Scarlett Johansson on SNL: Pretty Good, And Also Pretty

GQ’s Babe of the Year Scarlett Johansson hosted “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, and it was the same as every week: there was some funny stuff and there was some lame stuff, and from that hodgepodge there’s enough for people to call it the “WORST EPISODE EVER” or make the sane counter-argument, “SNL has always been hit-and-miss, you just remember it being funnier in the past because memories of bad skits fade over time.”

Here are some of my thoughts on the episode. The better skits (in my opinion) are embedded below; elsewhere, I’ve linked to crappier sketches.

• The best sketch of the night was the spoof of the Unstoppable trailer. Sure, it was reminiscent of FilmDrunk’s spoof, but the execution was deft, and I doubt there will ever be enough Unstoppable trailer spoofs for my taste.
• I enjoyed both the “16 and Pregnant” spoof that called MTV “Maternity Television” and the “Millionaire Matchmaker” sketch in which ScarJo played Patti Stanger in a mythical world where Patti Stanger doesn’t look like an ogre. Conclusion: When SNL parodies crappy TV, it’s less likely to be crappy TV itself.
• Exception to the above rule: the Paula Deene sketch.
• Granted, I’m immensely biased towards Scarlett, but even in tiresome, repetitive sketches like The Manuel Ortiz Show, her Spanish accent is better than the other actors’. Regardless of the material she was given, she acquitted herself well.
• Middle School Kids was a textbook awful SNL sketch: the same unfunny joke repeated three times over the course of five minutes. For a fat man, Kenan Thompson sure is terrible at physical comedy.
• I absolutely love Arcade Fire’s music — especially live — but their concerts are best experienced from the upper deck of an arena. Up close, those are some weird-ass-lookin’ French-Canadian hipsters. Win Butler could have a second career playing a serial killer in horror movies.