That Saturday Night Live would lead with a Rick Santorum sketch was a given, but it was unexpected that Santorum, played by Andy Samberg, and Mitt Romney, played by Jason Sudeikis, would meet at a bar to go over the primary season that was. I’ve complained a lot about the Republican primary cold opens, but this sketch was good. Mitt tipped the waitress with money in a sealed envelope, telling the waitress to give it to her husband since he’ll know better what to do with it…

SNL’s time allocation was weird tonight! One of the more clever sketches came right at the end of the night, with Sofia Vergara playing herself on the set for a new Pantene commercial (this was especially amusing after seeing Vergara appear in no fewer than four commercials shilling different projects. She’s the spokeswoman for everything!). Her costar for the commercial was Penelope Cruz, played by new cast member Kate McKinnon.

Between the C-SPAN sketch, “The Manuel Ortiz Talk Show,” the Santa Barbara news anchors sketch, and this parody of “What What Happens Live,” most of the sketches tonight felt the same. Because they were the same! This bit was anchored by Taran Killam as Andy Cohen, a more maniacal, self-obsessed and over the top version than the one usually seen on the late night talk show. He chatted with two of the “Shahs of Sunset,” played by Nasim Pedrad and Sofia Vergara, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who he met in the Hamptons, and some kind of rent boy played by Andy Samberg, who was in charge of mixing the drinks.

Good grief, what a way to confront your own mortality — watching One Direction perform on Saturday Night LIve

Saturday Night Live is back from a nearly month-long hiatus, and what better way to remind us of what we were missing than to lead with a C-SPAN sketch! My face looked just like the old white guy wearing glasses standing behind Jason Sudeikis’s Mitt Romney at the beginning of the sketch, as he pretended to be interested in cat-spaying, East St. Louis, Illinois, and the Kiamichi Country Oklahoma Sportsmen’s Association. “I want to be known as the cat-neutering president” was a cornerstone of one of his speeches.

The Cornell Sun published an interview with Seth Meyers on Friday, in which the SNL writer discussed his background in comedy and joking about politicians. Mentioning how jokes about the crop of GOP candidates seem to write themselves, Meyers then said liberals may be more sensitive to the jokes because the view the show as safe territory.

Oh Stefon, it’s good to have you back! Spring has come early and so has our favorite NYC tour guide, who swept onto the “Weekend Update” set to raucous applause. Stefon was here to give visitors a rundown of fun things to do in the city now that the weather is getting warmer.

There’s quite a bit of buzz about “Game Change,” the HBO film based on the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign, and SNL had Sarah Palin on to comment on the film. Except…she looked a little bit different than she usually does on the show, which may have had something to do with the fact that she was being played by Andy Samberg.

Paula Deen has had a pretty bad year already, and she had the opportunity to defend herself on SNL’s “Weekend Update,” but she seemed more intent on finishing the drumstick and stick of butter she had in each hand.

We probably all saw this coming, given that this was one of the biggest media stories of the last week — Saturday Night LIve opened the show with a comment from Rush Limbaugh on the fallout from his remarks about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke.

“Scared Straight” is a great recurring sketch, and it only made sense that the show would reprise it and give Lindsay Lohan the chance to co-star as Kenan Thompson’s partner in the fictional program commissioned by Jason Sudeikis. What was unexpected, however, was that she played herself herself.

I don’t think anyone expected that Lindsay Lohan would be hosting <em>Saturday Night Live</em> in 2012, or that she would do so without a movie, album, or any project at all to promote! Her opening monologue was a perfect opportunity to answer some questions the audience would have for her, and she wasted no time poking fun at herself for her various arrests and her stalled career.

When Emma Stone hosted “Saturday Night Live” earlier this season, an oddball sketch called “We’re Going To Make Technology Hump” aired right at the end of the episode. The premise was pretty simple, with Stone and Andy Samberg narrating a series of segments that featured various inanimate objects doing unspeakable things to each other.

“Get In The Caaaaage!” This is one of my favorite recurring “Weekend Update” segments, and it was twice as good this week because there was twice as much Nicolas Cage!

“I’m Piers Morgan, and do be fooled by my British accent, because it’s all I’ve got!” Taran Killam’s Piers Morgan kicked off his show in fine self-deprecating form. This hour was all about the Superbowl, and he had several guests on to cover the highlights. Nasim Pedrad appeared as M.I.A., still in her halftime costume, to defend her decision to sing with Madonna “while there’s all this injustice in the world” and also to give the finger to the stadium and the audience.

Lana Del Rey‘s lips (as portrayed to perfection by Kristen Wiig — which is especially interesting considering how many Twitterers wondered whether the performance was actually just a sketch starring Wiig) visited Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update to address the criticism hurled her away after her “stiff, distant and weird” performance three weeks ago.

Saturday Night Live brings us a glimpse into a not-so-distant future, a future when Barack Obama‘s second term leads us into a nightmarish socialist dystopia. Luckily, Newt Gingrich‘s vision for a moon colony became a reality.

Not since Ashlee Simpson performed the hoedown has an SNL performer botched a performance as bad as Lana Del Rey did as the show’s musical guest host last night.

SNL’s Weekend Update had Michele Bachmann on for her swan song following her disappointing finish in the Iowa caucus on Tuesday. Although she was bummed that her time as a Republican candidate was over, she was much more excited about being able to blink “for the first time since this all started.” Seth Meyers quizzed her about her statement that God told her to run for the presidency, and Bachmann placidly acknowledged that it may have been a mass text.

Two friends get separated on a flight. A nursery school application is rejected. A woman ordering at Arby’s has no way of knowing if her food is local or not. These are “white people problems,” and Charles Barkley is hosting a new show on Discover ID that finally gives them their due. Each segment features Barkley as the host speaking with a black person who was at the scene of the “crime,” but it turns out in each instance they weren’t paying attention to the “Caucasian crises” on hand.

Remember a few weeks ago, when “Saturday Night Live” aired a presidential debate sketch where the candidates were seated according to their chances in the polls, and Rick Santorum was left to participate via satellite from a gay bar in the San Francisco’s Castro District? Oh, so very much has changed since then. This week’s episode began with an address from Rick Santorum himself, played by Andy Samberg (wearing Santorum’s now-signature sweater vest, of course).

Televangelist Pat Robertson was incensed by Saturday Night Live‘s parody of Denver Bronco’s quarterback Tim Tebow on Monday morning, calling it an attack on Christianity. “There’s an anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting and I think Saturday Night Live did a parody of that, had Jesus come in,” Robertson fumed. “If this had been a Muslim country and they had done that, and had Muhammad doing that stuff, you would have found bombs being thrown off!”

It was the last sketch of the night, but Tim Tebow finally made his highly anticipated appearance, closing out one of the most solid episodes of Saturday Night Live in recent memory. Taran Killam, playing Tebow (and helping to settle a bet on sister site Sportsgrid), was interrupted by his personal hero Jesus during a standard locker room pep talk. Jesus, played by Jason Sudeikis, was not as enamored with Tebow as Tebow was with him.

When Seth Meyers reported on the story of a local strip club doing a Christmas toy drive (“give a gift to charity and we’ll give it to the manager!”), Jimmy Fallon just had to stop by his old “Weekend Update” post to hear more. Looking sharp in a navy suit and purple tie, he challenged Meyers to a “good old-fashioned ‘Weekend Update’ Joke-Off.” And, just to make things more exciting, former co-anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler also threw their hats into the ring.

Nicolas Cage (played by Andy Samberg) and Jude Law (played by the man himself) stopped by “Weekend Update” for a recurring segment called “Get In The Cage.” While ostensibly an opportunity for Nicolas Cage to talk to fellow actors about their craft, it was actually an opportunity for Jude Law to look quietly bemused while Cage spouted non-stop nonsense. When he got fed up toward the end Cage cautioned him “There’s only one way to leave the Cage…a fight to the death.