Unsatisfied with the hour and a half a week they already use to try and make Hillary Clinton seem hip, Saturday Night Live will do four half-hour comedy specials on Thursday nights this fall focused solely on politics.  Reporting on NBC’s upcoming season schedule, Variety writes:

Peacock will once again air hourlong “Office” episodes in September. The next month, “The Office” will be paired with the tentatively titled “SNL Thursday Night Live,” a live half-hour of politically themed sketches geared to the election.

Seems to me that if you’re having trouble producing one quality five-minute political sketch a week, the solution probably isn’t to create an entire half-hour show around the idea.  It’s like if Two and a Half Men decided to do a two-hour made-for-TV movie.

Maybe I’m wrong and SNL will somehow find a way to offer us funny, insightful sketches with all the edge and cultural significance of The Daily Show.  Or maybe we’ll get more Fred Armisen in black face doing an impression of Barack Obama that sounds weirdly like a depressed Yogi Bear because SNL only has one black comedian in the cast and he’s too big to play the part.

(My idea: Bring back Tracy Morgan and have him play Barack Obama, but with no attempt to look or sound like Barack Obama.  Just have him mock certain people’s fears of a black president, shouting things like: “I’m President Barack Obama, and as of right now all black people and white people need to trade houses!”)