great chops.

For instance, take a look at this clip. It’s so awkward — I love it!

By now, I’m sure a good portion of you have seen or at least heard about Mike Huckabee’s appearance on last week’s SNL. (For the rest of you, he appeared on Weekend Update to talk about the dead-end nature of his floundering candidacy.)

Here’s a clip of Huckabee behind the scenes at SNL.

I still can’t really understand why he did it — acknowledge that it’s all over and then go right back to the campaign trail. I’m guessing he’s just hoping that any publicity is good publicity.

But also, I’m struck by how likable and level-headed he seems. When you think about the things he says (letting gay people get married would end civilization, quartine AIDS patients) and then you talk to him in person, the disconnect is huge.

This appearance goes to the heart of my idea that Republicans have nothing on the rest of us when it comes to funny. Huckabee has been pretty consistently humorous throughout the campaign (think of that little “uh oh” he let out in the clip above — great timing!) I don’t think that Republicans not being funny is really a theory I have, as much as it is an assumption I’ve been working under for a long time. Case in point, Fox’s ham-handed attempt at a Daily Show-type program was Half Hour News Hour, which, thankfully, has not caught fire. Or maybe it has in other circles, but I haven’t heard about it in a year.

I guess there have been some funny Republicans. I hate to break it to you, but I think Brian Williams from NBC is actually a huge Republican. Even though we all love him on The Daily Show.