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