Jon Hamm pops back into Saturday Night Live to actually host, not just cameo

The timing was off tonight on Saturday Night Live. Not really on the individual sketches, which were mostly pretty good and well-performed, or on the technical side, where things seemed to run smoothly. (It wasn’t one of those episodes where you can just tell something got cut for time or a sketch was abruptly truncated at the last possible minute; either of those things may have happened, but it wasn’t obvious.) But the episode’s many strong elements, including Hamm himself, didn’t quite add up.

Again, not his performances, which were loose and funny in that just-one-of-the-cast way; honestly, the man probably could have been Beck Bennett if he hadn’t been Don Draper (though maybe he needed to be Draper first for that to seem at all possible). His monologue, though, efficiently outlined why this was all a bit weird. Hamm hosted three episodes in relatively quick succession during the Mad Men era (or, in SNL terms, the Armisen Administration). This seemed to get him in good with Lorne Michaels, therefore Tina Fey, and therefore 30 Rock, where he did an arc and then came back later. He also had a small part in Bridesmaids, popped up in other comedy projects, and generally causing some people to grumble about legislation that would force actors to choose funny or handsome. Then he didn’t host for nearly 15 years, but, as he illustrated in tonight’s episode, did more than a dozen cameos during that time. (As I think I mentioned last week, the one time I ever saw SNL in person, Hamm was there, even though Lena Dunham was the host. Good match for me, the person who thinks Mad Men and Girls are the two best TV shows of the past however many years.) Hamm maintaining his relationship with the show via 15 years of pop-ins isn’t a bad thing, but it is a little strange, and maybe tonight’s episode would have played better if it had been his sixth or seventh time, rather than his first proper episode in a decade and a half.

Instead, the shape of the episode kept it from really kicking into gear for Hamm, despite the overall structure not doing anything out of the ordinary. For example: It was a delightful surprise that the show did a vaguely politically-themed sketch that didn’t rely on Trump or a parade of half-assed impressions, in the form of the Check-to-Check Business News Channel, a series of updates for people more likely to monitor the cost of boxed mac and cheese than NASDAQ. Only one joke to this thing, but delivered quickly, sharply, and efficiently.  This could have been the cold open: grabby concept, simple physical set-up, bigger laughs than usual for that slot. (There’s no reason the cold open has to be a political sketch at all, of course, but that’s a separate issue.) And if the show still wanted to do Trump this week, what luck: It had a higher concept than usual in the form of White Potus, a pre-tape spoofing the HBO show White Lotus with past Trump administration faces swapping in for beloved character actors.

On paper, this has the makings of a refreshing shake-up. In reality, they stuck James Austin Johnson’s Trump into the cold open away, all just to repeat nearly the exact same Trump Interrupts format they’ve used not only earlier this season, but on past holiday-adjacent episodes! Then, as if attempting to balance out the current-events contents of the first half of the show, Weekend Update was packed with the kind of “funny situation” jokes that don’t have much to do with actual news and need a little more than Che or Jost guffawing at themselves to nail some of the silly pun-or-innuendo-based punchlines, and further padded with two retread guests (Bowen Yang returning as Chen Biao, which obviously makes sense in light of the tariff business; Sarah Sherman teasing Jost, again) and poor Emil Wakim doing some kinda-stand-up in the middle. It all managed to de-center Hamm’s work, which is fine when the host is a weaker link, but frustrating when it’s someone who keeps killing it.

Does this amount to a nitpick of the running order? Maybe. But the jumble of material in between Hamm’s appearances did make the episode feel diffuse, with a bunch of cameos that, rather than matching the jokes about cameos in Hamm’s monologue, were somehow both distracting and weirdly unceremonious; it didn’t help that they were throwing back to an era well after the late-2000s time that Hamm was a hosting fixture. Maybe it’s because for all of Hamm’s chumminess with the show, he’s most valuable as a utility player who can settle in and exploit his own gravitas. This episode set aside time for that; it just sometimes felt like an afterthought.

