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I Agree With McEnroe, He Should Have Been The Host Instead

As I will point out any time there is an athlete as the show’s host, I’m not a huge fan of sports but when it comes to SNL many of these jocks make for excellent hosts. So, after figuring out who Andy Roddick is my expectations were boosted, but not too much considering the rest of the season so far. Then, those expectations dropped the second he hit the stage to perform his monolog where he openly admitted that he didn’t have a sense of humor at all, couldn’t act and had no idea why he was even asked to host.

I feel that only one or two hosts have been able to pull this joke off and then went on to put on an outstanding show. Every other time that a host claimed that they were not funny, it turned out to be painfully true. Unfortunately, the latter of the examples was the case tonight with Andy Roddick reading every line with absolutely no personality at all. What made things worse what that John McEnroe was in what seemed to be half of the sketches bitching about how he would have done a much better job and I totally agree with the racket throwing tennis star.

Sure, this is partially due to the fact that I loved McEnroe since I was a little kid because my grandparents would watch tennis all the time and I was a fan of McEnroe’s antics on the court. That said, McEnroe still had more personality in each his mini surprise visit than Roddick had throughout the entire night.

The final straw was the fact that everyone kept hinting that Roddick looked like Seann William Scott, setting up the expectation that he’d be playing the American Pie star at some point in the night, only to have this promise fall flat.

Thankfully, there were sixteen segments to make up the night so we were in and out of sketches before I could get too bored. As is, I found this episode to be just average, but I feel if it were a fourteen-segment installment, I would have hated this episode. So, I’m glad this episode is what it was.

With that, it’s now time to wrap this thing up by shifting gears to share what I saw, as I give you…

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with a parody of 20/20 where Rachel Dratch as Barbara Walters teased Amy Poehler as Martha Steward during an interview about how everyone hates her because she was such a power-hungry control freak and talked with a monotone drone. Of course, with this being the opening sketch, it eventually led to the announcement of, “Live from New York…”
Andy Roddick then officially opened the show with a monolog about how concerned he was about acting, especially since he didn’t even think that he had a sense of humor at all. He then got interrupted by J.B. Smoove and his “wife” who complained about the quality if this week’s host and the real John McEnroe who was outraged that he wasn’t asked to host. Finesse Mitchell then interrupted as Andre 3000 to take over the start of the show.
This was followed by a fake ad for Cryogenix that promoted people having their heads frozen now, in order to take advantage of future cures. This sketch was based on the increase talks of this process following the news that, baseball great, Ted Williams opted to choose this road only the people in the ad were worried about minor things like weight loss or the common cold.
Z-105 Morning Crew was a parody of a generic morning zoo radio crew with Jimmy Fallon as the multi-voiced host who kept giving Andy Roddick a hard time through the use of these silly voices while acting like he was on Roddick’s side when he dropped the characters and acted as himself.
Battle Of The Sexes II was a parody promotion for the upcoming fictional event that had Fred Armisen as an aged Billy Jean King in order to challenge Andy Roddick to a tennis match as a follow up to the original Battle Of The Sexes between King and Bobby Riggs.
Mrs. Dalrymple had Rachel Dratch as a very proper British nanny, ala Mary Poppins who had to watch over Andy Roddick as a rowdy teen who felt he was way too old to not be left on his own. After the sketch, the real John McEnroe and Chris Parnell commented on how the sketch went as if they were recapping a tennis match.
Anderson Mellner Communications Celebration took place at a private company event where Will Forte and Fred Armisen played Hall and Oates in order to distribute congratulatory plaques to the employees who the event was set up to celebrate.
From The Audience had Kenan Thompson as Venus and Serena’s dad who chimed in from the audience to announce that he wanted to adopt Andy Roddick as his son.
Dave Matthews then took to the stage to perform Save Me.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week, Will Forte returned as him monotone Tim Calhoun character to unveil the skeletons in his closet since he was planning to run for President and wanted to preemptively address a few issues. Horatio Sanz also dropped in as Rosie O’Donnell to slap Tina Fey because Rosie’s visit was to address the claims that she was a monster to work with as the boss of the magazine that she used to run. To make things even more fun, Horatio was split down the middle with an angry butch side and the more cheerful feminine side that she showed the world back when she hosted her own daytime talk show.
Tennis Talk With Time Traveling Scott Joplin brought the return of Maya Rudolph’s time-traveling talk show host character in order to mock Andy Roddick as Andre Agassi at his current age, Seth Meyers as a young Agassi and Will Forte as the Agassi from the future with the central joke being the changes to Agassi’s hair.
Chris Parnell then brought back his creepy Merv The Perv in order to hit on women at Andy Roddick’s gynecology office, who the girls were actually excited to see.
Dave Matthews then returned to the stage to perform So Damn Lucky.
Jock Talk was a sports talk show sketch that had Jeff Richards as the host who interviewed Andy Roddick and Seth Meyers as two jock friends who jocked it up with talking about sports. John McEnroe also got a few moments as Richard’s dad who kept walking in at the wrong moments while the trio were in the middle of workout routines that made them look like homosexuals even though they weren’t supposed to be gay.
Action News 13 was a sketch that took place on a news set where no news was said because the never-ending music cues kept delaying the start of the show.
Finally, Andy Roddick closed the show by thanking the audience and saying his goodnights.

Once again we have another average show for this season that was still at least a little fun thanks to these three sketches that contained my favorite moments of the night. First, I loved Tennis Talk With Time Traveling Scott Joplin because I love that this was the second appearance of this time traveling talk show host whose primary interest in life is tennis. Next, I really liked the Anderson Mellner Communications Celebration because I will always laugh at an impersonation of Hall and Oates. Finally, I was a fan of Battle Of The Sexes II because I’ve always found the real deal Battle Of The Sexes tennis match to be interesting and this parody sequel was pretty fun with the help of John McEnroe as a commentator.