Jenny Slate full-frontal nude photo! The girl who said the f-word on Saturday Night Live!

Jenny Slate made her debut on Saturday Night Live in the early hours of Sunday morning with her own sketch about a biker chick talk show in which she and her guests used the word "frickin'" (instead of "f*ckin'") over and over again. Amid the hilarity, she somehow wound up tossing in the real f-word and then made a funny face (puffing out her cheeks) to call attention to it. The "slip-up" was edited out for the West Coast feed, so we didn't get to hear it, though we did notice the edit because it was made mid-puff.

Former SNL cast member Charles Rocket is best known for saying the f-word on camera back in the Eighties. He later committed suicide. Jenny, who especially in biker drag was a fine visual alternative to chubby Casey Wilson, should fare a lot better. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if she'd been hired for that very reason. Facing competition from premium channels and the Internet and looser restrictions on cable, why not use the new kid to test out the reaction well after midnight on the 35th season debut?

Saturday Night Live steals joke from Tabloid Baby

Imagine our surprise while watching Saturday Night Live to see host Christopher Walken break off midsketch to tell an obscure joke that was immortalized on page 361 of Tabloid Baby.

The riddle was reeled off as a non sequitur midway through the "Meet The Family" sketch (above) late in the broadcast. And while there may have been variations of the joke as it's been carried on through the years, one very hip SNL writer took the Tabloid Baby version (attributed in the book to legendary New York City newsman Jim Ryan) verbatim.

The allusion is only the most recent indicator of Tabloid Baby's impact and cultural significance. Thanks to Lorne Michaels, and thanks to SNL, for the tribute!

Never mind the denials. SNL hearts Hillary.

Lorne Michaels and his top writer at Saturday Night Live hit the media trail to deny the show is in in Hillary Clinton's pocket, despite three straight weeks of front-loaded sketches (including an overt endorsement by guest host and former writer Tina Fey-- and a cute appearance by Hillary herself) that not only placed the candidate in a sympathetic light but apparently helped her reverse her freefall.

Michaels and Jim Downey claim they're equal-opportunity satirists, but one admission in The New York Times throws all denials out the window:

Both men suggested that Mrs. Clinton benefited from being portrayed by Amy Poehler, whom Mr. Downey called our charm machine.' But Ms. Poehler resisted one aspect of the portrayal in the first sketch on Feb. 23. Mr. Downey had written a moment when a tear was supposed to come to Mrs. Clinton’s eye, and the debate hosts were going to hammer her for "turning on the water works again.”

Mr. Downey acknowledged, “Amy wasn’t crazy about that. She said that was not fair.” The tear was cut from the live show.

Not fair? Hillary's weeping tactics have been debated and satirized for months. Sounds like the show's stars have more power than the writers, which is no surprise but also not promising for the show, which has dropped in quality exponentially from its surprisingly consistent return from strike hiatus.

SNL avoids the Obama blackface issue

Lorne Michaels’ Saturday Night Live has never displayed much worry about white castmembers playing “blackface” (think Darrell Hammond as Jesse Jackson). But in the case of Barack Obama, who made a cameo appearance in the last episode before the WGA strike, there was some hand-wringing in the media about the need for a regular, politically-correct Obama character, and, with young Kenan Thompson too fat for the role, rumours that a tall, lanky African-American Obama player was about to join the cast (instead, a chubby white girl was added to replace Maya Rudolph).

In the end, they used Fred Armisen. Any controversy was immediately deflected because the makeup was laugh-out-loud good. And they sidestepped the “blackface issue" on a couple of counts: Armisen didn't need more than a light bronzing, as both he and Obama are of mixed race heritage (Obama with a white mother and Kenyan father; Armisen is Venezuelan on his mother’s side and part Japanese).

By the way, last night's SNL episode was one for the time capsule: the first consistently- funny show since the fifth episode of the second season (and as a reminder, Steve Martin made an appearance). The sketches were tight and actually laugh-inducing, and with the exception of Carrie Underwood’s subpar performance (why do the musical acts always sound so bad on this show while there’s never a problem on Conan?) and Tina Fey’s desperate Hillary-flogging during the news segment, the show held up to the end! As it was the first fresh SNL since the start of the Writers Guild Strike, the solution to SNL's quality control problem is obvious (Ben Silverman take note): cut back Saturday Night Live to once every 16 weeks.