‘Weekend Update’ Also Has To Cope With Vanessa Bayer’s Departure

The gaping hole at the center of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” just doubled in size. Not only was Saturday night’s episode Bobby Moynihan’s last, it was also the final appearance of Vanessa Bayer. While Moynihan’s departure was announced earlier in the week, Bayer didn’t announce her impending goodbye until a few hours before Saturday’s episode.

Bayer joined the cast alongside now ex-cast members Jay Pharoah and Taran Killam back in 2010, and her departure (along with Moynihan’s) signals the end of an era. During her seven years on the show, Bayer honed a very specific type of comedy—one that I’ll go ahead and call “suburban weirdness.” SNL could always depend on Bayer to push the most normal of sketches into unexpected territory, like in the trilogy of Totino’s Super Bowl commercials. Just like Bobby Moynihan, Bayer also crushed “Weekend Update” on a regular basis.

As I laid out in the previous Moynihan showcase, it takes a very specific type of performer to consistently kill on “Weekend Update.” If Moynihan was the king of the desk piece, then Bayer was surely the queen—or possibly prince or princess, given her characters. Bayer’s both a showy and a subtle performer. She can go big and broad with the best of the rest, but she can also draw jokes out of mannerisms or a flick of her finger or twist of her smile. That’s why she absolutely comes alive during “Update”; the camera is right there on her face, capturing every awkward pause or over eager gesture. Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy. Laura Parsons. Rachel from Friends. Dawn Lazarus. Four characters, four weekend update all-stars.

Bayer’s first big “Weekend Update” character—Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy—originated in a sketch and then broke out on his own to become “Weekend Update’s” go-to bit for the episodes that aired around Passover or Hanukkah. Introduced as the son of Seth Meyers’ (and later Michael Che’s) podiatrist, Jacob’s desk pieces follow a pattern: Jacob passes along some embarrassing foot medicine to the anchor, and then proceeds to read prepared facts about Jewish holidays from paper, looking up only when it’s time to let loose a totally staged (and cringeworthy) “zinger.” Any attempt from the anchor to actually talk to Jacob anchor-to-bar-mitzvah-boy fails, as Jacob awkwardly gets back to read his prepared remarks. This is Bayer’s brilliance, right here: Jacob is a bad comedian. “It beats doing homework” is a textbook example of a corny punchline, but Bayer makes every one of Jacob’s appearances work because of her physicality. That punchline isn’t funny, but the way Jacob stretches out his neck and grins, so unbelievably proud of his wit, that is funny. It’s also full of heart. In just three minutes, Bayer gets you invested in this little boy; the moments when Jacob cries are some of the only moments in SNL history that elicit genuine “awwww“s from the audience.

Just like Jacob, Bayer’s other regular “Weekend Update” character also debuted in a sketch. Whereas Jacob quickly jumped behind the desk, it took five seasons for Disney star-turned-“Newscaster of Tomorrow” Laura Parsons to pull up a chair. Laura didn’t make her “Update” debut until 2015, but she made a big impact on the segment in those few seasons. Laura is, surprisingly, when SNL goes for broke. No topic is off limits, and no news story is too depressing for Laura—a character that doesn’t really understand what she’s reading (HIV is “when your whole body goes ‘oh boy.’ Speaking of boys, Jared Fogle!“) This is a little actress that will do anything, literally anything for a chance in the spotlight. On “Weekend Update,” that means overeagerly belting out a news theme song off-key and diving into stories about El Chapo, dildos, and Bill Cosby.

Bayer’s keen physicality and mastery of mannerisms also makes her a great impressionist, particularly with people that initially seem beyond mimicking. Did anyone really do a “Jennifer Aniston” before Bayer? In two “Weekend Update” appearances, Bayer targeted Aniston’s performance as Rachel on Friends and exaggerated all her tiny eccentricities. The constantly surprised tone, the hair touching, the specific way Rachel says “Oh!“—it’s spot-on Rachel. The impression was even strong enough to stand up to the ultimate SNL test: performing the impression to the subject’s face.

In the SNL equivalent of making a half court shot at the buzzer, Bayer introduced a new, instantly memorable “Weekend Update” character in her last month on SNL—and she played her twice! The appearance of nonsensical weatherperson Dawn Lazarus so close to Bayer’s final episode just proves how much more originality and low-key bizarreness the performer had left in her. Lazarus fakes her way through a weather report, nailing the cadence and attitude of every local weatherperson ever while making absolutely no sense. It defies transcription, as actual weather terms are punctuated with nervous stumbles and, inexplicably, the monosyllabic utterance “hap.”

With both Moynihan and Bayer gone, there’s a major shortage of recurring “Update” characters. Kate McKinnon’s still a sure thing (if she ignores the siren call of a full-time movie career for one more season), and Cecily Strong’s on the cusp of “Update” greatness. Without Moynihan and Bayer, though, get ready for a lot of new weird characters next to Colin Jost and Michael Che next season.

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