‘SNL’ skewers cruise ship, Rubio’s dry mouth (VIDEO)

Between Triumph--the Carnival cruise ship that lost power for four days in the Gulf of Mexico and had to be tugged to shore--and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's dry-mouthed rebuttal to President Barack Obama's "State of the Union" address, "Saturday Night Live" was handed a pair of news events perfect for skewering this week.

"SNL" dedicated its cold-opening sketch to the doomed "poop ship" and its shower-deprived passengers.

"Just because we're stuck in the middle of the ocean without working toilets doesn't mean we can't have some fun," Dean, Carnival's frazzled cruise director played by Jason Sudeikis, said, before turning it over to Reggie Davis (Jay Pharaoh), the ship comedian and Chris Rock impersonator.

Dean and his fellow cruise director then tried to comfort passengers by reading the week's headlines from an air-dropped newspaper--which included the pope's retirement, North Korea's rocket launch, Oscar Pistorius' murder charge and "4,000 Stranded on Nightmare Cruise."

During its "Weekend Update" segment, the sketch-comedy show ribbed Rubio, with Taran Killam portraying the the cotton-mouthed Congressman.

"You're about to give an important partisan speech, you get a little nervous in the green room when you an eat an entire bag of dry-roasted peanuts and beef jerky," Killam's Rubio said recalling the sequence of events. "There are hot lights on you. The room isn't ventilated. You're wearing your lucky burlap unitard under your suit. You do what anyone do: You suddenly lunge to the side, all the while holding awkward eye contact with the camera and then you take a drink from the tiniest bottle of water anyone's ever seen."

Later, "SNL" reprised its spoof of "Fox & Friends," the cable network's loopy morning show, skewering its coverage of the "State of the Union."