Saturday Night Live/Jeremy Piven/AFI

Jeremy Piven/AFI is the eleventh episode of the thirty-second season of Saturday Night Live, and the six hundred and nineteenth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Jeremy Piven (Host), AFI (Musical Guest)

Special Guests: Common (Himself)

Cartoon Voices: Stephen Newman (Will Lyman)

Episode Breakdown

• Hardball - Hillary Clinton: Senator Hillary Clinton (Poehler) sits down with Chris Matthews (Hammond), but he is stuck with a series of ground rules about the questions he can ask. He's forced to hand over all of his questions on Iraq for her purview before he can ask one about her change in stance on the Iraq war. She explains that her change in stance is because a newspaper reported that Barack Obama's poll number surged to rival hers because of her agreement with the war. Clinton explains that for every point that Obama gains in the polls, 75,000 troops will be withdrawn until Obama drops out of the race. Clinton then mocks Obama for taking a side of an issue by studying it and applying his convictions, whereas she only takes side of an issue when it could advance her political career. She also claims to be half-black and starts swearing loudly when Matthews corrects her on her claim that Obama is only considering running in order to spite her.
• Jeremy Piven's Monologue: Instead of trying to make a half-hearted connection with 300 people in the audience, Piven instead decides to make one serious connection with an older woman sitting at a prop table in the front. Piven chats her up about how he had sex with a porpoise and his affinity for the pan flute while a man playing the guitar plays behind them. He suddenly interrupts the conversation in order to celebrate their "2 minute anniversary," which he celebrates by giving the woman an iPod mini (which is playing the song that has been playing since they met) and a puppy and telling her that she's pregnant. He says he can't support the baby because he has a show to do.
• 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 explains that using Urigro has influenced the speed and quantity of urine drastically, which he goes on to display in the bathroom.
• Wishmakers Color Commentary: Jim Nantz (Piven) and Phil Simms (Sudeikis) perform commentary on a game with Danny Hoover (Samberg) from the Make a Wish Foundation. The two professionals call the plays in the AFC Championship game with the Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots, but Hoover keeps saying "that'll move the chains" after every play. They confront him about it and Nantz becomes increasingly frustrated with Hoover's repetition of the phrase. When Hoover says his disease is "ADD," Nantz flies off the handle and berates Hoover, believing that he meant Attention Deficit Disorder. A producer passes Nantz a note saying the disease was actually "Automatic Death Disease," and Nantz lets Hoover take over the play calling. He gets out one play where he just gives variations of "move the chains" until he collapses on the desk.
• TV Funhouse - Fun with Real Audio and Stuff: A phony documentary mocked up to look like a Frontline broadcast about the year 2007 in review airs, with particular emphasis on the attempts the Bush administration made to appeal to the American people. In one speech, President George W. Bush appeared in the form of a cartoon chipmunk during one of his speeches. This caused an overwhelmingly positive response and caused other members of the administration, pundits, Tony Danza and even The Sopranos to adopt this form. However, the president was forced to move on to other ideas like panda bears and "farting in a shallow pool." Unfortunately for the president, this caught on even faster than the chipmunk craze.
• The First Person in History to Dance: Two cavemen (Armisen & Sudeikis) are seen sitting around a fire, one sharpening a stick and the other jabbing the ground with branch. Techno music begins to play in the background and gradually gets louder, causing one of the cavemen to start dancing. The dancing gets progressively more complex until the caveman pulls out two glow sticks and waves them around until the song ends. He then puts the glow sticks away and starts poking the sand with his stick again.
• MacGruber 1: MacGruber (Forte), a man who can get out of any situation using common household objects, is trapped in a factory control room with a bomb with two of his friends. He asks Casey (Rudolph) and JoJo (Piven) to hand him various objects lying around, but hits a wall when JoJo refuses to hand him some dog poop. Time quickly runs out and the factory blows up.
• Two A-Holes - At an Adoption Agency: The two a-holes (Sudeikis and Wiig) are sent into the adoption agent's (Piven) office by his assistant (Poehler). They ask him where his showroom for babies is, but he indulges them by asking a few questions about whether or not they'll be eligible for adoption. They explain that they only want to adopt because they like the movie Annie and are generally unresponsive throughout the rest of the interview until he answers a phone call. They start asking random questions about working out and if he spells "babies" with a Z. They also ask if they can get a baby who looks like Gonzo from Muppet Babies, and the agent demands that they leave.
• MacGruber 2: This time, MacGruber (Forte) and his friends are stuck in a dam control room with a bomb. However, the situation breaks down once again when MacGruber asks JoJo (Piven) to "round up all the pubic hair" he can find. JoJo refuses and Casey (Rudolph) claims to be a shaver, so the dam explodes, killing them and flooding the town.
• Love Like Winter: AFI song.
• Weekend Update:
  • After a controversial performance by Stephen Colbert, the White House is making use of a less polarizing figure at the annual correspondents dinner. Rich Little (Hammond), the entertainment for the 2007 dinner, gives a preview of his act and criticizes the president using impressions of Ronald Reagan, Pee Wee Herman and Johnny Carson.
  • A new segment called "Really!?! with Seth & Amy" is shown about quarterback Michael Vick not throwing his marijuana away before crossing through an airport security checkpoint despite having over $170 million left on his contract. They also mock him for hiding his weed in a bottle of water, which he couldn't bring on the plane in the first place.
• Common: At a Common concert, Common and his DJ (Thompson) are alerted by the promoter (Piven) that John Legend is not going to be able to make it to the show. But they've found a replacement in the form of the Blizzard Man (Samberg). Blizz comes in dressed like Vanilla Ice and performs cheesy raps over Common songs. Common isn't amused by this and gives him a lyric sheet to sing from. He quickly throws it away and freestyles again. Common agrees to give him one more chance and decides to cancel the show instead of going on with Blizzard Man.
• MacGruber 3: Once again, MacGruber (Forte) and his friends are trapped in a control room with a bomb. MacGruber asks that JoJo (Piven) hand him a bucket filled with "old bum sperm," but JoJo says no, and the boat explodes.
• Crystal Falls City Hall Meeting: At Town Hall, the Mayor (Hader) introduces a real estate proposition that will build a shopping mall on top of Unicorn Forest, a forest that's entirely inhabited by a unicorn which grants wishes and gives out gold. The community members (Armison, Wiig, Sudeikis, Thompson) agree with the plan, saying that it's embarrassing for people to say that they wished their yachts from a unicorn. The only people who are pro-Unicorn are Periwinkle the Pixie (Poehler), who believes the forest is the last magical place on Earth, and Crazy Larry (Hammond), who was told that the town will devolve into a horrible wasteland if the unicorn were killed. Alan, the real estate interests' representative, convinces the people that it'll haunt them whenever they have to drive 10 minutes to the exact same mall in a neighboring town if they pass. Ultimately they agree to kill the unicorn.
• SNL Digital Short - Nurse Nancy: A trailer for a movie called Nurse Nancy starring Scott Garbaciak (Samberg), in which Garbaciak plays all of the roles, ala Eddie Murphy. The entire trailer is shots of Garbaciak in different roles, including Nurse Nancy, a toaster and a doctor.
• Miss Murder: AFI song.
• Hangmen-At-Law: Two lawyers (Forte and Hader) head up a law firm which specializes in hangings. The two attest to the fact that if they were the hangmen for an execution, they wouldn't chant any Shiite phrases or cause accidental decapitation. They then throw to Sammy Hangar (Sudeikis), their Sammy Hagar impersonator and mascot, and then reveal that they're a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Notes

