John McCain's appearance delivered another big number for "Saturday Night Live."

He wasn't quite as much of a draw as Sarah Palin two weeks ago, but still big -- a 9.0 household rating/20 share in Nielsen's 56 overnight metered markets, compared to Palin's 10.7/24. Palin's seg aside, it's "SNL's" highest number since a holiday compilation seg aired in December 1997.

There was a surreal quality to the cold open with McCain as McCain and Tina Fey as his running mate. You gotta give him credit for trying, but he just looks tired, and like his running mate two weeks ago, desperate. The bit even pokes fun at the rampant rumors of division within the McCain-Palin camp, with Fey/Palin's bid to sell "Palin in 2012" T-shirts on the sly.

Silly as it is, I got the biggest giggle out of the joke about "McCain Fine Gold."

And although it's been made clear in this space that I am a Keith Olbermann fan, I gotta admit that Ben Affleck, this week's "SNL" host, gets him to an indignant T in this seg spoofing his trademark anti-Bush rants on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

Sunday update-update:

The ratings are in and they are gi-normous. (Good grief, don't let this be an omen for Nov. 4.) Sarah Palin's appearance pushed "Saturday Night Live" to its highest numbers in 14 years, since the show was hosted by another telegenic brunette thrust into the national spotlight, Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, on March 12, 1994.

"SNL" pulled a 10.7 rating/24 share in Nielsen's 56 overnight metered markets, which cover more than 70% of U.S. TV households. To put it in perspective, that number is 161% higher than the show's average last October, and 47% higher than last week's seg. It's lofty enough to make "SNL" the No. 3 program of last week, behind ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" and CBS' "CSI," on a household rating basis. (Final national viewer tally and demographic breakdown won't be available until Thursday.)

As I said below, Palin may not be bound for the Beltway next year but she will undoubtedly be in the market for a good TV agent come Nov. 5.

Sunday update:

OK. Gotta give Sarah Palin a few points for having a sense of humor, though I couldn't help but think "desperation time" while watching her two appearances on last night's "Saturday Night Live" (posted below), in the cold open and in the "Weekend Update" seg. Lorne Michaels (did Palin call him "Lauren"? -- it sure sounded like that to me) and Alec Baldwin played their parts perfectly (with a cool cameo from Mark Wahlberg to boot). Watching Palin and Fey pass each other was definitely worth the price of admission. And for the record, I would like to see the "30 Rock" sketch that Palin wrote. (Michaels flexed some self-depricating -deprecating muscle of his own in telling her "not enough people know that show.")

Can anyone explain why there's a life-size prop of a cow, or some other farm animal, in the background and Michaels and Palin are talking backstage? Is it part of a running gag, or maybe just a political commentary from "SNL's" prop master? After all, the hind end was pointed squarely at Palin.

If the polls keep going the way they're going, and the endorsements, a la Colin Powell's big news this ayem, keep going the Obama-Biden camp's way, I'm thinking Palin still gets her national platform -- a show on Fox News Channel or some other outlet. No matter what you think of her politics, you can't deny that the woman is telegenic, and she's already got her on-air signature -- her kitten-ish wink -- down pat.

Posted Saturday:

Sarah Palin's visit to "Saturday Night Live" tonight should make for a must-see vid clip, no matter what transpires.

The folks at Hulu are so charged up about the GOP veep nominee's potential to deliver the Super Bowl of viral vid (remember those debate ratings?) that on Friday they emailed out a "placeholder" link to the clip on their site. It should become real thing around 2 a.m. PST Sunday, after "SNL" airs on the West Coast.

Those Internet types, they think of everything.

Friday update: Well, 38.9 million viewers disagreed with me. That's how many checked out McCain's speech in the 10 p.m. hour, marking a 500,000 viewer gain over Dem nominee Barack Obama's speech last week.

I guess it is a generational thing.

Sarah Palin was MTV in her widely viewed veep nomination acceptance speech -- fast-paced and full of cuts and jabs, zingers and flash. For tonight's main event at the Republican National Convention, John McCain was a Hallmark Channel movie -- well-produced but utterly predictable, sticking with a formula that plays well the target aud.

