Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
BUSH’S PRESS CONFERENCE
Alberto Gonzalez (FRA) is uneasy despite George W. Bush’s (JAS) support
— Pretty funny background facial expressions from Fred’s Alberto Gonzalez as his mood goes back-and-forth depending on what Bush says regarding the consequences he may or may not suffer.
— The fact that the comedic conceit of this particular President Bush press conference cold opening isn’t focusing solely on the speech Jason’s Bush is giving is making me like this more than the tepidly-written Jason-as-Bush press conference cold openings.
STARS: ***
MONOLOGUE
host tells a joke & introduces dad Archie, brother Eli, mom Olivia [real]
— The Tom Brady/circus/three rings joke Peyton relays was very good.
— Funny line about Peyton’s mom being a disappointment to the family because she never made it to the NFL.
— A short and simple but fairly charming monologue.
STARS: ***
UNITED WAY
host is a poor role model for kids during a United Way activity
— A very famous and often-played piece.
— A great way for Peyton to spoof his role model image. Every moment of this commercial is a riot to me. Petyon hitting and knocking over kids with the football when passing to them, him speaking very harshly to them, him teaching them inappropriate things like picking the lock of a car, etc.
— The tattoo part is particularly hilarious.
STARS: *****
BRONX BEAT WITH BETTY AND JODI
Betty & Jodi are impressed by the size of zookeeper (host)
— Amy and Maya’s flirtatious compliments to Peyton are pretty funny, but feel like an inferior knock-off of their flirtatious compliments to Jake Gyllenhaal in the first installment of this sketch.
— Some laughs from Amy and Maya’s talk about if Peyton’s head size made it difficult for his mother to give birth to him.
— I like Maya calling up her husband to see if he’ll get mad by her flirting with Peyton.
— Overall, the weakest Bronx Beat by default, but still not bad. However, I hope the quality of Bronx Beat isn’t already slowly starting to diminish, after the pretty solid start it had in its first two installments.
STARS: ***
ESPN’S NCAA TOURNAMENT POOL PARTY
lucky (AMP)’s girly rationales produced a perfect NCAA basketball bracket
— The “huge whore” comments from Amy about her college roommate are pretty funny.
— I love the brief cutaway to Peyton’s deadpan confused face during the discussion of one of Amy’s girlish reasons for her picks, even though the whole latter gag with Amy’s girlish picks and her having no knowledge of sports is starting to feel lazily stereotypical.
— Solid turn with Jason and Amy using “Peyton Manning” as an unflattering term for disappointments, offending Peyton’s character.
— Funny line from Amy about how she’s going to donate her prize to a charity for cats who are overfed.
— More laughs from more unflattering things being said about Peyton Manning.
— A pretty good laugh from Jason yelling “Don’t pull a Peyton Manning!” to Peyton’s character after he angrily walks off the show.
STARS: ***½
PARTY POOPER
at a party, Penelope (KRW) compulsively one-ups guests’ small talk
— The debut of this Penelope character.
— Kristen’s delivery and the one-upping habit of this character are already making me laugh.
— So far, a one-note character from Kristen, and a precursor to an unfortunate endless number of one-note “look at me” recurring characters of hers, but this particular character is working pretty well in this inaugural appearance of hers.
— Funny escalation to Penelope’s lies after an unhappy Peyton tries to beat her at her own game.
STARS: ***
TV FUNHOUSE
“Maraka” by RBS- multilingual explorer poses myriad questions to viewers
— A spot-on spoof of Dora The Explorer, as well as children’s shows in general that rely on the “The main character asks viewers a question and pauses for a long time while waiting for viewers to answer” trope.
— The increasingly random, unrelated, inappropriate questions Maraka asks viewers are priceless.
— I love Maraka saying to viewers “Don’t question it, just do it!” during the arm-flapping bit.
— A hilarious inclusion of random foreign tongue-clicking sounds from Maraka in the middle of her very long-winded spiel delivered in Spanish.
STARS: *****
LOCKER ROOM MOTIVATION
“Casino Royale Theme” inspires terpsichorean basketball coach (WLF)
— Oh, yet another classic tonight. This sketch is also a fantastic one-two punch with the Maraka cartoon that preceded it.
— Peyton: “I just thought about going out there in the second half, and a little bit of pee came out.”
— Another great line from Peyton: his random one about practicing French kissing with his French-kissing puppet.
— Even just the build-up to Will’s famous dance, where he’s initially just intensely listening to the music with a very serious look on his face, is coming off funny, though even moreso when you know what’s coming.
