Comedy Quick Results: A Breakdown of Ronda Rousey's SNL Skits

Every culture has its methods of atonement and purification. Some people visit confessional booths. Others swing a chicken over their heads three times. But if you find yourself erring as a public figure in modern western pop culture, there's really only one way to make it up to the populace: you must prostrate yourself on the altar of late night television and beg and/or mug for the public's forgiveness. Since Hugh Grant took to The Tonight Show after getting caught with sex worker Divine Brown over two decades ago, talk and comedy shows have become the go-to venue for celebrities looking to rehabilitate their image for whatever reason.

Last night, former UFC Women's Bantamweight champ took her own steps toward populist redemption by hosting Saturday Night Live – her first major public appearance since her devastating loss against Holly Holm last November. As a penitent and suitably humbled "sinner," she did just fine. But how did she actually fare as a host and comic actress on live television? Let's break her appearance down skit by skit to find out.

Cold Open

Tina Fey returns as Sarah Palin and it's topical! Which is good for comedy, but sad for reality. Fey doesn't share any screen time with Rousey in this bit, but we'll see them together soon enough in their forthcoming feature, Do Nothing Bitches (which kind of sounds like a joke, but is actually real life).

Opening Monologue

Rousey thanks the audience for showing up in the midst of the blizzard that's shut down large portions of New York. "Tonight, we're literally the only show in town," she points out. "I'm so excited to be here, because it's the first time I'll be live on television without getting punched in the face," she continues. It's a little rushed, and not exactly exemplary oratory, but it works. "It's also the first time I'm talking to my fans since I lost to Holly Holm in November – which, by the way, was a fight Holly deserved to win and I just want to take a moment to sincerely congratulate her," she says, with what actually sounds like sincerity, before she quickly waves it off. That out of the way, she makes a brief concussion joke (it's funny cuz it's true?) and then embarks on a bit where the SNL cast and crew coach her through the rest of the monologue like it's a fight and then offer commentary on how she's doing. It's all very passable, middle-grade SNL humor. Rousey is acceptable in her role, and everyone else picks up the slack. If nothing else, it's at least a testament to what can happen when a group of professionals assess Rousey's skill set and develop a game plan that caters to her strengths and allows her to either work on or compensate for her weaknesses. Perhaps Edmond Tarverdyan could take note?

Bullies Against Mixed Martial Arts

Rousey, playing a sweet but naive teenage girl, goes on what she thinks is a date and is secretly fed dog food. When a group of mean girls exposes the prank and rubs it in her face, Rousey slaps the Queen Bee. QB continues to mock her. Rousey slaps her again. More mocking. Some punching. QB keeps lurching forward and trash talking, like a less hilarious Nick Diaz goading Anderson Silva, and Rousey keeps punching and kicking her down. The punchline is a PSA-style warning from "Bullies Against Mixed Martial Arts." And that's the whole skit. It's funny cuz Rousey can hit people. The end.

Bland Man

In this lukewarm parody of The Bachelor, Saturday Night Live falls into that path-of-least-resistance pattern they've been unable to resist for at least three decades now in which they pick on something so utterly ridiculous and self-parodying that the actual skit just becomes a lackadaisical "Hey, this is stupid. Right??" riff. Rousey plays one of a series of Bachelorette hopefuls lobbying for time with the Bland Man bachelor in this here, parroting the same pseudo-flirtatious lines as all of her competitors and lightly mocking one of reality television's most enduringly absurd shows. Her timing is not great – it's slightly sharper than what she exhibited against Holm – but she's not significantly more sloppy than the professionals she's working with, either. The material is clearly letting everyone down. Even Kate McKinnon and the increasingly reliable Aidy Bryant can't do anything with it, so it's unfair to judge Rousey for what is essentially a borderline competent reading.

Hot Teachers

SNL thinks statutory rape is hilarious. Last April, they aired a sketch that featured a teenage boy bragging about sleeping with his hot female teachers in court. This skit is almost exactly like that one, except it features Rousey as one of the giggling teachers/predators.

The Super Crew

Rousey plays a metal-bending heroine in this amusing riff on second string superheroes. It's not exactly a demanding role, but she's amiably goofy and committed to the absurdity of it. If anyone insists on remaking Barbarella in the next few years, this should be enough to put her in contention for the title role.

"I've Got A Small Penis But I'll Go Down On You"

If "Dick in a Box" and various other Lonely Island offerings are the Anderson Silvas or Georges St. Pierres of hilarious phallus-based musical comedy on Saturday Night Live, this rap in which two well-endowed guys brag about their gargantuan wieners and their Napoleonic friend continuously offers to go down on women instead is the Kimbo Slice. Some people are going to like it just fine, but no one's going to argue that it's the GOAT. Rousey's whole job here is to react with disgust and she's just fine at it. Not that it would be enormously challenging to appear unamused in the face of this tune.

Citizen's Forum

Various misfits show up to testify and voice complaints in this town hall-like setup. Three minutes in, Rousey appears as a woman who runs "an old-timey traveling carnival sideshow." Her only exhibit is a lost Baldwin brother. The material's bad. The delivery's worse. Kate McKinnon, playing a woman who gets hopped up on energy drinks and throws a wasp's nest into a Zumba class, is the best part of the skit. The tiny Penny Dreadful-esque hat perched atop Rousey's head is the second best. Everything else is tied for the worst.

Party Invitation

In her most significant and demanding role of the night, Rousey plays a woman who invites two dunderheads to a get together at her house. They ask a lot of ridiculous questions and she acts confused. And… that's it, really. Her timing isn't perfect, but it's not terrible, either and her performance is more than the skit deserves, anyway.

Wrap Up

Ronda Rousey thanks and hugs everyone as the credits roll. On the whole, this episode wasn't exactly a triumph for her but it wasn't particularly great for anyone else not named Kate McKinnon or Leslie Jones, either. She's not the only problem with this episode, if she's even a problem at all.

As far as athlete Saturday Night Live hosts go, Rousey wasn't as good as the perennially funny and quick-witted Rock, but she was nowhere near as secondhand embarrassment-inducing as the shockingly wooden hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, either. She proved that she could take a joke, and she was borderline OK at delivering them.

But your mileage may vary: