I wonder. . .do you remember how many bits they had per WU? Maybe they do more of them per episode now.
I wasn’t questioning that the font had changed; I’d noticed it, too. It’s been changed several times over the years. I questioned that someone would think a design change made by the graphics department would have any bearing on the quality of the writing or performances within the show.
Not sure how many they used to do. I WAS JUST TRYING TO MENTION THAT IT IS A CONCEPT BUILT INTO THE PREMISE! DOES ANYONE LISTEN TO ME? BUT NOOOO! ARGH! OOF!
I usually got a laugh out of their Eric and Don Jr. bits during Weekend Update.
I wonder if they sort of ration those out over the course of the season; if you’re going to hang onto a joke about a politician since late May, it’ll probably keep until February. Only the ideas that popped up since about September would be current-events relevant, and maybe not even all of those.
I agree with you though; not as terrible as described upthread. I do fear that it’ll be the model for the rest of the season; I tend to feel like the cast departures were a bit too drastic and recent for the show to really get their footing this season. Aren’t they like 3-4 people down vs. the normal cast size this year, even with the few new hires they’ve made?
It reminded me a little of Tom Hanks’ recurring Girl Watchers sketch.
That show sucked on Ice!
That’s exactly what I thought. I hate him already.
Weekend Update has been berry berry good to cast members who might otherwise be overlooked.
You’re not the only one.
AAAAARRRRRGGHHHHHHHH!!!
A lot of us were saying THAT when the show was on a major slump in the mid 1990s.
Weekend Update for Episode 1 ran 15:27, which seemed exceptionally long to me. There were three bits.
The McConnel-Walker campaign bit ran 3:25
Michael Longfellow’s monologue ran 2:43
The Lantern Fly ran 2:45, leaving only time for the goodnights.
Knock off an additional 15 seconds for the open and applause, it means that Che and Jost were on for just over 6 minutes, less than 40% of the runtime. I compared that with a WU from 2017. That ran for a much shorter 8:29. Of that 3:32 was given to a Kate McKinnon/Ruth Bader Ginsberg skit, leaving about 60% for Che and Jost.
Once you get under 50% of Weekend Update actually being Weekend Update, I don’t think you can call it Weekend Update anymore.
And suddenly I feel lazy 
Thanks for the effort and the info.
You can always watch all the SNL sketches on YouTube within a day after the show. They don’t show the segment which names all the cast members or the closing segment with the host saying goodbye, but they show all the comedy sketches and the two musical numbers. This is anywhere from 15 to 18 YouTube videos. During weekends when I miss the show on television, I watch those videos on YouTube the next day.
I live a half a mile from an AMC movie theater, so I have watched that introduction to each movie in the theater with Nicole Kidman a dozen times at least. It’s after the previews for other films showing soon and before the film itself. It does have her saying some rather strange things about how great it is to watch the movie in an AMC theater.
(Incidentally, every time I watch it, I find myself thinking, “Why are you talking in an Australian accent, Nicole? You spent nearly all the first four years of your life within twenty miles of this theater.” Look it up if you don’t believe me. Kidman was born in Honolulu. Then a few months later her family moved to Bethesda, Maryland (or possibly Washington, D.C.) for the rest of that four years. Her father did his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii and then did a post-doc at the National Institute of Health on Wisconsin Avenue near the border between Maryland and D.C. Yeah, that’s kind of a stupid thing for me to think, since a person’s accent is more based on where they lived from 4 to 18 than where they lived from 0 to 4.)
I was wondering how that played in the rest of the country. In the northeast they are everywhere.
We’re getting warnings, just in case they migrate west.
I also thought Yang’s lantern fly evoked Belucci’s bee, though Belucci hated being the bee and Yang proudly leaned in to the lantern fly.
I think SNL redeemed themselves tonight. I was ROFLMAO with the eyeball sketch. That’s gonna be a classic, right up there with the Coneheads. I am also very stoned so my perception might be skewed.
Since the beginning of the 47th Season in October 2021 the three-person group Please Don’t Destroy has done 13 sketches which are in the shows, even though those three are not listed as being part of the cast. Incidentally, they are now making a movie whose plot is a lot like their interactions in their SNL sketches. It’s already scheduled for release on August 18, 2023. Conan O’Brien has a small part in the movie:
One of the reasons that it’s worth it to watch the week’s sketches a day or two later on YouTube is that they have cut-for-time sketches as well as the ones that are performed live on the show. The cut-for-time sketches come from the dress rehearsal for the show that is done starting at 8:00 PM on Saturday. They often perform more sketches during the dress rehearsal than can be done during the hour and a half of the show. These sketches are filmed and generally not different from the ones done live. Occasionally these cut-for-time sketches are very good. Just as an example, here are one that was done in January this year which is on YouTube and a list of some cut-for-time sketches:
Belushi, not Belucci. His ancestry is Albanian, not Italian.
Agreed, last night’s episode was a big improvement over last week.
Thanks.