A Very Good Boy Is The Star Of Saturday Night Live's Air Bud Sketch
Everybody knows the story of Air Bud, the loveable scrappy dog who leads a high school basketball team to victory. But up until last night, nobody knew the tragic story of popular cheerleader Rochelle, who tries and fails to seduce the new canine cool kid. Played by host Sydney Sweeney, Rochelle brings her flirting A-game to the table, but Air Bud (played a lovely, well-behaved golden retriever) calmly ignores her persistent advances.
It's a cute sketch, as long as you don't think too hard about the obvious bestiality implications going on here. Those of us who've grown up on "Family Guy" might be used to watching TV where a dog hooks up with a seemingly normal human woman, but it's a little weirder when the dog's just a regular dog and the story's in live action. Luckily, Rochelle walks away from Air Bud when she finds out he's got a dog girlfriend ("Were you ever going to tell me about her?!" she asks), but not before throwing in a few weird condom jokes into the mix.
The star of the sketch, of course, is the dog who plays Air Bud. He does not bark nor try to leave his seat, and when it's time for him to eat a sandwich he goes for it right on cue. Much talk has been made of the dog from "Anatomy of the Fall," who gave a groundbreaking, award-winning performance as service pooch Snoop, but this dog might be giving him a run for his money. Not only did he nail the role, but he did it all live, in just one take.
SNL and dogs: a chaotic history
This canine performance is particularly noteworthy considering what usually happens when the show decides to bring on a dog or two. Because you can't actually explain to a dog how cameras work or what live TV is, it's hard to motivate them to stay in character. Such was the trouble with Court Show, a sketch where a judge (played by Cecily Strong) decides on dog-related legal disputes. The sketch's highlight is when Cecily has to give a monologue while holding her character's pug in her arms, and the pug will simply not stay still. Not only does the dog make Cecily break, but it blatantly contradicts the lines Cecily's saying. "She's crippled," she says, but the dog in question can clearly move around perfectly fine.
Cecily also struggled to keep the dog actor on the same page with "Hero Dog Press Conference," where she played a dog-to-human interpreter. The German shepherd actor mostly barked when he was supposed to do, but he also went off script and licked Cecily's face at a few points, which is honestly just unprofessional. In a 2017 sketch, Beck Bennett had a similar (though off-screen) task of voicing the thoughts of a dog who was hooked up to a new translating helmet, and he had to go off script because the dog knocked his helmet off on his own.
It all goes to show that not all dog actors are created equal. The mature golden retriever we watched last night was the most professional dog actor "SNL" has had in years, and we hope he gets more acting gigs sometime soon.
"Saturday Night Live" returns to NBC next week at 11:30 p.m. ET, with host Josh Brolin and musical guest Ariana Grande.