* Having delivered a smackdown to “Saturday Night Live” earlier this week, I actually have something positive to say about the show. “The Best of Darrrell Hammond,” which airs Saturday, is actually well worth your time. Then again, given that Hammond is the longest serving “SNL” cast member - he’s been on the show for 11 years, a record among all “SNL” players - you’d expect him to have come up with an hour or so of good material.

Hammond is, of course, an uncannily good political impressionist - his hangdog Bill Clinton is a true “SNL” classic, and the special demonstrates that his Al Gore and even Jimmy Carter impressions are good. And of course his Chris Matthews - and there’s a great Matthews skit at the start of Saturday’s show - is more enjoyable than the real thing. Even his Dan Rather and Donald Trump impressions are funny, though his Tim Russert didn’t really work all that well, and that “Jeopardy!” skit with Hammond as Sean Connery goes on too long.

Still, watching the Saturday Hammond special is great because it cuts out the seemingly endless subpar sketches that have occupied many “SNL” outings in recent years. It’s a concentrated dose of the good stuff, and, as it turns out, the skit that had me rolling on the floor had nothing to do with politics.

In a memorable skit with Maya Rudolph and Jason Bateman, Hammond played the golden-voiced Bill Kurtis. The premise of the sketch was that Kurtis was recording some voiceovers for an A+E show about serial killers - and all the while bantering with the engineers, Rudolph and Bateman, about trips with the kids to the Build a Bear Workshop, losing pounds via Weight Watchers and other lighthearted stuff.

The contrast between the increasingly grotesque voiceover lines and the lighthearted gossip, not to mention Hammond’s perfect impression of Kurtis’ deep-timbered voice, made the skit hysterical. For some reason, the serial-killer voiceover line “three of the anuses were never identified” sent me over the edge.

With very few exceptions, it’s good stuff — worth recording to speed through some time next week.

* Well, so much for that: It appeared NBC was going to do right by fans of “Kidnapped,” when the network announced a few weeks ago that the failing drama was going to move to Saturday nights, where it would finish out a 13-episode run that would allow viewers to see the story to its conclusion. Now the network has yanked the show from Saturday nights as well; other drama repeats will air in its place. According to TV Guide’s Matt Roush, the remaining episodes will be available at NBC’s Web site. And there’s always DVD.

* Gateword.net reports that Jewel Staite, a veteran of Joss Whedon’s "Firefly," will be appear in several episodes of “Stargate: Atlantis” next season. In other Joss Whedon-related news, former “Angel”/“Wonderfalls” writer/producer Tim Minear’s new series, “Drive,” has been picked up by Fox for spring.

* Variety reports that Rob Lowe joins the cast of “Brothers and Sisters” on Nov. 19; he’ll play a Republican senator who falls for political pundit Kitty Walker (Calista Flockhart).

* Starting Nov. 21, BBC America will begin airing the season of “Doctor Who” starring Christopher Eccleston. The long-running BBC series returned to TV in England with Eccleston as the Doctor in 2005. Sci Fi is currently airing the season after Eccleston’s, which stars David Tennant as the Doctor (and truth be told, both latter-day Doctors are good, but I prefer Tennant). Speaking of Who-related news, SyFyPortal has posted a review of “Torchwood,” the new “Doctor Who” spinoff starring Captain Jack Harkness, which recently began airing in England.

* TiVo’s listings report that Rainn Wilson, Dwight of “The Office,” will be on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Nov. 10.

* Regarding Wednesday’s “Lost,” yes, it was kind of sad that Mr. Eko died, but I wasn’t as broken up about it as some other folks have been. I thought he was an interesting guy, but as happened with Ana Lucia and Libby, I never felt as though his character was developed as well as it could have been.

My main gripe with Wednesday’s episode was that it barely moved the plot forward at all, and that the flashback was pretty repetitive - we knew that Eko felt bad for his brother’s death, and not much of what we learned was all that new or compelling. As for how Eko died, doesn’t it seem plausible that he simply died of his internal injuries and that the black cloud’s assault on him was just one more hallucination?

Still, I liked the Jack-Juliet interaction, and I’m always into hatch-tastic action. I wish I could take credit for this observation, but it belongs to a commenter on Alan Sepinwall’s blog: Was Colonel Tigh the spectral, one-eyed man spotted in that other hatch?

Now, on to the biggest problem of this short season so far - the new Losties that popped up a couple of episodes ago. It’s bad enough that we’re just supposed to accept these random folks as having been on the island the whole time. But the writers are giving them inane dialogue and so far, they feel like refugees from a C-grade horror movie, or a couple that got lost on their way to an all-inclusive vacation. “Honey, this is the worst Sandals resort ever!”

I don’t know, so far they just don’t click and, like the “Star Trek” red shirts, I get this feeling that they’ll die before we get much of a chance to get invested in them. Your thoughts?