Outside forces boosted this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live; it wasn’t particularly stellar in the area of writing or even of regular-cast performance, but the host and musical guest both pulled more weight than usual. More surprising: the Ting Tings, whose songs have always struck me as the bad kind of catchy, the nyah-nyah approach to earworms. They were semi-inexplicably booked to play a couple of songs that have been making the rounds for like two years now, but given that old-news quality, their stripped-down performances were actually quite engaging, seeming to shrink the SNL stage to a more intimate size. The live version of “That’s Not My Name,” with its minimalist beginning building into a more familiar, noisy climax, was actually more fun than the radio cut; “Shut Up and Let Me Go” was less transformed, but included an enjoyable cowbell shout-out.

Less surprising, due to her general awesomeness, was Sigourney Weaver as host. I speculated last week that Charles Barkley might’ve had the longest gap between hosting gigs, but Weaver actually broke that record this week; she last appeared in 1986, fresh off of Aliens. Fitting, then, that she matched her second collaboration with James Cameron with another go at SNL — and hey, the show finally managed to book the star of an already-out movie that hasn’t bombed and has in fact grossed a bajillion dollars. I guess they did that with Taylor Lautner, too, but Sigourney Weaver is a sixtysomething lady — not exactly the demo SNL chases.

Expectations for sports-star hosts of Saturday Night Live are already low, but SNL threw a curve ball of sorts by booking for their year/decade kickoff not just a sports star, but a sports star who no longer plays sports and, indeed, remains in the national consciousness primarily due to, in descending order, (1.) his unlawful transgressions, (2.) the goofy stuff he says, and (3.) Kenan Thompson’s occasional and hilarious impersonation of him on, hey, Saturday Night Live. The choice of Barkley

It also made me about any number of inauspicious records, such as: when was the last time a long-retired sports star hosted, if ever? (I am too lazy slash sports illiterate to look this up and say for sure, but every sportsman or sportslady I can recall hosting since I began watching the show circa 1992 has been pretty current.) Was this also the greatest amount of time lapsed between a first hosting gig and a second, with sixteen-plus years passing after Barkley’s first shot back in 1993? (Trivia: Phil Hartman and Mike Myers were still in the cast; Nirvana was the musical guest; Barney jokes were still sort of amusing; “Office Space” was still a cartoon — and, to be fair to the carping that’s about to commence, at least four of the sketches were recurring bits.) If so, Buck Henry ought to turn up and smash that record to pieces.

Perhaps in a Christmas/rerun/rehash state of mind after working around that “Very Gilly Christmas” special on Thursday, perhaps exhausted after a rare three-week December run, perhaps just laziness as usual, Saturday Night Live brought out the recurring characters in full force on this week’s show. Not counting Update or the Digital Short, eight sketches made to air; six of these were reprisals, many representing third or fourth go-rounds, mostly with a Christmas slant.

When you’re doing six recurring sketches in a single night, you’re bound to be using at least a few that don’t work, but you’re also likely to hit upon at least a few good ones, assuming the existence of the latter (and I do: as much as I complain about them, plenty of recurring characters on SNL have worked just fine). This batch half-dozen had just about every combination, save, thankfully, the Sketch That Should’ve Never Made It to Air in the First Place Nevermind Several Times. Here’s the breakdown:

I  know Jesse is usually our typical SNL guy, but tonight’s Gilly SNL Christmas special has inspired my most current obsession: the little “I Wish It Was Christmas Today” song. I couldn’t remember how many times they’d done it, or for how many holidays, or what amazing costumes they wore. It was bothering me. So, armed with the invaluable archive over at SNL transcripts, I think I’ve tracked down all of the times they’ve performed it. Really, I’m surprised at how much they’ve managed to use the song on different holidays, but I’m sure glad they did.

First Occurrence: December 9, 2000 (Val Kilmer hosting)

They wear red sweaters, they giggle, and it’s the amazing moment we all love and remember.

Second Occurrence: December 16, 2000 (Lucy Liu hosting)

For some reason, they manage to do it over the very next week!

Third Occurrence: May 19, 2001 (Christopher Walken hosting–Weezer musical guest!)

