Being off a couple of weeks helps “Saturday Night Live” build up its material. Not that the writers need time to write; it just gives the world time to come up with some truly crazy things to satirize.
For this week, in a show hosted by Charlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” there were a lot of them.
The death of Mommar Gadhafi (and the loss of a character of Fred Armisen) was covered first, in a cold open of the ghost of the slain Libyan dictator, speaking from hell about what lessons he learned (first, don’t dare your enemies to kill you).
Then there was the Kardashian divorce – covered immediately after the monologue in a well-produced little film promoting the inevitable divorce special – rife with great imitations.
Herman Cain got in the show more than once; once as part of Rick Perry’s loopy appearance – taken from the notorious video of a New Hampshire speech (in imitating him for “Weekend Update,” Bill Hader reverted to a bit of his Stefon character).
They even found a way to make fun of the Greek financial crisis in a long and generally funny sketch involving most of the cast as Zeus convenes his various gods and found he doesn’t really have a god of finance (though he has two gods of war).
But no, they didn’t have time to get something in there about the death of Andy Rooney.