— And there goes the famous dancing. Absolutely priceless and legendary. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, it never fails to bowl me over with laughter. Even there mere Casino Royale music itself is hilarious-sounding when combined with Will’s dancing to it.
— I love watching the reaction of the performers in the background during Will’s dancing, and how some of them are attempting to hide their genuine amusement (Bill in particular has his hand strategically placed over his mouth in a resting manner almost the entire time, because he already KNOWS he’s going to break at Will’s dancing) while some of the others are just openly smirking without hiding it. It’s also pretty fun to imagine what Will’s dancing must look like from the perspectives of his giggling scene partners, considering they’re standing/sitting behind Will.
— Great turn with Peyton joining in on Will’s bizarre dancing, complete with him playing Will’s leg like a guitar.
STARS: *****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Before He Cheats”
WEEKEND UPDATE
presidential candidate Tim Calhoun lays out his scattershot platform
Zoo News- SEM considers the fate of Knut the polar bear cub
Sanjaya Malakar’s (ANS) version of “You Really Got Me” moves DAA to tears
— Maybe it’s just me, but Seth’s delivery sounds a lot more low-key tonight. Is he under the weather this week?
— Yes! TIM FUCKING CALHOUN! Will Forte keeps the classic performances coming tonight.
— Tim Calhoun’s personal Bay Of Pigs revelation was hilarious.
— I absolutely love Calhoun’s delivery of “I will NOT budge on this” when proposing that the presidential seal be replaced by a real seal.
— A reminder of those “Head-on, apply directly to the forehead” (*repeat several times*) commercials that were rampant in this time period.
— Calhoun’s “anal” answer regarding which side he would pick in the same-sex debate had me laughing so hard.
— An interesting-seeming side segment, with Seth doing a Zoo News segment.
— Seth’s lower-key delivery tonight (yeah, he’s definitely gotta be under the weather this week) is particularly noticeable during his Zoo News segment. I’m not caring much for this segment, aside from the comically harsh comment about putting down Abigail Breslin.
— I think I recall hearing that Seth unknowingly mispronounced the name of the polar bear all throughout the Zoo News segment.
— Second Update in a row with the traditional tree-frog-joke-gets-interrupted gag.
— The random Sanjaya interruption, while a very dated reference when watching this in 2020, still works for me, mostly because Andy’s Sanjaya impression is pretty funny, as are Seth and Amy’s reactions to his singing, all of which makes this hold up better than, say, Fred’s equally-now-dated Judge Larry commentaries in then-recent Updates.
— A random inclusion of Dan Aykroyd as one of the crying audience members during Sanjaya’s singing. And in typical annoying Amy-Poehler-on-Weekend-Update fashion, Amy hurts the gag of Dan’s random cameo by pointing at him afterwards and asking “Why is he here?!?” Ugh, why does Amy always have to call attention to things like this? Dan’s random cameo would’ve been funnier had no acknowledgment been made about it by Seth or Amy.
STARS: ***
300
while filming 300, (host) fails to smash boulder onto fellow actor (FRA)
— Good facial make-up on Peyton, rendering him unrecognizable.
— This premise is just plain dumb, thin, and questionable, and not in the funny way that those kinds of premises can sometimes be. It also doesn’t help that there’s no escalation to the main joke.
— I do like Jason’s performance as the increasingly agitated director, and there are some occasional laughs from Peyton, but otherwise, oof.
STARS: *½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Wasted”
PORCH TALK
daft & indiscreet (host) & (KRW) sip coffee on a pleasant spring evening
— The second and final edition of the Porch Talk sketch that debuted in this season’s Jaime Pressly episode. I heard they would later do a variation of this sketch in one of the wraparound segments in an updated Best Of Mike Myers special that would air around 2007/2008 (this updated special includes newly-filmed wraparound segments with Mike interacting with individual members of the then-current SNL cast from season 32/33), but I’ve never seen the updated special myself.
— Much like last time, Kristen’s delivery is absolutely perfect here, and Peyton is complementing her performance well with solid delivery of his own.
— Lots of funny odd, disturbing, and very random revelations being delivered by Kristen and Peyton in a calm, affable manner. These sketches are growing on me even more, and I already really liked the first installment. I wouldn’t have minded this sketch appearing at least one more time in a regular episode.
— Like the first installment, this overall sketch was kept at a perfect short and sweet length.
STARS: ****
THE MERCEDES 550
the oven-equipped Mercedes 550 is the car for meatloaf lovers like host
— Pretty funny random concept.
