‘Saturday Night Live’ tributes David Bowie with Fred Armisen appearance

Given all of the news of the past week and the super-crammed show that they presented, one of the last things that we expected from “Saturday Night Live” this weekend was to see a tribute from David Bowie … especially since it happened so early in the week.

Yet, we are so happy that the show decided to make this move. Before playing a clip of Bowie’s iconic 1979 performance of “The Man Who Sold the World,” former cast member and “Late Night” bandleader Fred Armisen came out to tell a story about watching Bowie perform growing up, and the impact that he had on his entire life. Fred is a talented musician, and was known for that in many ways even before his comedy. It seems right that he came back for this, even if he did not do much the rest of the show prior to it and the uproarious applause that he was given before the tribute began was a little bit of a surprising choice given the subject matter.

Ultimately, it’s nice to see that “SNL” does continue to find a way through many of its shows to pay tribute to some people who played key parts in it in some shape or form. In watching this we were reminded of how the show honored late cast member Jan Hooks, and this is something that they have done with many other people in the past.

It’s always touching when the show takes a moment to slow down the comedy and pay tribute, but obviously we hope it never happens. It always hurts to see a legend leave.

If you want to see our review of the rest of the episode of “SNL,” be sure to head over to the link here. Also, you can sign up over here to get some more TV updates on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)