Saturday Night Live/Jake Gyllenhaal/The Shins

Jake Gyllenhaal/The Shins
Season 32, Episode 10
Airdate	January 13, 2007
Production Number	1481
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
← 32x09 Justin Timberlake (2)	32x11 → Jeremy Piven/AFI
Saturday Night Live — Season Thirty-Two

Jake Gyllenhaal/The Shins is the tenth episode of the thirty-second season of Saturday Night Live, and the six hundred and eighteenth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal (Host), The Shins (Musical Guest)

Episode Breakdown

• Presidential Address: President George W. Bush (Sudeikis) talks about his plan to deploy additional troops to Iraq and how he has reconsidered his plan after critics described the troops surge as "doubling down on a bad hand." Instead, Bush is deploying every single person serving in any branch of armed forces, along with anyone who has had weapons training, gang members and all uniformed people like firefighters and pizza delivery men. He suggests that Haliburton be employed to feed the 75 million person force and that the Texas Air National Guard will be the lone protectors of the nation.
• Jake Gyllenhaal's Monologue: Gyllenhaal tells the audience that his one request in exchange for being on the show was that there be no Brokeback Mountain jokes. Surely enough, Gyllenhaal spots two men dressed as cowboys (Sudeikis and Forte). He asks them if they're gay cowboys, but they tell him that they're just big fans of his work. Because they're clearly lying, Gyllenhaal decides to do all of his gay cowboy fans a favor by singing a song from the movie Dreamgirls. He puts on a wig and tears off his suit to show that he's wearing a dress. As he sings the song, he ventures into the audience to approach the various gay cowboys in the audience while his back-up singers (Rudolph, Poehler and Wiig) appear on stage to help him finish the song.
• Deep House Dish - Caj Cade & Dee False/Tamela Foxx/Tuhnay Griggs: DJ Dynasty Handbag (Thompson) and his co-host T'Shane (Samberg) introduce several house music acts after T'Shane embarrassingly tells an unfunny story about having to pay for his ticket to a club. The acts featured include Helsinki's Caj Cade (Poehler) & Dee False (Gyllenhaal), Tamela Foxx (Wiig) and lastly Tuhnay Griggs (Rudolph). The first two are promoting unfortunate charities supporting "global warnings" and a drag queen named Katrina, while the third abandons the set when she is asked about her CD.
• Bronx Beat - Frank O'Connor: Betty Caruso (Poehler) and Jodi Deitz (Rudolph) host a talk show set in the Bronx, but they spend most of the time complaining about their kids and the unseasonal weather. They bring out guest Frank O'Connor (Gyllenhaal), who wrote a book about mountain biking. But instead of talking about the book, they spend the time nagging him about getting married and questioning what his race is. Although he valiantly attempts to steer things back to his book, they continue to talk about their sex lives until they kick him off the set. They then take a call from their friend Didi (Wiig), but they hang up before she starts swearing. They decide to bring O'Connor back out, but instead of talking about the book they start talking about a weird smell in New York.
• Donald Trump/Rosie O'Donnell Feud: Donald Trump (Hammond) hosts a press conference about the new season of his show, The Apprentice. He mentions that he wants to talk about the show and not about his ongoing rivalry with Rosie O'Donnell. A reporter (Sudeikis) asks Trump a question about working with his daughter on the show, but Trump's answer suddenly takes a turn when he starts insulting O'Donnell again. This repeats when another reporter (Thompson) asks an innocent question about the show. A reporter from Entertainment Weekly (Poehler) finally solicits an actual question about O'Donnell, but Trump refuses to answer the question. He then switches his attack to Barbara Walters when another reporter (Rudolph) asks about the losers living in tents behind the mansion. After one more question about O'Donnell, Trump calls off the press conference.
• Juliano's: Pam (Wiig) and her boyfriend (Gyllenhaal) managed to get a table at a popular and exclusive restaurant, but their expectations are dashed when the waiter (Hader) serves them chicken parmesan and spaghetti. The waiter tells them to look closer at their food and they discover that meatballs (Armisen and Samberg) are wearing sunglasses and smoking cigarettes. Suddenly, Pam's chicken (Rudolph) disappears and reappears with the meatballs, who have started a band using a keytar, a saxophone and a tambourine. Unfortunately for the band, Pam is hungry and eats one of the meatballs. The boyfriend then tells Pam that maybe they should stop doing mushrooms and going to restaurants.