— Great reveal of Peyton not having pants on.
— Hilarious visual of each car seat being a toilet.
STARS: ***½
AIR FORCE ONE
awful basketball players don’t need Nike Air Force One shoes
— Two commercials in a row?
— Cool look of the male cast in those white tracksuits they’re shown walking in unison in.
— A fairly fun use of what appears to be the entire male cast, minus Seth, of course, and Darrell, the latter of whom not only is missing from this commercial, and not only is missing from this ENTIRE episode, but has been missing from these PAST TWO episodes. Does the man need a search party sent out for him or something?
— An overall forgettable commercial.
STARS: **
GOODNIGHTS
host’s brothers Eli & Cooper [real] give him a birthday cake
— A nice and unique change of pace for SNL’s goodnights, with Peyton being presented with a birthday celebration. I wonder if he was genuinely not expecting this.
— Nice touch with how the birthday cake is a replica of SNL’s home base stage.
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A very solid and memorable episode. There was an impressive amount of THREE sketches that I rated five stars, and there was barely anything that I didn’t like. Peyton Manning was also one of the better athlete hosts I feel SNL has ever had.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
a step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Shia LaBeouf
I enjoyed this episode a lot. United Way and Locker Room are obviously classics, and that TV Funhouse might be one of my all time favorites; dunking on children’s cartoons in the post-Newgrounds era is probably cliché, but Smigel usually makes it work. Even the stuff that people tend to dislike like 300 and Penelope worked for me. Penelope is one of my weird SNL guilty pleasures. I never get annoyed with that character, for whatever reason.
The only weak link for me was the Mercedes ad. It was just a little too dumb, and the studio audience seemed to agree until it got to the toilet seat part.
This was on the verge of being an all-timer episode before the post-Update section, where you get a terrible sketch (300), a fine if low-key sketch (porch), and then two (to me) just okay commercial parody things. Anyway, Peyton Manning knocked it out of the park (haha, wrong sport) as the host, and the good stuff in this episode is fantastic.
I had forgotten Penelope debuted so “early.” I thought the idea of the character was fine, but I didn’t think it needed all the annoying tics Wiig gave the character. This also didn’t need to become recurring or at least recurring so much.
Two of the best sketches in this episode (United Way and dancing coach) would get second editions later on–the second dancing coach (in Michael Phelps’ terrible episode) would not be very good, but I was actually a fan of Eli’s spin on the United Way. It wasn’t as funny as Peyton’s, but it went in a slightly less obvious direction and I appreciated Eli’s take.
I had forgotten what episode had the Dora the Explorer parody–I remember dying at this. “DO IT, ASSHOLE!” was fantastic.
While the sketch is kind of funny, I had never really understood the NCAA Tournament sketch. If Peyton had made so many wrong picks, how could he be one of the top predictors? The premise also is, as you point out, fairly cliche and something that literally everyone during tournament time points out–people guessing based on mascots or silly things do better than the experts. But I laugh at the Peyton Manning mockery, even though he HAD just won a Super Bowl not long ago.
Wow this was seemingly on its way to being an all timer before the post update stuff.
Still great episode
I had also forgotten that Penelope debuted this “early”
I recall reading at the time that the Air Force One commercial had been cut at multiple dress rehearsals before airing in this show.
LOVE this episode and besides the 300 sketch, everything worked for me. Might be my favourite of the season. Peyton was a fantastic host and easily my favourite athlete to do it. It’s too bad he never came back like Charles Barkley. United Way, Maraka and Locker Room Motivation are easily top ten of the season.
Locker Room is one of those lightning in a bottle moments. A sketch where everything magically comes together and is carried by the performer. On paper it doesn’t seem that funny but Will’s dancing is so out there and committed that it’ll have you laughing before you can even think “why?” They should have never tried to make it recurring. It’s the same league as Matt Foley and those Close Encounters sketches with Kate McKinnon
This episode and Michael Jordan/Public Enemy are generally held up as the best athlete hosted episodes the show has done and it’s easy to see why. Peyton has easy confidence throughout the show that he’s able to pull off jokes most other athletes can’t like in Porch Talk or Penelope.
I personally like Penelope, she’s a clear winner when stacked up against some clunkers like Trina (Thomas!?), Shana, Stacia (I said we!) or Lilia (Don’t make me sing!)
In the monologue seated behind Archie & Olivia is Eli’s girlfriend turned wife Abby who also appears in Eli’s monologue five years from now.
