Change is a controversial word on the 17th floor of Rockefeller Center. Chase feels that "Update" should be used sparingly and that routines should be changed. But "Lorne feels that audiences are kind of stupid," Franken said, "so he thinks we can use jokes every week. I tend to think that our audiences are more sophisticated than most. The way it is now, we'll just take a good joke and run it into the ground. If we varied by only using a good joke once every four shows, we could use it forever."

In the shaky world of show business, "Saturday Night" is unlikely to last forever. But with costs decreasing with each show, it could run for several years, until, as Chase says, it goes down the toilet and NBC flushes it away.

When that happens, Franken said he would like to return to stand up comedy work with Davis, preferably on the West Coast. "It would really be nice to work alone with Tom again, not having people assigning us things and not having things edited out," he said.

Franken got up to leave, because it was already 2 p.m. and he had yet to start writing. He picked up a script from beneath his coffee cup, a skit in which Nessen leaves in the middle of the show. "Don't forget to put 'Kill all preppies' in the article," he smiled.

It was hard to tell if he was serious.

"If anyone wants to make it in show business, well it doesn't help at all to go to Harvard."