SNL Swipes at 'Nightmare Cruise'

The week's gloomy news cycle proved comedic gold for Saturday Night Live, which opened last night with a sketch lampooning Carnival Cruise Lines' stranded ship/PR nightmare, reports the Hollywood Reporter. As cruise employees Jason Sudeikis and Cecily Strong try in vain to boost passenger morale, they run down headlines from a newspaper dropped in by helicopter: Sudeikis responds to a heckler, saying, "There IS a God. He has not abandoned us," then turns to the paper, reading, "Uh, the pope resigned." North Korea's nuke test and even, yes, Oscar Pistorius follows. Then: "OK, you guys might think you have it bad," says Strong. "But do you have it worse than "4,000 Stranded on Nightmare Cruise?" Oops. "That is about us." Other highlights include Kate McKinnon on "Weekend Update." Christoph Waltz guest hosted in what Mike Ryan at Huffington Post calls "the best show of the season." (More Saturday Night Live stories.)