SNL’s return rates big

Tina Fey, Carrie Underwood, a long writer’s strike and the new presidential race all combined to make this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live broadcast the most-watch episode of the late night comedy jam the highest-rated in two years, pulling in a 6.1 rating.

Host Tina Fey, the former head writer of SNL, returned to keep the show’s political balance intact for a change, with an opening sketch that made fun of the news media’s tendency to fawn over Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular; the show also made fun of Mike Huckabee, who appeared in a Weekend Update cameo making fun of his own hopeless dark horse candidacy to upset John McCain’s all-but-certain GOP nomination.

While typically uneven from sketch to sketch, the show was fresh and funny more often than not and the entire cast deserves a free pair of golf shoes.