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"I just want to go over where we are this week," Michaels, in a dress shirt and tie, said to the small group in his office, fifteen minutes before the Writers Meeting began. (This regular confab is known as the Topical Meeting.) "We're doing a show two days before the midterm elections." President Trump had been crisscrossing the country, holding rallies to whip up his base against the predicted "blue wave" of Democratic candidates. Since Trump's election, SNL had been on a high, getting the best ratings in years and winning eighteen Emmys (the show has collected 103 in its fifty-year history). Alec Baldwin had become an unofficial cast member, regularly undergoing hours in the hair and makeup department in order to portray Trump as a lip-scrunching, slit-eyed scowl of aggrieved petulance. The impression was popular—people were stopping Baldwin on the street to thank him—and it provoked the president to spew unhinged Twitter rants, to the delight of everyone at SNL.

Viewers always expect politics in the show, but the news cycle was moving so quickly that it was impossible to say what stories would feel relevant by Saturday night. "Unless somebody has a foolproof idea now," Michaels said. "Trump is just going to keep going whirlwind."

Colin Jost, one of the show's two head writers and an anchor of the Weekend Update segment, wondered aloud whether Barack Obama had been out campaigning for Democrats.

"He was in Georgia with Stacey Abrams," Michaels said. "Will"—Ferrell—"was there too, knocking on doors."

A producer asked whether Alec Baldwin would be available. Michaels said that Baldwin had called to say that he would be sitting this show out. "He was in touch with the FBI too," Michaels said, referring to the pipe-bomber's target list. He chuckled and added, "These are dangerous times."

Michaels stands about five foot eight, but his posture and nonchalant confidence belie his actual height. His eyes are close-set and dark, with a glitter of mockery. Crinkles sprout from the corners. The attitude he projects is perhaps best captured by a phrase that A. J. Liebling used to describe a wine: "warm but dry, like an enthusiasm held under restraint." (His friend Paul McCartney says, "He always reminded me of Jack Benny.") His smile, when he summons one, is a straight line that bisects his face like a slash. His hair is silvery and frequently barbered; it frames his face in a brushy fringe, like a hedgehog, or a senator. A gleaming white asterisk—his Order of Canada rosette—is usually in his lapel; and on his right hand is a bulky gold signet ring, set with a square red stone engraved with Sufi characters, which he bought in the 1970s at a junk shop in Santa Monica. He has had replicas made for his wife and three grown children. "It was an old imam's sealing ring," he told me. "The guy I bought it from told me the inscription means

 

'With the luck of Ishmael.' And Ishmael had no luck whatsoever. So it's a joke, a Sufi joke. You could open with this in Persia."

Michaels has four chief deputies, each of whom embodies a different facet of his personality. Erik Kenward, a calm Harvard Lampoon alum with a neatly trimmed beard, has worked at the show since 2001 and has absorbed the boss's unflappable steadiness, with a tinge of the long-suffering. Colin Jost, who was also a Harvard Lampoon editor, is, like Michaels, demonstrably well-read and au courant about politics. He is married to Scarlett Johansson, which lends him a Hollywood shimmer that Michaels appreciates. Erin Doyle, whose family owned pubs in Philadelphia, rose through the ranks after starting as an intern and became one of Michaels's assistants. She has a palpable warmth and, like Michaels, a knack for dealing with high-strung famous people; she also produces shows for his production company, Broadway Video. Steve Higgins moonlights as Jimmy Fallon's announcer, egging on Fallon's boyish tendencies. He grew up in Des Moines, and had an early cable show with his brother in which they chain-smoked in a kitchen and watched comedy clips. He is a booster of silliness, a quality that Michaels considers essential to the show; and he is a reliable errand man when Michaels, known to avoid confrontation, has bad news to deliver.

In the Topical Meeting in Michaels's office, Doyle mentioned that Jim Downey had called with an idea for the cold open, the newsy sketch that starts every show and ends with a performer looking into the camera and shouting, "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!" Downey is a revered figure in these offices, a former head writer who was hired right out of Harvard in the show's second season, and stayed for thirty-three years. He has been responsible for many of SNL's most memorable political sketches. (The word "strategery," deployed by Will Ferrell's George W. Bush, was a Downey creation.) Downey and Michaels have always viewed the show's mandate as speaking truth to power, whoever that power might be. But in the age of Trump, many SNL staffers were finding that holding powerful liberals accountable was tough to stomach.

Doyle said, "Downey's idea was Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi giving a press conference, and the point is that they're bummed out that no pipe bombs were mailed to them." Everyone laughed. But the bomber was last week's story—it would feel old by Saturday.