What was on

Please Don’t Destroy has admittedly been a damned-if-you-do-destroy, damned-if-you-don’t-destroy proposition for me, at least as far as their on-screen appearances. When they orient their videos around their office on writing night, it can get a little cutesy and same-y. When they venture outside of the offices, they often come up with half-baked pop-culture parodies that the show has done better elsewhere. But this particular instance of the latter, with Hamm playing a federal agent unreasonably psyched for the pizza being ordered while the cops work out a grueling disappearance case, was one of their best, powered by Hamm’s ability to look the part of the serious lawman while also doing some excellent pizza-anticipation acting (and, later, sleepover sulking).

Hamm also gave fine performances in the ten-to-one icebreakers sketch, where his character’s “fun fact” at a work orientation is that his mother killed his father naked on TV; and as a man determined not to let out any deep, dark secrets on a generic game show. The icebreakers sketch may have been a little self-conscious in its ten-to-one-ness, but I admired how it stayed on a weirdly even keel, rather than escalating madly.

What was off

It’s not that unusual to have three pre-taped segments, but it still felt a little skimpy that those pieces, the cold open, and a triple-guest Update meant that Hamm only performed in four live sketches. And in that context, it felt particularly wasteful to plug him into the Bowen Yang sketch about a gay couple indignantly but confidently spouting nonsense in response to reasonable questions about their new baby. If Bowen Yang doing a sketch where he indignantly but confidently spouts non sequiturs sounds familiar to you, well, you’ve been watching SNL for the past few years. But you might also have seen the specific Adam Driver episode where they did this sketch before, only it was funnier because the couple announced, and kept insisting, that they were “trying” for a baby, which better pokes at the language convention while serving as a purer piece of dialogue and performance. (Basically, having a prop baby doesn’t make the sketch funnier; possibly it makes it less funny, even if that baby is played by Lizzo.) Even this sketch didn’t outright bomb, but when several other, funnier bits felt cut to the bone, the coasting stood out.

Also, Johnson’s Trump got some good shots in at Dear Leader, but it still veers awfully close to reconceiving a loathsome idiot as kind of a lovable insult comic, which, I’m sorry, it’s just not the move right now. (In other words: It’s so hard for me to resist the bit of him turning and riffing on specific SNL cast members by name, which is part of what’s becoming so insidious about the whole thing. Probably the whole show could stand to take the self-awareness shtick down by about 25%.)

Most valuable player (who may or may not be ready for prime time)

This episode didn’t really have a strong multiple-sketch MVP; Ego Nwodim enhanced the Check-to-Check Business News Channel, while Ashley Padilla nailed her oddball part in the icebreakers sketch and Michael Longfellow did some nimble game-show-hosting work. Honestly, the connective tissue here was Hamm; even if this wasn’t his best episode, it’s not typical for the host to be the best part of multiple sketches, and he pulled that off nicely.

Next time

Quinta Brunson kicks off the final stretch of Season 50 with her second hosting gig. I wonder if the remaining two hosts will be first-timers; even if they are, this will be the fewest first-timers in a single season in years (and if they’re not, it might stand as the least-first-timers season ever).

Stray observations

• • Jon Hamm is right: Mad Men is better than Succession!
• • OK, I didn’t really watch Succession, but I do think people sometimes forget how stunningly great Mad Men is. (OK, maybe not in the A.V. Club comment section.)
• • I truly was baffled by some of the jokes that made the cut on a particularly long Update. Did Jost and Che just hear about the “nap dress” this year? A trend that was being written about three years ago and therefore no longer really qualifies as a trend? That said, I enjoyed Jost’s crack likening Trump’s incessant tariff talk is to Bubba from Forrest Gump talking about shrimp.
• • If my mixed write-up and mixed-positive grade don’t seem to match, settle down and stop freaking out about letter grades. But moreover: I quite enjoyed both of Lizzo’s songs, neither of which repped her catchiest work but felt genuinely unpredictable to me, a person who has seen her live three times, but always as an opener for white-lady rock bands.
• • The Herpes medication ad was funny but boy, does it have some rough competition as far as SNL ads starring Hamm: Jon Hamm’s John Ham, Ham & Bubbly, and the Closet Organizer.