They perform it again, only dressed in Hawaiian shirts for Memorial Day. This episode is also memorable to me because I missed it when it first aired,  so Jesse sent me a VHS tape of it, and I watched it over and over all summer. If sending someone the Walken/Weezer SNL VHS isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

Fourth Occurrence: December 1, 2001 (Derek Jeter hosting)

Like the first, only with ugly/amazing snowmen on their sweaters.

Fifth Occurrence: December 14, 2002 (Al Gore hosting)

This time, in costume! Jimmy Fallon is Harry Potter, Horatio is a teddy bear, Chris Kattan is a soldier, and Tracey Morgan is in a hilarious Chicken Elmo costume.

Sixth Occurrence: April 10, 2004 (Janet Jackson hosting)

The boys wear pastel to sing about how Christmas is better than Easter, which it totally is.

Seventh Occurrence: December 18, 2004 (Robert De Niro hosting)

This is the one I wish I had the video of, since, with all the cast members off the show except Horatio, he gets the Muppets to fill in for Jimmy, Chris, and Tracey. The Muppets!

It would be cruel to end this post without showing you a video, so here goes:

SNL Christmas Song

And, for kicks, here’s a live video of Julian Casablancas covering it (you can download a cleaner version from his album here):

Saturday Night Live is supposed to pretty much function regardless of the host, but it’s been difficult not to notice how ill-timed its guests have been for much of this season. Megan Fox and Drew Barrymore appeared after the movies they were promoting had already bombed; Joseph Gordon-Levitt would’ve made a natural early-fall host to capitalize on his summer heat but instead came on in late November; and now Taylor Lautner shows up to host nearly a month after Twilight fever reached its peak.

Superficial/promotional considerations aside, I had other reasons to be apprehensive about Lautner’s gig, namely Lautner himself; he seems like a nice kid, but nothing in New Moon hinted at a talent for (intentional) comedy. But much like his special lady giant Taylor Swift, Lautner proved a surprisingly adept host, although his work fell more on the “didn’t screw things up” side of things than T-Swift’s “actually pretty funny on her own” triumph-relative-to-expectations. And for whatever reason, Lautner actually had better material than Swift, so his episode was a nice surprise.

This cannot be ignored: during a typically hit-or-miss Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Blake Lively, they aired a sketch that made me cry laughing and nearly fall out off my couch in the process. I’m pretty sure that the “Under-Underground Rock Festival” ad, as seen above, is really freaking funny on its own, but it held a special place in my heart for its semi-obscure inspiration. It’s actually a hilariously close parody of a web ad for a yearly (and quite popular) music festival curated by shock-mook-rap act Insane Clown Posse, which I wrote about over on my personal blog a little while ago. The real ad is funny enough on its own, by the fact that SNL writers saw fit to parody this at all really tickled me, and they did a bang-up job with the target, however broad, with such zeal it almost came off as a sort of deranged affection (but maybe that was just my deranged projection).

It was a delirious high in an episode that had several, including a wonderfully strange last sketch of the night featuring Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis as Southern dandies/hillbillies (dandbillies) grappling over a stolen potato chip at a NASA job interview. I love pretty much any SNL sketch that reminds me of the Kids in the Hall. It’s also possible that I particularly love this sketch because there’s almost no chance for a repeat engagement; Forte and Sudeikis last made a bid for too-strange-to-reprise with their ESPN Classic characters, forever announcing female sports sponsored by feminine care products, and while I enjoyed the fact that the second go-round somehow scored a leadoff spot, it makes me wonder if there’s anything this cast wouldn’t be game to do over (hopeful answer: a sketch about potato-chip stealing at a hilariously crummy version of a NASA office).

Maybe it was a lucky break for Joseph Gordon-Levitt that last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live was so universally acknowledged as terrible, because by comparison, his own perfectly decent gig began to look positively transcendent. After a rocky start with a ridiculously overlong and poorly written bit involving Obama in China, Joseph Gordon-Levitt took the stage for his monologue, an elaborate and impressively faithful reproduction of the “Make ‘Em Laugh” number from Singin’ in the Rain.

