Amy Poehler is returning to Saturday Night Live ... sort of. She's not actually going to be on the show during its usual Saturday performance, but rather on the Weekend Update Thursday spin-off. She'll be sitting behind the anchor desk with her co-host Seth Meyers.Frankly, it's a good way to launch the second season of her NBC show Parks & Recreation. Obviously, NBC is trying to copy the success of having Tina Fey do her Sarah Palin impression for a couple of Thursdays (and indirectly promote 30 Rock as a result).
I'm an Amy Poehler fan, so I think more of her on television is a good thing. I liked her back during her Upright Citizen Brigade days (and have seen her perform live several times with the troupe).
I only wonder how Weekend Update Thursday will fare without a big media event like the last election to use as fodder. I'm sure they'll think of something.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-31-2009 @ 10:37AM
Jimmy said...
I see this less of support for Parks & Recreation than NBC showing a lack of support of Seth Meyers as the solo anchor of these 30 minute Weekend Update specials. I, myself, was not a fan of him as the solo anchor on SNL.
I have a feeling that bringing back Amy Poehler was NBC and not Lorne Michaels, who is confident enough to have Seth Meyers as the Weekend Update anchor.
I think that even without the election year, this is a smart move, as it allows NBC to have more weeks during the season with at least 1 new show. There were a bunch of weeks later in the season when 30 Rock was the only new show, because it premiered over a month later than the rest of the schedule. And that was OK.
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7-31-2009 @ 11:19AM
RogueFace said...
Maybe this has been mentioned in previous articles regarding the Thursday show, but will they be continuing the WU segment on SNL when this is on?
It seems like it might be overdoing it a bit with the WU if it's on for 30 min on Thursday and another 10-15 during the SNL broadcast. Don't get me wrong, I love WU, and often watch SNL up until it simply because there's nothing else on and I don't want to miss WU. But 40-45 minutes a week of WU seems like it might wear out it's welcome. And like they might run out of jokes. If it's a slow news week, they tend to have a rather lackluster WU during SNL, filled with crappy walk-on characters and cameos. What are they gonna do for 30 minutes during a slow news week? See how long they can stretch out "Really!?"? Have every character Keenan Thompson's ever played show up?
Just seems a bit dangerous is all.
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7-31-2009 @ 1:03PM
Mike Doran said...
It seemed to me that Seth Meyers could have used an on-air partner on WU; nobody does solo news any more. The obvious candidate would be Abby Elliott; she looks the part, and she is the granddaughter of Bob (Wally Ballou) Elliott.Maybe in the future...
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