Admittedly, Ron Burgundy makes everything better. However, Steven Lloyd Wilson summarized Will Ferrell’s unannounced appearance on a North Dakota newscast best:
It is a real local news broadcast, which means that it is the most tedious exercise in banality in television. Ron Burgundy cannot change this.
To save you the 30 minutes of sitting through the entire newscast (which includes many non-Burgundy-centric segments) we’ve boiled his appearance down to these 14 moments that you can skip around to and still get the full enjoyment out of this fantastic bit of viral marketing.
KXNet – Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson
At 2:45 we get our first awkward interaction between broadcasters (typical of a nightly local newscast). Here, Ron is commenting on the meteorologist’s apparent weight loss.
3:25 – this:
At 3:43 Ron revels in the fact that he’s reporting on a “trash fire” in a Sam’s Club parking lot. FIVE HUNDRED GALLONS.
His face at 6:54, in reaction to the JackToGo wearable luggage piece.
At 7:18 when he makes fun of the name of a North Dakota town by oddly emphasizing it’s pronunciation (which was markedly different than the locals’ pronunciation of the same town later in the broadcast).
On their way to commercial, at 8:00 Ron teases weatherman Jared in the DAKOTA STORM CENTER (growling).
When they come back from break around 18:14, Ron compliments his co-anchor and inquires as to her marital status. Standard issue Burgundy misogyny. Keep watching, the way he swivels to look at Amber around 18:30 is priceless, as well as his face thereafter.
19:24 – the guy’s name is Howdy. Nothing to do with Burgundy here, just a guy named Howdy.
20:38 – Amber tries to ad lib with Ron, but Ferrell plays it perfectly. Ron is programmed to read the teleprompter, nothing more.
24:26 – an off-camera Ron offers a tender shoulder caress to the sportscaster.
25:00 – said sportscaster shows he did his homework, slipping an Anchorman reference into his read
25:45 – Ron clearly thinks hockey is a different sport than it actually is.
30:29 – Ron gives North Dakota some insight into his unmatched facial hair-growing prowess. Keep watching from here on out, his guess at identifying what the crew’s gift to him is might be the best line of the newscast.