There’s been a rumor that the kid who is getting the tattoo in United Way is future Modern Family star Nolan Gould, he’s not listed on IMDb but it does look a lot like him. Does anyone know for sure?
Sudeikis has told the story about how while Chris Graham is a character made up for the sketch, they found out that there actually is a Chris Graham who works at ESPN, he has been the director of travel and ad sales since 1995.
The only complaint I’ve heard about the NCAA Pool Party sketch is that it is a bit too Inside Baseball for the average SNL fan so let me provide some insight. As mentioned in the sketch Ted Trimble is 56-2 and Mandy Jensen is 58-0 with five games left to play. Over the course of the sketch, Ted’s anger changes from simply Mandy beating him to Sudeikis’s Chris Graham constantly reminding him that he, a published author and college basketball expert, is losing to a girl and then finally the meta twist of Arizona being labeled as the tournament’s “Peyton Manning” due to their great regular season but lackluster postseason results which was a common criticism of Manning until he finally won Super Bowl XLI in his 9th year in the NFL less than two months prior to this episode.
A near classic! The post-Update half brings down the score a bit, but still a great episode overall.
Being in the age range during the early years of Dora the Explorer, I really enjoyed the Maraka cartoon the first time I saw it. It still holds up today thanks to perfect one-liners and a spot-on parody of the show.
NCAA Pool Party is interesting because it feels like it’s trying to do two different concepts at once. It starts out as a cliched “women aren’t familiar with sports” sketch when it suddenly becomes an excuse to bash on Peyton for most of the remainder.
The problem with 300 is that the conceit doesn’t really work. The setup appeared to be the patented “host plays a character who’s the opposite of their persona” (in this case, Peyton is a guy who can’t throw), but it never clicks because a) the presentation doesn’t make sense as it is shown that he can throw when they’re not filming and b) the concept fails since throwing is something that’s not distinct to Peyton Manning, almost everyone can throw.
I’m still uncertain if Dan Aykroyd’s cameo is either an absolute waste, or perfect because it was a nothing appearance. I didn’t even notice until you pointed it out that Amy “ruined” it by acknowledging his presence.
From what I’ve heard, this is one of the only breaks from Bill during the first half of his tenure.
According to Stooge’s original review of this episode, Jorma Taccone of The Lonely Island directed the United Way parody. I never fail to crack a smile at that sketch.
The next episode has the infamous “Dear Sister” Digital Short that was cut from reruns due to the Virginia Tech shooting.
*gunshot* “OOH, WHATCHA SAY….”
Akiva directed the United Way commercial, and I think co-wrote it with Seth.
Forte and Lutz wrote the locker room sketch.
I actually won my pool party for that years bracket so I like seeing the NCAA sketch. As for Peyton, as much as I don’t like him, he was really good here. He was a much host than his brother ended up being.
Second-best episode of the season. Hader and Suds are everywhere again. The sneaker ad parody was snuck in to connect with the vague sports theme of the night. It was indeed cut from multiple shows, and made a minimal impact. Also note that it’s the same six cast members from the “Casino Royale” sketch. For some reason, I said “United Way” was “melancholy and straightforward”; 13 years on, I have come around and acknowledge this as an all-time top ten Digital Short.
If I had to rank athlete-hosts, I’d go with Peyton, then MJ, Jeter, then (shocker) Bob Uecker.
And sorry Peyton Manning and MJ, but the best athlete host of all time is George Foreman. No question.
This episode’s reputation mostly rests on the United Way piece (especially with the stories about how a parent encouraged a reluctant Peyton to hit their child with the football) for casual fans, and for more hardcore fans (as it’s more difficult to find), the locker room sketch. The rest of the night is middling to pleasant, other than the fabulous Tim Calhoun (Forte going from the locker room sketch to Tim Calhoun is one of the greatest one-two punches in SNL history), but it didn’t really have to be any better. When an athlete hosts, the expectations are right through the floor, often for justified reasons, so when an athlete surprises, everyone is happy. SNL has tried to recreate this episode twice, first with Eli Manning (who does a respectable job at an impossible task) and JJ Watt (a woodenly charming and game host, but who was hosting in an era much too polarized for the country to feel involved and with too shaky of writing to have the desired effect [although it does have some good moments, especially one of my favorite 10 to 1s in a long time]).
That basketball short at the end is what reminds me the most of something that might have been in Watt’s episode – you could easily see Mikey Day in there. The most interesting part is all the guys walking side-by-side in the white outfits. It makes what is mostly a cohesive male cast feel jarring – can’t imagine what it would have been if Seth and Darrell had been included.
