I am – Hercules!!

Everyone was so busy buzzing about new cast member Jenny Slate slipping “fucking” into her biker-chick sketch last week that it took a while for some to notice that Darrell Hammond – the voice and face of Sean Connery, Donald Trump, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton on the show – had quietly ended his record 14-year run on “Saturday Night Live.”

The news was further obscured and confused by Hammond’s guest appearances on all three Thursday primetime editions of SNL this fall. He was on this Thursday playing Dennis Franz opposite fellow ex-cast member Maya Rudolph as Oprah Winfrey:

As usual talkback was rife with chatter insisting the Megan Fox opener was the series’ most unwatchable installment since perhaps the Ann Risley era, but I recall laughing quite a bit at the “pilot is scared” sketch:

The “Svetlana is $10 cheaper” sketch cracked me up as well:

And, gods help me, I laughed at the rundown of individuals who make use of Live Lounge:

I sensed some talkbackers were implying last week that the Hammond years were useless and that SNL was far sharper during the Eddie Murphy era. In closing, clips to foster comparison:

11:30 p.m. Saturday. NBC.

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