For a guy who's billing himself as a "maverick," McCain TV didn't seem to veer far from the traditional GOP campaign themes of recent elections: national security, taming big government, tax cuts, school choice, Washington insiders (bad), love of this great country (good), and protecting the health care system from a bogeyman in the guise of "a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor."

In fairness, McCain's long speech was notably free of culture-vulture saber-rattling and hammering on some other wedge issues. But even the theme of the night, as plastered all over the St. Paul convention hall, "Country First," served as a constant reminder that watch out -- the other guys are putting something other than their Love of Country first in this campaign.

"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," McCain said toward the end of his nearly 50-minute address. "My country saved me."

McCain has never been accused of being a great public speaker. His delivery is a halting and he's got a habit of pausing a little too long before flashing a toothy smile to punctuate his applause lines. He used a bunch of them during the overly long Candidate's Cut of his speech.

By the time he got to his "stand up and fight with me" closing, he frankly sounded more winded than fiery. (My husband gave up long before, and went into another room to catch Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" special on Fox.)

But I can't help it -- I have long had a soft spot for John McCain. It was much softer during the 2000 campaign, when it felt like he was actually trying to challenge his party's orthodoxy, than it is today. Still, there's no denying that his story as a war hero and Hanoi Hilton survivor is admirable and inspirational. He is a Great American, imbued with the honor, courage, dignity and patriotism that the other convention speakers lauded him for.

But does he still qualify as a maverick? By his demeanor and delivery, it felt like he was sticking to the script for the most part on Thursday.

No matter what you think of her politics, there's no denying that Sarah Palin's speech tonight at the Republican National Convention made for great television.

The woman can throw a verbal punch, and she was probably extra pugnacious tonight because of the going-over she and her family have endured this week. She clearly responded to the roar of the crowd, loosening up and losing her caribou-in-the-headlights look and ramrod-straight posture as she went on. It was fascinating watching her work through this make-or-break moment in her relatively brief time on the national stage.

Of the many crowd-pleasing zingers Palin lobbed at Barack Obama, the one that that probably stood out to the ears of showbizzers was her reference to Obama's set design choices for his coronation speech last week.

"But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan?" she said, with a snide emphasis on "some studio lot."

The parsing and analyzing of what Palin did and did not accomplish in her big moment will go on ad nauseum in the next few days, as will the slicing and dicing of her personal and professional life. Former "Daily Show" dude Mo Rocca made me laugh out loud with his observation on "CBS Evening News'" post-speech webcast that the most intriguing part of her perf came at the end when Palin's youthful family joined their self-described "hockey mom" on stage. 

"It was like the cast of 'Alaska 90210,'" he said. So true, and with just as many plot twists, eh?

I also couldn't stop thinking about how Tina Fey could probably do a hell of a Palin impersonation were she still on "Saturday Night Live." And with the brunette Palin favoring a slight beehive and Cindy McCain going for the Farrah Fawcett look, I'm thinking if this White House bid doesn't work out there's gotta be a conservative-themed "Charlie's Angels" remake in the works, no? Maybe Curtis Nowrasteh is available.

Sarah Palin has been the gift that keeps on giving as far as latenight joksters are concerned.

Anne Thompson has posted a LOL roundup of all the Palin quips that have flown during the past few nights. I got a kick out of the clips of Palin in her big-hair local TV sportscasting days, but my favorite Palin find on YouTube so far is a vidclip that she sent into to CBS' "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" in June of last year, when Craig was on his campaign to become an honorary citizen in every city in the U.S. (That was before he became a full-bodied citizen of the U.S. of A. earlier this year.)

Palin sent in a vid message to "Late Late Show" in June making Craig an honorary citizen of Alaska. "This is God's country," she informs him. She invites him to come up to the wilderness and "we'll show you what fishing's all about. We'll let you partake of rich, succulent wild Alaskan salmon."

Ferguson demonstrates the sharpness of his observational skills in asking his aud, "Is it just me or do you get a kind of naughty-librarian vibe from the governor?"