The monologue musical number has become just as much of a go-to in recent years as the “questions from the audience” bit, but if it’s done well, it provides a nice dose of variety into the mostly-comedic proceedings. This variation wasn’t particularly funny, but for me, the monologue stands with the music performances as a time when SNL doesn’t particularly need to be funny as long as it’s entertaining, and Gordon-Levitt’s physical dexterity — his ability to do back flips off of walls on live TV — was actually sort of thrilling, not a word I would apply to many other monologues.

I’m torn between sighing about the continuing poor quality of this fall’s SNL episodes and celebrating Jason Sudeikis. It wasn’t a banner episode for him, or anyone, but was certainly front and center in a lot of sketches. Watching this utility player grab a bunch of screen time was more fun than thinking about how host January Jones looked vaguely ill at ease through most of the episode, or that this November’s run of episodes has been particularly lazy, and how much it will suck if Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn’t handed some decent material next week.

So, right, Sudeikis: what a versatile and funny guy, even when the material isn’t anywhere near there. He had one of the better of this season’s obligatory okay political cold opens, because the writers seem to actually enjoy writing goofy stuff for Joe Biden to say, as opposed to the ginger tiptoeing they do around Obama. He got to show off a decent Jimmy Stewart impression in a Rear Window sketch that I otherwise don’t want to talk about ever again because it was super-duper terrible. He went for stupid-enthusiasm in the now-officially-overplayed Jon Bovi bit on Update. And he did his flummoxed-straight-man thing twice: first, and to lesser effect, as the lead anchor of the news program where Kristen Wiig’s barely-closeted lesbian reporter attempts to interview extremely attractive women, one of those things that was funny once but because Kristen Wiig does it, must be revived at least once a year. He played semi-straight again for the final sketch of the night, one of the only decent ones, where he cloudwatched with a sheltered female companion. I’d link to that sketch here, but it’s one of the few that didn’t make it on to NBC’s SNL site.

In that (minor but funny) cloud sketch, January Jones was cast as a strange girl that Sudeikis put up with because she’s hot; she also played the object of Wiig’s affections in that reporter sketch, making this the second-most reused trope of the night. These sketches basically built around the fact that January Jones is attractive vaguely resembled the writers’ fumbling of Megan Fox in the season premiere, but they were overshadowed by the most-reused trope of the night, which, oddly, had January Jones playing the epitome of old-time glamour. The monologue was, as expected, a riff on her Mad Men role, fine; but then she was playing Grace Kelly in that sketch that, again, I’d really rather not think about; and the night’s other actually-good sketch “A Lady’s Guide to Throwing a Party,” had her playing a fifties/sixties housewife.

Sometimes the term “lazy” is bandied about so often by critics, including myself, in reference to SNL, that the description begins to feel, well, kinda lazy in and of itself. But I can’t think of another way to describe the thought process that goes: “January Jones, oh yeah, she’s on Mad Men and she’s pretty, so I guess we have to write a bunch of sketches where she’s in the fifties and sixties, and a bunch more where she’s pretty.” I mean, January Jones isn’t actually Grace Kelly or even Gwyneth Paltrow. She doesn’t actually have a particular reputation you need to play around with. Chick was in American Pie 3.

Of course, some writers would apparently take that to mean that they should be writing sketches about her being in American Wedding. Instead of sketches that are, you know, funny first and pop-culture-related second if at all. I’m usually quick to defend the show for its built-in hit-and-miss quality and degree of difficulty, but yikes, these last few episodes have been making it pretty difficult.

Also, the Black Eyed Peas were there. Not good.

Episode Grade: C-

At fourteen years old and eight feel tall, Taylor Swift became, I assume, one of the youngest and most towering celebrities to ever serve as both host and musical guest of Saturday Night Live. This should not be such rarified air; if this chick can do it, they should occasionally force others to pull double-duty, possibly against their will. For example, the upcoming Joseph Gordon-Levitt episode could feature JGL musical numbers instead of Dave Matthews Band, and when Beck returns for the tenth or fifteenth time, he should have to do a monologue. Let Taylor Swift’s la-la-musical-monologue pave the way, because it was way better than her actual songs lamenting how well she could service a nondescript boy if he’d only notice her.

