Saturday Night Live/Forest Whitaker/Keith Urban

Forest Whitaker/Keith Urban
Season 32, Episode 13
Airdate	February 10, 2007
Production Number	1484
Written by	Seth Meyers Andrew Steele Paula Pell (head writers) Doug Abeles James Anderson Alex Baze James Downey Charlie Grandy Steve Higgins Colin Jost Erik Kenward John Lutz Lorne Michaels Matt Murray Marika Sawyer Akiva Schaffer Robert Smigel John Solomon Emily Spivey Jorma Taccone Bryan Tucker
Directed by	Don Roy King
← 32x12 Drew Barrymore/Lily Allen	32x14 → Rainn Wilson/Arcade Fire
Saturday Night Live — Season Thirty-Two

Forest Whitaker/Keith Urban is the thirteenth episode of the thirty-second season of Saturday Night Live, and the six hundred and twenty-first episode overall. It is the first appearance by both the host and the musical guest.

Guest Stars: Forest Whitaker (Host), Keith Urban (Musical Guest)

Episode Breakdown

• Happy Valentine's Day from the Cheney Family: Dick Cheney (Hammond) and his wife Lynn Cheney (Wiig) decide to share some of the valentine cards they've gotten lately, including angry ones from indicted former aide Scooter Libby, Harry Whittington and Wolf Blitzer. Cheney defers to his wife, who reads her retaliatory valentine which involves her husband hunting him down and cutting off his beard. In fact, none of the valentines they've gotten are positive except for one from Haliburton which gave him a $500,000 Barnes & Noble gift card.
• Forest Whitaker's Monologue: Whitaker plugs his film The Last King of Scotland, saying that if he could just bring a maniacal dictator to life on film then he'd finally be able to host Saturday Night Live. He's interrupted by Rudolph, who plays up his abilities to the point of absurdity before shoving a microphone in his hands so he can sing "Get Ready" with her.
• Bronx Beat - Joseph Humphries & Cora Reynolds: Betty Caruso (Poehler) and Jodi Deitz (Rudolph) host an episode of their talk show despite their depression over how cold it is outside in the winter. They introduce their two guests, Dr. Joseph Humphries (Whitaker) and Dr. Cora Reynolds (Wiig), who are there to announce a blood drive at the Bronx hospital, but the two insist Humphries is going to divorce his wife and get together with Reynolds. Even though they continue to deny this, Caruso keeps saying things like "love has no color" and complaining about her husband. They try to take a call, but it turns out being Frankie Deitz (Armisen), Jodi's son who threw up in her bed. They interrogate them about what Frankie must have before telling them to go.
• SNL Digital Short - Andy Popping Into Frame: Several background scenes are shown with Samberg suddenly appearing into each one. After a while, Forte gets involved in popping into frame, too, but he's quickly driven off by Samberg with a gun.
• Assagio's: Two couples (Hader & Poehler, Rudolph & Armisen) are at a fancy restaurant where they are served by a waiter (Forte) before he introduces a senior waiter (Whitaker) who sings his own arrangement of "Don't Let the Sun Come Down on Me," which goes on far longer than they would like. When he gets into the fourth verse, they decide to start eating, but he still won't stop. Every time that they think he'll stop, he goes into another section of the song while the couples consider hitting him with the creamer. This goes on for ten minutes, and he's gotten to the point where he's singing at a pitch indiscernible to the human ear, which is now accompanied with howling dogs and broken glass. He starts singing another song, but the people eating throw things at him to make him stop.
• Urigro: A man (Sudeikis) endorses a product that cures Weak Male Urination Syndrome, a disorder which causes his urine flow to be weaker than average, as illustrated by a dripping hose. He says using Urigro has influenced the speed and quantity of urine drastically, which he goes on to display in the bathroom.
• The Road to the Final Four: Greg Gumbel (Whitaker) and fervent PETA supporter Katrina Hoffman (Poehler) give color commentary over a Man Versus Beast tournament where humans and animals are pitted against each other. In the quarter finals, David Angelides (Sudeikis) is pitted against a mountain lion. He's attacked by the mountain lion, but the picture is blurred out by the local cable provider. When they cut back to the match, the man is playing dead, but that doesn't work when the mountain lion kills him. He's interviewed by a correspondent in the locker room, where he calmly responds to her questions even though he's hemorrhaging blood and missing limbs. Before going to commercial, Gumbel and Hoffman tease the next match of a king cobra against former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.
• Stupid Boy: Keith Urban song.
• Weekend Update:
  • Jesse Jackson (Hammond) and Al Sharpton (Thompson) comment on Barack Obama's intentions to run for president, as they have been presidential candidates in the past. They speak directly to Obama in order to show him their "blackness scale" which gauges how electable a black person would be for white people. They rank him just below Bill Clinton on the scale, but above Will Smith.
  • In an exclusive interview, astronaut Bill Oefelein (Sudeikis) gives his side of the story for the bizarre love triangle story involving a woman who drove 900 miles to try to kidnap a woman whom she believed was in a relationship with Oefelein. He says it's his fault for being such a stud. His charms seem to work on Poehler, but Meyers breaks it up.
• Whitney Houston's Valentines Day Special: Whitney Houston (Rudolph) hosts a Valentine's Day special which also features Chaka Khan (Thompson). Khan starts singing "Feels Like Makin' Love," but she's interrupted by Houston and is disturbed by her obsession with Bobby Brown. Khan leaves, only to be replaced with Brown's Uncle Tommy (Whitaker). Uncle Tommy delivers some flowers from Brown and sings "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green with unfortunate accompaniment from Houston.
• Am I a Crazy Street Person?: Steve hosts a game show where two contestants, Claire Brinkley and Alex Grenkey, have to determine whether or not guests on the show are crazy street people or actually the profession that they describe. Among these guests are Gary Blintz (Armisen) the sea captain, Eddie van Melkser (Forte) the space man and San Fantastic (Thompson) the very important business man, all of whom are crazy street people. Grenkey gets all of these wrong, but things take a turn when Brinkley realizes her opponent escaped from an "institution" in San Diego. Although he loses, Grenkey is offered a job by Fantastic.
• Once in a Lifetime: Keith Urban song.
• Sloths: Karen Donolley (Wiig) from the Staten Island Zoo introduces a documentary about sloths directed by students from the Staten Island Technical High School. The documentary starts off with some information about sloths, but it quickly devolves into a vulgar, violent portrayal of sloths, which "eat cocaine off America's gravestone."

