Josh Brolin is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, and as with this season’s fellow returnee Dakota Johnson, it’s been a while. This is actually his third time at the show, which even fans may not remember, because his first gig in 2008 – featuring Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin joined by the genuine article, alongside an extremely pregnant Amy Poehler – was such a big deal that it overshadowed his first return engagement in 2012. For a refresher, and a possible preview of how Brolin might fare this time around, let’s take a look at both of his previous episodes, which are streaming (at least in part) on Peacock.
When and Why He’s There: Brolin’s 2008 episode from Season 34 is occasioned by his starring role in W., Oliver Stone’s biographical movie about the then-sitting president George W. Bush; combined with the episode airing weeks before the Obama-versus-McCain presidential election, it could hardly be more 2008 it tried. His 2012 visit in Season 37 feels less urgent; he’s vaguely promoting Men in Black III a month and change ahead of its Memorial Day debut. So he’s working on a three-episode streak of hosting during presidential election years.
Era: Both episodes have an overlapping core of Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Andy Samberg, Kenan Thompson, Seth Meyers, and Bobby Moynihan. Brolin also catches Amy Poehler at the very end of her run in 2008 and Kate McKinnon just one week into her tenure in 2012; less prominently, the 2008 episode features Casey Wilson from Happy Endings during her sadly abbreviated single-season run on the show. But despite the many looks at the show’s past (Tina Fey cameoing as Sarah Palin, Poehler) and future (McKinnon, a featured Vanessa Bayer), this is very much the Wiig era in full swing.
Time Capsule: The 2008 episode is situated not only in the final stretch before Election Day but in the aftermath of that fall’s financial collapse, which affects Weekend Update jokes, a quick fake ad for a trading service for selling off any and all of you assets, and, of course, MacGruber, whose personal finances have been decimated. In addition it’s a ridiculously cameo-heavy episode: Fey and Palin, yes, plus Alec Baldwin (then Fey’s 30 Rock costar), Mark Wahlberg (appearing twice to belabor his “response” to a very funny Andy Samberg impression the week before), and Brolin’s W. director Oliver Stone, the kind of novelty parade that became the show’s stock in trade during the Trump years. Most of the 2012-ness, meanwhile, is encapsulated via a Piers Morgan sketch that now feels like something from another planet: In a segment dealing with the fallout from the Trayvon Martin shooting, it spoofs Morgan (Taran Killam) as an anodyne twit rather than a self-important jackass, shoehorns in an appearance from Kayne West (Jay Pharoah) and Kim Kardashian (Nasim Pedrad), and engages in repeated race-bent casting (Josh Brolin as a Latino; Fred Armisen as Ice-T). The only real satire that lands avoids impressions entirely: It’s just Jason Sudeikis, rattling off other Florida rules as ridiculous as the “stand your ground” law (“you snooze, you lose,” for example, where murder is allowed if you fall asleep).
Highlights: Brolin’s 2008 appearance is terrific, but not for the reasons you might remember – because the three best sketches of the episode get a tepid-to-disastrous response from the studio audience, turning up after a bunch of guest-star hoopla has died down. One is the debut of Jerry (Bill Hader) and Carl (Will Forte), businessman characters who would somehow recur a few more times after this episode, despite the fact that their first sketch, wherein they jostle with another businessman (Brolin) over who gets called “Fartface,” absolutely dies in the room. But the show was right to keep at it; it’s very funny, even if the audience goes pin-drop quiet when Forte and Hader start screaming in an apoplectic rage at Brolin; they certainly don’t get back on board for the sketch’s pitch-black ending. There’s also a dark and nasty button on the one-off “Fall Foliage” sketch, with Brolin extolling the virtues of leaf-peeping and making butternut squash soup to a boardroom full of uninterested coworkers. It’s deeply strange and very funny. There’s also a filmed “New York Underground” piece, a parody of the kinds of low-rent culture shows that some markets air right after SNL, as well as the preciousness of late-2000s-era indie rock. Naturally, subculture specialists Armisen and Hader are the stars; more surprisingly, this segment was directed by Noah Baumbach, who quietly made a few pieces for the show during this era. Not to be outdone, the weaker 2012 episode’s best sketch isn’t just underseen; it’s basically nonexistent, at least as far as the internet is concerned. A silly, fun sketch about a high school with a “slow-motion hallway” has been banished from streaming because it heavily features the song “More Bounce (in California).” Otherwise, the best moment is Steven Spielberg’s enthusiastic appearance in Samberg and Hader’s “Laser Cats 7,” particularly his exclamation of “Hitchcockian!” at his own cameo-within-the-cameo.
Lowlights: Most of the famous stuff from Brolin’s 2008 episode hasn’t aged that well, or, in one case, isn’t in the Peacock version of the episode (see “Missing from Peacock” below). Fey’s Palin impression is funny – and then it’s interrupted by the real Palin doing wooden shtick with a bunch of other non-cast celebrities. Amy Poehler’s Palin-themed rap on Weekend Update got a lot of attention at the time, but it feels pretty corny today, as well as a harbinger of future instances of SNL getting cute with some genuinely loathsome people. 2012, meanwhile, is a middling overall experience, choked with recurring characters. Speaking of which…
Recurring characters: If there’s one thing that pops out about the Wiig era based on these two episodes, it’s just how many recurring characters the show utilizes compared to a typical Season 49 episode, when such things are mainly confined to Weekend Update or recurring formats. There’s also a sharp line here between a modern-day recurring character master, Will Forte (MacGruber, Jerry and Carl, and an Update appearance from perpetual political candidate Tim Calhoun), and Wiig herself, a brilliant performer who also had a hand in some of the most vexingly repetitive routines in the show’s history. In these episodes, her roster includes Sue, who freaks out and ruins surprises; an impression of Suze Orman, the kind of niche celeb whose prominence seems near-incomprehensible a decade-plus later; and two particularly tedious (but seemingly popular) Fred Armisen collaborations: The Californians (in the first of what feels like at least 45 different installments, each running a minimum of 27 minutes) and Garth & Kat. 2012 also features Laser Cats, Jay Pharoah’s Principal Frye (the “attention teachers and students” guy; it gets old).
Missing from Peacock: Streaming music clearances mean that the performances from timelessly beloved Adele and consummate one-hit wonder Gotye are excised in the Peacock versions. But more prominently, one of the 2008 episode’s most famous bits is missing: “I’m No Angel,” a commercial featuring an extremely pregnant Poehler shilling for a fragrance from “old, weird Greg Allman.” You’ll have to head to TikTok to catch that one. The 2012 episode is even more gutted: A cold open about competitors for the Republican presidential nomination featuring the Green Day song “Time of Your Life” is gone, as is a series of parodies of the then-ubiquitous song “Empire State of Mind,” and a Digital Short goofing on the music video for Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know.”
How He Did: Brolin’s two episodes offer object lessons in the vagaries of the SNL hosting job. In 2008, he’s excellent, playing weirdo characters with a serious actor’s impressive conviction, powering through an episode whose guest stars have more of an outsized, headline-grabbing presence. In 2012, he sort of blends in with the wallpaper, despite the lack of big-name cameos there to overshadow him; at this point, towards the end of the Wiig/Hader/Sudeikis dynasty, the show is running so smoothly that it’s easy to barely notice the host at all. Put together, his past work indicates that his 2024 episode could go either way; there’s not an entrenched superstar at the center of the show, but it’s also a bigger cast that could easily place him in secondary roles. Just don’t hold your breath for the return of Fartface.