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

• Amy Poehler as Senator Hillary Clinton.

Music

• Sandstorm by Darude: The song that plays during the "First Person in History to Dance" sketch was "Sandstorm" by Finnish dance music producer and DJ Darude. The single was the best selling instrumental record ever and is a staple of the electronic dance music scene. The song has become ingrained into popular culture since then by acting as the introduction for Iran's national football team and during Los Angeles Dodger baseball games.

• Love Like Winter, performed by AFI: "Love Like Winter" is the second single off AFI's 2006 album Decemberunderground. The song reached #4 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts but failed to make much of a dent on the main single charts.

• Miss Murder, more or less performed by AFI: AFI's second performance was of "Miss Murder," their first single from Decemberunderground. However, when the band performed the song, they ran into severe technical difficulties which caused singer Davey Havok's vocals to be either muted or silent throughout the entire song. Additionally the sound of instruments was warped and would occasionally drop out of the song.

Trivia

The Show

• Dedication: This episode was dedicated to Michael DiBari, a cameraman on the show who died of cancer earlier in the week.
• M.I.A.: Although she appears in the MacGruber shorts, Maya Rudolph does not appear in any of the live sketches.

Behind the Scenes

• Technical Gaffes: Throughout the show, several sketches were plagued by technical malfunctioning, particularly in the sound department. During the first several seconds of the sketch with Common, Jeremy Piven's microphone wasn't functioning properly. This led up to the second AFI performance in which most of the lyrics could not be heard. Although it wasn't as obvious, the guitar chord sound also missed its cue during the hangmen lawyers sketch.
• Dress Rehearsal: The digital short from this episode had been cut from four separate dress rehearsals before finally making it into the live show. It first appeared during the Ludacris episode's rehearsal.