This season of “Saturday Night Live” is Bill Hader’s last, the troubling news only meant one thing for many: That we will no longer get weekly updates from Stefon, the flamboyant New York City nightlife correspondent on Weekend Update.
Regardless of any given night’s successful sketch rate on Saturday Night Live, the last 60 seconds or so are always a chance for everyone on stage to acknowledge the completion of a thrilling seven days. Not only are new bits pitched and written and re-written and designed and rehearsed and scrapped and picked apart and celebrated and performed for a live audience and broadcast across the country and the greater world on television, but it’s done from scratch each week.
The simultaneous exultation and exclamation at the end of the night is a wonderful tribute to making it through the week together – cast, crew, musical guest, and host.
But while those waving-goodbyes may have become routine over thirty-eight seasons, what SNL has gotten really good at over the past decade is saying farewell to their own. Last night’s episode, helmed by the superstars Ben Affleck and Kanye West, let the spotlight shine on Fred Armisen and Bill Hader in some really terrific salutations to the departing veterans. (Armisen has not yet officially announced his departure, as Hader has, but the word is out.)
