‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Louis C.K., Abraham Lincoln, Hurricane Sandy mocked

If we were going to be extremely cynical about this weekend’s edition of “Saturday Night Live,” then we would be spending most of this review talking about how it was one of the weaker entries in the season despite the presence of Louis C.K. as the host. However, what we are really going to do instead is hand the writers, actors, and all of the crew an enormous amount of credit for still finding a way to get the show together despite what Hurricane Sandy has done to much of the nation.

In case you did not know the full extent of Hurricane Sandy’s damage on production this weekend, there were employees shacking up with each other due to the floods, and others found themselves having to bring their children to work in order to put on a show. It was probably one of the most difficult situations”Saturday Night Live” has ever faced given the state of things in Manhattan, and what we really want to do more so than highlight what didn’t work this week is celebrate some of the material that shined.

“SNL” got off to a great start in one of its best cold opens of the season, which featured a lovely skewering of New York City Mayor Bloomberg and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during their discussion of Hurricane Sandy and the recovery process, as well as famed interpreter Lydia Callis, who has received plenty of press as of late over her crazy facial expressions while giving sign language for the hearing impaired. C.K. followed this up with some great stand-up about his experience flying into the city in the wake of the hurricane, and it was nice to have a monologue that wasn’t just a musical number.

Even though the “Fox & Friends” sketch that followed was a little tired, there were some great one-liners in here about how the President was somehow responsible for not stopping the hurricane. This led into what was really the best sketch of the entire night: the brilliant send-up of “Louie” in “Lincoln,” who starred as Abraham Lincoln during some of his last minutes on earth. It was weird, wacky, and surprisingly touching … kind of like “Louie.”

In keeping with our positive philosophy for this week’s installment of the show (and thus trying to not discuss the Australian Screen Legends bit), new cast member Aidy Bryant’s ‘Courtney Barnes’ was a great addition to “Weekend Update” as a social-media expert who is really just trying to add to the point that a good number of people who comment on Facebook pages are idiots. It was a simple, but effective setup that was similar in some ways to how Bill Hader’s Stefon operates.

Even though C.K,’s later sketches were not exactly stellar, you have to give credit to the guy for taking on so many different roles and being game to try it all. He also stayed pretty true to himself in the process, and you can say the same thing for musical guest fun., who somehow made it through the entire show without performing their hit “We Are Young.” (They did perform “Some Nights.”)

What do you think not just of this week’s episode of “Saturday Night Live,” but of C.K. and the crew even pulling off this show to begin with?