• SNL Digital Short - Laser Cats! 2: Samberg and Hader go to Lorne Michaels with a new short film that is "ripped from the headlines." In the sequel to the original Laser Cats, two scientists (Poehler and Armisen) have developed a formula that turns laser cats into regular cats, but it is stolen by Dr. Scientist (Gyllenhaal). Nitro (Hader) and Admiral Spaceship (Samberg) are called by the president of the galaxy to retrieve the formula, but they're trapped in Dr. Scientist's lair. They chase after him, but Nitro is shot several times. Distraught by his near loss, Admiral Spaceship shoots Dr. Scientist in the head with a laser cat, and the two celebrate with space beer. Annoyed by this total waste of time, Michaels throws Hader and Samberg out of his office.
• Stock Footage Awards: Dan Rather (Hammond) hosts the Stock Footage Awards, which honors the people who shot background footage for newscasts. He introduces Jane Pauley (Wiig) to give out the award in the category of "America's Health" to a cameraman in Richmond (Gyllenhaal) who filmed "obese people from below the neck." The co-hosts then present the nominees for "Middle East Issues," which is awarded to a producer for AP (Poehler), who gives a heartfelt speech about how she hopes her video helped the cause of "whoever was in the video."
• Phantom Limb: The Shins song.
• Weekend Update:
  • Apple CEO Steve Jobs (Armisen) presents his company's new product, the iPhone. He gives a slow, meandering description of the phone's features which includes the ability to watch The Office, a clock and an "iGenie." Meyers asks him how long the battery life is and Jobs admits it is only 20 minutes long.
  • Whitney Houston (Rudolph) talks about what her life is like now that she's auctioned off a great deal of her excess junk from a storage facility. But despite selling so much, Houston lists what wasn't sold in hopes of pawning it off on a viewer. This list includes gold toilets, a wind machine, monogrammed fur capes, a Lexus SUV and a warped platinum record. Poehler buys everything for $15.
• Law & Order Master Class: An acting coach named Catharine Fontane (Poehler) instructs a class of acting hopefuls who would like to land a short three-line role on Law & Order. One woman (Rudolph) reads a scene with Fontane's assistant Kenneth (Hader). Fontane tells her that she's not moving enough and redoes the woman's entire scene, except moving inexplicably at all times. Another actor (Gyllenhaal) performs an entire scene without having to read the script, much to the amazement of the coach, who kicks the other hopeful out after his scene. They continue to perform acting drills like "spot a dead body" until she brings in a Sam Waterston impersonator named Barry Edley (Armisen) and they recite the intro to every Law & Order episode.
• The Wheelchair Set-Up: A couple named Jeff (Gyllenhaal) and Anna (Rudolph) attempt to set up their friend Rob (Sudeikis) with a woman in a wheelchair named Jamie (Wiig). The two are insulted when they find that they were only set up with each other because they're both wheelchair bound. The couple attempts to play it off like the wheelchair angle hadn't crossed their minds once. They backtrack so much but fail entirely at covering up, but when the two roll off, it turns out that they get along nicely.
• New Slang: The Shins song.
• Kaplan, Liebowitz & Dolemite: Three lawyers introduce their firm in a commercial. The partners in the firm are Lowell Kaplan (Armisen), Jeffrey Liebowitz (Gyllenhaal) and Chrisopher Dolemite (Thompson). Dolemite is the grandson of the former pimp and blaxploitation film star Dolemite.

Notes

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

• Jason Sudeikis as President George W. Bush.

Music

• Phantom Limb, performed by The Shins: The first song performed by The Shins is "Phantom Limb," the first single from the band's third album, Wincing the Night Away. The song was released as a single several months before the album release in January 2007 and quickly became popular with college radio DJs.

• New Slang, performed by The Shins: "New Slang" is a song off The Shins' first album, Oh Inverted World released by Sub Pop in 2001. The song later gained popularity in 2005 when it was prominently featured in the film Garden State and several episodes of Scrubs. The song is about someone telling another person that if they had only gotten together, their lives would have been much better.