Notes

"Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!"

• Darrell Hammond as Vice President Dick Cheney.

Music

• Get Ready, performed by Forest Whitaker and Maya Rudolph: The song Whitaker and Rudolph sing at the top of the show is "Get Ready," originally performed by The Tempatations in 1966. The version the two sing, however, is actually the Rare Earth cover of the song which proved to be more popular when it was released three years later.

• Don't Let the Sun Come Down on Me, performed by Forest Whitaker: As Whitaker says in the singing waiter sketch, the song he sings is "Don't Let the Sun Come Down on Me" by Elton John. The song is from John's Caribou album and was notoriously difficult to record because John wasn't satisfied with any of his vocal tracks.

• Stupid Boy, performed by Keith Urban: The first performance by Keith Urban is of "Stupid Boy," the second single off Urban's 2006 album Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing. It reached as high as #8 on the Billboard Hot Country singles chart at the time this episode was aired.

• Once in a Lifetime, performed by Keith Urban: The second song performed by Keith Urban is "Once in a Lifetime," his first single from Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing. The song peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot Country singles chart, but remained on the chart long enough to break a recent record set by Garth Brooks.

Trivia

The Show

• Died in Dress: Initially, the cold opening was a sketch about Lisa Nowak, the crazed astronaut stalker who had been getting news that week. However, because most of the sketch died, it was reformatted into a Weekend Update piece before the show went live.

• Cut Sketch: At the end of the show, there was supposed to be a sketch where Fred Armisen and Forest Whitaker attempted to pick up women at a food court. This sketch was cut because of time constraints.

Behind the Scenes

• Reused Sketch: The "Am I a Crazy Street Person?" sketch was originally shown during the dress rehearsal of Jake Gyllenhaal/The Shins but was cut for time.

• Repeat Sketch: The "Urigro" sketch originally appeared in episode 32x11 - Jeremy Piven/AFI.