Saturday Night Live season 34
season of television series

The thirty-fourth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 13, 2008, and May 16, 2009.
This season is notable for its take on the 2008 presidential election, which saw the show's ratings rapidly increase and multiple award wins.
Presidential election coverage
SNL's coverage of the 2008 presidential election caused ratings to increase rapidly. The season premiere opened with Tina Fey playing Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin (alongside a pregnant Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton) in a "non-partisan message on sexism". The phrase "I can see Russia from my house!" was coined by SNL producer Mike Shoemaker during this sketch.
Accolades
The show won a Peabody Award for its political satire in 2009. Tina Fey won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Sarah Palin. The show also won a Writers Guild of America Award for Comedy/Variety Talk Series.
Cast
The entire cast of the previous year returned for season 34. Added to the cast was Upright Citizens Brigade Theater performer Bobby Moynihan.
The public source identifies “Saturday Night Live season 34” as season of television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Saturday, Night and Live.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Saturday Night Live season 34”, the useful work is to connect “season of television series” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7426698. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2009.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Saturday Night Live season 34”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Saturday Night Live season 34 primary sources, Saturday Night Live season 34 archive and Saturday research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Saturday Night Live season 34”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Saturday Night Live season 34” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.