Her sing-songy introduction to the show wasn’t hilarious, but it was sort of cute and, more importantly, in tune with her sensibilities. As it turned out, Swift fell into a pretty broad SNL host category: very game, not necessarily all that polished, and yet surprisingly good at a few odd impressions like Kristen Stewart and Shakira (I’ve never really seen that Kate Minus Jon Plus Babies show but her impression that Kate woman seemed to at least have a specific vocal cadence). I was impressed by her command of her gangly-Amazon (ganglazon?) body, even if it was just in service of, say, imitating Kenan Thompson’s pointless “Scared Straight” character.

Actually, that recurring bit was one of the less tired of the night, or at least I found it more amusing than the one billionth Penelope sketch. Not because the material is particularly good — it is not; this falls squarely on the “awful schtick” side of the Kenan awful schtick/hilarious character work divide — but because the sketch has been done so many times that the main attraction is now (a.) Jason Sudeikis’s reactions, which he obviously plays up in order to facilitate (b.) Bill Hader cracking up at the ridiculousness of everything.

If that had been the only bad recurring bit of the night, I could’ve ignored it. But, as mentioned, the show trotted out Penelope for a sketch I could barely bring myself to watch; Armisen’s conceptually clever but beyond played-out Nicholas Fehn character on Update; and the less irritating but still sort of second-rate parody of The View. This kind of laziness is understandable after three or four episodes in a row; dispiriting, though, after two weeks off.

It’s not as if every non-recurring sketch was golden; the one with Swift and Jenny Slate as crazy-in-love roommates felt like it was going somewhere funny, but instead just repeated itself and ended abruptly, despite nice physical work from Slate and Swift (I particularly liked Slate attaching herself to Swift’s leg as she left the room). But at least it required more effort than “Kristen Wiig, doing a tic, go!”

Surprisingly, at least to me, the show was best when it really focused on Swift’s presence and audience. The highlights (apart from a mostly solid Weekend Update) had her playing around with tween/teenage culture: the trailer for Firelight, in which a Kristen Stewart lookalike is torn between Frankensteins and mummies (I realize the correct term would be Frankenstein’s Monsters and I’m sure someone in the SNL writers’ room does too, but they also correctly surmised that “Frankensteins” is much, much funnier to say); and a PSA about parental automotive mistakes just as dangerous as texting while driving. I liked the ad for the soundtrack to the unfinished animated classic Bunny Business, too. Given that they are capable of writing actually-funny sketches, I don’t think it’s asking too much for the writers to limit their reprisals to say, two a week, rather than the three or four we’ve been getting for the last few shows.

Episode Grade: C+

In the short history of SNL running episodes on four successive weekends — this week’s show capped only the third time they’ve done this — the fourth installment has rarely been much good. Usually, predicting SNL episode quality based on logical scheduling patterns proves fruitless; returns after long breaks, which you might assume would result in a build up of decent material, are sometimes disappointing (perhaps because even after a long break, the show is still more or less written and produced in a single week), and often a good episode will turn up during a dismal run, or vice versa. But there was a clear sense of burnout running through this episode that it would be difficult not to attribute to this being the seventh SNL production in five weeks (counting the three Weekend Update Thursday installments).

Gerard Butler was the nominal host, but for some reason the first chunk of the show consisted of reprising bits from last season’s standout Dwayne The Rock Johnson-hosted episode. Johnson himself actually reappeared to play The Rock Obama, a clever riff on the Incredible Hulk that had little to say in its second go-round. Curiously, Johnson wasn’t on hand for a reprisal of the sketch where Bill Hader plays a sportscaster who is clearly a malevolent alien beast; he originally appeared as Hader’s human co-anchor inexplicably attempting to cover up the alien’s nature.  It was one of last season’s most inspired moments, and although there’s still fun in watching Hader’s brilliant physical and vocal work as the alien, no one provided a real reason for essentially remaking the sketch without a sense of surprise.