Cold Open: Quaddafi at the U.N.
Flight Attendants: Megan Fox and Kristen Wiig
Commercial Parody: Bladdivan
Digital Short: Megan Fox & Will Forte
Russian Brides – Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Bill Hader, Megan Fox

>>>NEXT: “Burning Up The Bedsheets” With Megan Fox, Jean K. Jean, and Judy Grimes

Fast forward a year. Tonight SNL premieres its 35th season (well, if you don’t count the last two Thursdays). Times are tougher than ever for network television — Tivo is king, appointment television is scarcer than ever, Jay Leno has brought comedy to 10 pm. Okay, maybe not that last thing. The point is, SNL is premiering tonight in a non-election year — and expectations are high. How can it possibly meet them?

Two words: Megan Fox.

Actually, I’m not really joking. SNL’s bread and butter is in buzz — picking great hosts and bands to encourage people to tune in. See above re: appointment television. In the Internet Age, they now also have to worry about next-day pickup. So who better to kick off the season than the Internet’s favorite pin-up girl? She’s already making the video rounds with her appearance on Jimmy Fallon, her SNL promos and Thursday Update cameo, and her recent headline-grabbing comments about her vagina. (This girl is a media superstar for a reason.)

She already showed herself to be game and a good sport on Thursday, and it made next-day news — whatever happens with the ratings tonight, SNL only needs one or two knockout skits to burn up the internet the next day.

But it does need them. It needs them because in its 35th year, SNL has never had more competition horning in on their beat. There’s Jon Stewart (who just beat them for an Emmy!) and Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel (“F**ing Matt Damon,” anyone?) and Jimmy Fallon (darling of the Internerds) and even Leno (he’s got five days a week to come up with something). So SNL needs to be memorable and fresh and funny (think: the Ahmedinejad “Iran So Far” spoof or Amy Poehler‘s pregnant Palin Rap).

Note that neither of these skits mentioned featured a guest host — the blockbusters often don’t, and that’s as it should be. The SNL regulars and writers are there because they’re damned talented, and it’s their job to create memorable, hilarious moments to make the whole show good (or at least until Update). Jason Sudeikis‘ send-up of Glenn Beck is already a hit, and strong supporting characters like Bill Hader‘s impression of James Carville or really anything by Kristen Wiig will keep the chattering online classes buzzing the next day (we all need something to post, right? Thanks for the traffic, SNL!).

But the guest hosts are there to create that spark of excitement, that unique OMG moment that will instantly set Twitter ablaze. SNL needs that. It’s the catalyst for everything else. Because fundamentally SNL is not just about comedy, it’s about Zeitgeist. So they’d damn well better tap into it.

Megan Fox, you’re on.

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Fox apparently has a thing about touching paper — it gives her the willies — so she downloads scripts n’ stuff to her Kindle, which helps with that. (Oddly it didn’t come up later in the interview when she talked about her punishment for the Wal-Mart shoplift: Wrapping presents.) Fox also talked about her addiction to Sally’s Spa, a game where you virtually run a spa for someone named Sally, and about which Fox apparently has a whole lot of angst. Sally’s Spa shouldn’t, though; a Megan Fox mention on Jimmy Fallon zoomed it into the Top 100 on the iTunes store.

She also talked about her SNL debut tonight, and the angst of doing the table read (going through the draft sketches on Wednesday to weed them out) lest you flub a joke and kill a writer’s sketch, and Jimmy and she bonded over a mutual fear of ghosts. Fallon professed faux-nervousness at the beginning of the show but did actually seem a little nervous, which ended up being charming as he segued into relief when the interview became just a nice, normal conversation. It certainly didn’t seem like Fox was being stiff or nervous and it actually seemed quite natural, which made it genuinely enjoyable to watch, and not for any of the reasons one might think they’d enjoy a Megan Fox interview. (By the way, Rolling Stone, take note — Jimmy Fallon just asked her about normal, conversational stuff and the result was an interview that was charming, natural and totally un-creepy. Your interview, if I may say so, was sorta creepy.)

Anyway, gadget types, you can now claim Megan Fox as one of you. You’re welcome.

She also teased the appearance on tonight’s episode of SNL Weekend Update Thursday (best name ever!), appearing in a funny little soap opera send-up to commemorate the ending of Guiding Light, coming on set with a gun to challenge Amy Poehler for the Update chair (scandal!). It was a small bit but she did well, which bodes well for Saturday night (although oddly the audience seemed taken aback by her presence and only started applauding when Amy exclaimed “Megan Fox!”). See stills from the appearance below; always great to see Darrell Hammond back on set and in the mix. Lorne Michaels would be silly to get rid of him, he’s always going to be useful. But then again, that’s never stopped Lorne Michaels before.

We’ll have that video for you when it’s online, but in the meantime here she is in a series of NBC promos for Saturday’s premiere, with Andy Samberg — who, lest we not forget, she has said she’d enjoy being sandwiched with, along with Jonah Hill. I’m sure they’d both hate that.

p.s. Don’t believe me that Megan Fox SNL Promos are news? Check out Google, which returns 302,000 results for “Saturday Night Live Megan Fox Promo.” Really.

SNL Promos with Megan Fox and Andy Samberg:


Stills from Megan Fox’s cameo on SNL Weekend Update Thursday:

Update: Video here.

Anyhow! Jalopnik, which has quickly become my new favorite car site (suck it, Autoblog!), has gone to such meticulous lengths to make this the most thorough, complete and breastfully-documented giga-gallery that all we can do is offer up a respectful — nay, worshipful — golf clap to post author Wes Siler for such a loving, potentially server-busting compilation. This gift will keep on giving for a long, long time. (Some dude posted a pic of Kleenex in the comments — I guess it’s already given to him.)

So! How can we at Mediaite get in on this sweet action? I tried Googling “Megan Fox” and “Media” — two can play that game, Jalopnik! — and got this video from AskMen.com. It’s all about this summers’ Megan Fox Media Blackout Day, and to be honest it’s a bit of a sausage-fest. (And by a bit, I mean, Oktoberfest in Munich.) But still, it will allow us to add the tag “Megan Fox Video” to this post, so there you go. Oh, fine, we’ll add this clip of “Transformers 2: CGI Megan Fox Even Hotter This Time,” though I’ll be honest, there are a few too many dudes in this one, too. Guys. Enough. Did God give YOU a perfect rack? I think not. Step off.

Anyhow: If you want Fox, you’ve got her! See below. Though the Jalops did miss this sweet vampire pic of Fox with blood dripping from her fangs from upcoming flick Jennifer’s Body, and —far less forgiveable — missed the Megan Fox Pic To End All Megan Fox Pics: THE ROSE.

This is NOT an all-inclusive sample. Clearly. Try here for more. And more and more and more. Now, to your Megan Fox Video Porn: Speed through the first two, the Jennifer’s Body trailer has way less dudes. And more blood. You’re welcome.