Penelope is well-performed, but there are two things I dislike about it – that the hosts are so often treated as irrelevant, and how draining the character is. There’s a fine line with “annoying” characters where you go from being amused to exhausted.
Seth being under the weather makes sense. I had wondered if he was nervous, as that polar bear piece felt like the test ramp to the much more detailed and insightful pieces he now does on his talk show.
I greatly enjoyed this version of the porch coffee conversation – there are some truly great, dark lines, well-written and delivered (the man “surprising” the couple by hanging himself in their garage being the best). I hope the Myers version is around somewhere.
(Speaking of Myers, I read a press release for that special and Bill Hader was NOT a participant, which seems unthinkable now, yet shows just how much he was on the fringes of the show even through 2008)
The bracket sketch interests me partly because the female part in this seems like the type that Amy would have recoiled from earlier on, as she and Tina dealt with the boys club atmosphere. This is a part Victoria Jackson would have aced. I suppose by this point Amy was secure enough in her role at the show to take this risk, and she does a very good job with it.
There is only one small complaint I have about the locker room sketch – I’m not a fan of fake cursing in sketches and it becomes more and more irritating to me around the early ’10s (with Aidy Bryant in particular being given some clunky ‘funny’ types of fake profanity, if memory serves). Overall the whole thing is a masterpiece, enhanced by the sheer joy that Will Forte brings to his work on the show. The absolute bliss in his movements and how that radiates throughout the sketch is absolutely incredible. It is such a rare, rare gift, and I loved every moment.
Promos (Jason is very funny, especially in the second).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkPQ-ZxeWh8
There is article about the making of The Locker Room sketch and it has the whole sketch 🙂
https://www.fastcompany.com/3046062/anatomy-of-a-sketch-how-will-forte-made-dance-magic-with-peyton-manning
The opening paragraph of this Fast Company article is absolutely fraught with bad SNL takes (“Michael Jordan bad; George Foreman good”).
I forgot to say how much I love the goodnights for this episode – such a warm, family feeling that SNL mostly lacks in the last few decades.
I didn’t think Eli’s episode was that bad but I might be biased as I’m a huge Giants fan. Well other than that truly awful beauty pageant sketch
I think the episode is alright, especially for when it aired – I mostly meant that there were punishing expectations because so many love Peyton’s episode and it could have easily been seen as a big steaming failure. So it was difficult to ever navigate out of that type of view. He did a decent enough job to where that didn’t really happen, but I think the bar was probably always going to be too high in this case.
This episode was a classic. Peyton was a great host.
I will add that the locker room sketch in this episode was the best. The one in the Michael Phelps episode would pale in comparison.
Wasn’t there a monologue in dress rehearsal with Amy as a football with Peyton?
Mainly remember the “Locker Room Motivation” sketch with Will dancing what to me at the time was something that sounded like Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass and later found out, it actually was! Forte brought the house down, that’s for sure! “United Way” was a great way for Peyton Manning to show how it’s NOT done! Not-so-great “AI” contestant Sanjaya being given a crying reaction from a young teen girl in the audience constantly during his performances was such an overdone cliche that, of course, some “SNL” cast members do the same thing including original cast member Dan Aykroyd! Didn’t notice Amy acknowledging that. And great birthday celebration of Payton at the end credits. By the way, when I originally commented on this ep back on tv.com., I mistakenly ID’d the day this show originally aired as that of also my Dad’s birthday. It was actually the day before…
One of the kiddos in the United Way sketch was Maya Blake, daughter of SNL Band member Ron Blake.
I had no issue with Amy acknowledging Aykroyd’s presence in Update. Seems like pretty standard straight-manning to acknowledge the out-of-the-ordinary. But I suppose it’s just a matter of personal preference.
“And in typical annoying Amy-Poehler-on-Weekend-Update fashion, Amy hurts the gag of Dan’s random cameo by pointing at him afterwards and asking “Why is he here?!?” Ugh, why does Amy always have to call attention to things like this? Dan’s random cameo would’ve been funnier had no acknowledgment been made about it by Seth or Amy.”
Pretty dramatic stuff here, Stooge.
Amy does not acknowledge Aykroyd. When she says “why is he here” it is in reference to Sanjaya. She and Seth are both saying stuff like that throughout the whole Sanjaya bit. I think if you watched it again it would be more clear that they never reference Aykroyd.