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On Wednesday afternoon, the entire SNL machine — some 50-odd staffers — gathers for the weekly read-through, which serves as an audition for the skit ideas that were greenlit on Monday. The cast and host Adams sit around a large table and read sketches they have often never seen before, while Lorne Michaels intones the stage directions. Over the next three and a half hours, the show's writers, many of whom have been up all night, wait with tired but attentive eyes to see how much laughter their material provokes.

While some sketches fall comparatively flat — including one called ''Club Red,'' about a holiday resort catering exclusively to redheads — ''BBQ OR,'' co-written by Jost and scribe Rob Klein, absolutely kills. Set up as a fake commercial, it stars Will Forte as the titular owner of Dr. Uncle Jimmy's Smokehouse and Outpatient Surgical Facility, which serves up ''the tastiest wings and the fastest colonoscopies this side of Jasper, Arkansas.'' Forte totally sells his part with a goofy old man's voice, reading from an eight-page script that, only two days ago, was little more than a vague idea in Jost's brain: ''I was just working from an image that I thought was funny of doctors having their hands covered in barbecue sauce and then operating on a patient,'' he says. Now, somewhere in the building, a person is probably figuring out how to build a BBQ OR. And there's still no guarantee that the sketch will appear on the show. ''It is crazy,'' agrees Jost. ''You'll write a scene about people wearing hot dog costumes and they'll spend, like, $10,000 on a hot dog costume. And then it never airs.''

Lorne Michaels has another office, on the ninth floor of 30 Rockefeller Center. From here, thanks to a large interior window, the producer can literally oversee proceedings at SNL's broadcast base, Studio 8H. ''It was built for the NBC orchestra,'' says Michaels on Thursday afternoon. ''The studio was built on springs so the subway didn't affect the orchestra.''

At one time, this was the comedy playground of John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, and more. The names have changed, of course, and every week there is a new host and fresh comic situations. But if the content of SNL is in constant flux, its crucial DNA — the cold opening, the monologue, the musical act, ''Weekend Update'' — has remained the same since the first season. The only things missing are the Muppets. This ''strategery'' is approved by veteran SNL writer Jim Downey, author of the 2000 skit in which Will Ferrell (as George W.) first uttered the now-famous malapropism. ''No one ever says, 'Come on, UCLA, you've done basketball — try kayaking!''' says Downey, who first joined SNL in 1976, with a laugh. Adds Meyers: ''The tradition of SNL is one of its strongest things. Once you lose that, you become like everybody else. And we're the only people that dramatize the news. We can play the people. We can go to a place where The Daily Show can't.''

This year, going there has made SNL itself part of the news. Michaels rejects the accusation that SNL is biased toward Clinton — pointing out Obama was a guest last year — or that the show played a role in her victories: ''We can reflect something, but I don't think we affect the course of human events.''

NEXT PAGE: ''The Guardian!'' Lorne Michaels scoffs with an angry laugh about the newspaper's criticism of his choice of Fred Armisen to play Barack Obama. ''Now, where the f--- does the Guardian come to review Saturday Night Live? I have nothing but the greatest respect for Obama.''