Saturday Night TV

Saturday Night Live: Peyton Manning hosting this week, and he did a pretty admirable job. He's obviously not a professional actor, but had had fun with it. Mostly, he just played someone exactly like himself, except funnier.

I appreciate a guy who can make fun of himself, and Manning did a nice amount of it. He told a great joke in the monologue (full disclosure: I'm a Patriots fan), "What do Tom Brady and the circus have in common? They both have two more rings than you do," and they did a sketch where people used the phrase "pulling a Peyton Manning" to mean looking impressive until the stakes are high and then choking.

I had to look up Carrie Underwood to figure out who she was. I guess that means I'm old and out of touch (and that I don't watch American Idol). But I quickly became a fan. Not so much of the music, but she's got nice legs and was wearing a tiny skirt. I'm easy to please.

Some highlights: the beginning of the halftime sketch, where Manning gave the best line of the show ("I just thought about going out there for the second half, and a little bit of pee came out."), the meat loaf/toilet car commercial, the couple drinking coffee, and Sen. Tim Calhoun on Weekend Update is always funny. But the absolute best part was the United Way ad. They could've filled the entire 90 minutes with Peyton Manning hitting kids with footballs, and I wouldn't have complained.

Lowlights: the middle of that halftime sketch with what sounded like a Herb Alpert song just dragged on forever, Bronx Beat is never funny, after 30 seconds it became pretty obvious that he wasn't going to throw that rock in the 300 sketch but it kept going for another two minutes, and Weekend Update. I liked Tim Calhoun as I said earlier, but two things stuck out. First, during the "Zoo News" piece, there were some good jokes in there, but Seth Myers read them like it was a race. I think there were commas in those sentences but he read it like they weren't there. Second, obviously since I didn't know Carrie Underwood, the Sanjaya sketch did nothing for me. I'd hear about him and the crying girl, but I can't say it did anything for me. And he was picked by the judges out of a very large talent pool, so even though he might be the worst singer out there, that still makes him a very good singer.

Shia LaBeouf with Avril Lavigne (hey, I've heard of her!) next time out, but that's not for a few weeks.