Saturday Night Live aired its thirty-second season in the 2006-2007 television season. The a few seasons before season 32, Saturday Night Live was having some rough ratings. But this season brought high ratings. The season premiered after NBC Universal announced severe budget cuts, which were later revealed to be approximately $750 million. Because of this, executive producer Lorne Michaels decided to fire cast members Horatio Sanz, Finesse Mitchell, and Chris Parnell, and not to hire any new cast members. The show also lost Tina Fey, who left to work on her own show, "30 Rock". Her Weekend Update spot was filled by Seth Meyers. Rachel Dratch also left to appear on "30 Rock". The thirty-second season began on September 30, 2006 and ended on May 19, 2007. The season contained 20 live episodes.
This season had only eleven cast members and no featured players, neither of which had occurred since the twenty-third season.
According to in-home live-plus-same-day viewership figures from Nielsen Media Research, this episode had a 3.2 rating, 13 share in 18-49 and 6.7 million viewers overall.
Starting with this episode, Seth Meyers is the new Weekend Update anchor with Amy Poehler.
This is the first episode featuring new director, Don Roy King
Brian Williams made a cameo appearance at the start of Weekend Update.
This episode has a different representation of the "Saturday Night Live" logo and how the host and musical guests appear in the opening credits than what's depicted in the next episode.
Lenny Pickett accompanied the Killers on saxophone during their 2nd song, "Bones".
This is the first episode since the Heather Graham/Marc Anthony episode in Season 25 that did not include any featured players or new cast members.
For reasons unknown, NBC reaired this episode just 2 weeks later. This marks the shortest span of time between an episode and its repeat.
Sacha Baron Cohen made a cameo appearance during the cold opening as Borat. Reports appeared in November that following the show, Laurie and Cohen went out in New York City with Cohen interacting with others in-character. This resulted in a man physically assaulting Cohen after being insulted by the Borat character, until Laurie broke up the fight.
This episode averaged a 3.3 rating, 13 share in 18-49 and 7.4 million viewers overall (SNL's highest since the first time Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosted in season 31). When this episode reran on January 6, it delivered a 3.4 rating, 14 share in adults 18-49 and 7.6 million viewers overall, which was more than the original airing.
With this show, Alec Baldwin has hosted 13 times, surpassing John Goodman.
Martin Short mentioned in an interview on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" that only he, Steve Martin, and Lorne were aware that McCartney was in the building before he appeared on camera.
The NBC rerun on June 9, 2007 cuts the ending of the Carpool sketch where Kristen Wiig's character turns on the radio and Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" plays on the radio (the sketch ends after Alec Baldwin's character says, "Bobby McFerrin raped my grandmother!"); this is also how the sketch ended on the SNL special "The Best of the 2006-2007 Season."
The final sketch (the Cat Lawyer fake commercial) was pre-emptively ended when the show displays a title card, cuts audio soon after, and then cuts to commercial early.
Timberlake becomes the third in SNL history to simultaneously be a host and musical guest more than once, next to Garth Brooks and Britney Spears.
Jimmy Fallon appeared in the Barry Gibb Talk Show sketch, and also introduced "What Goes Around...". Cameron Diaz, Timberlake's girlfriend at the time, introduced "My Love."
After the episode, NBC put an uncensored version of the Digital Short "Dick in a Box" on their website and YouTube. The uncensored version is prefaced with a warning stating that the Digital Short has explicit language that was bleeped out on the TV version. It quickly became an internet phenomenon, much like "Lazy Sunday" did a year earlier.
With this episode, Barrymore becomes the second woman to host five times after Candice Bergen. No other female celebrity has hosted more than five times.
Darrell Hammond does not appear live during the episode.
Horatio Sanz makes a guest appearance as Elton John during the "Donatella Versace Super Bowl Special."
This is the only episode this season to feature Seth Meyers outside of Weekend Update.
In the March 31st and July 14th reruns of the episode, Bill Hader's character mentioning that his father had Down Syndrome was bleeped out during the "Danny's Song Memories" sketch after NBC received complaints over the usage of the phrase.
Chris Rock appears in the cold open, giving his insight on the 2008 presidential election; he suggested that there would be no reason that America would not be ready for a black president because we just had a retarded one.
Darrell Hammond does not appear in this episode(his weekend update commentary as John McCain was cut after dress)
Manning hosted the show on his thirty-first birthday. During the goodnights, a cake was wheeled out by his brothers Eli and Cooper and a rendition of Happy Birthday was performed by the Saturday Night Live band.
Darrell Hammond is again absent from the live showing of this episode(his Weekend Update commentary was cut after dress-rehearsal)
The dress rehearsal version of the monologue originally had Amy Poehler as a New England Patriots fan who heckles Manning. Both the dress rehearsal and the live show monologue had the joke about Tom Brady and the circus having two more rings than Manning.
This episode dominated its timeslot with a 3.5 rating, 15 share in 18-49 and 7.9 million viewers overall.
The digital short The Shooting is removed from the iTunes version of the episode due to the Virginia Tech shootings that happened two days after this sketch aired, and was quickly removed from NBC.com and YouTube due to NBC's inability to clear the song "Hide and Seek" used in the short. Despite NBC's inability to clear the rights, the Digital Short aired in its entireity when the episode was rerun on August 4th.
With this episode, Molly Shannon is the second female former castmember to come back and host, and the first who worked under Lorne Michaels as a cast member.
