It’s usually fun — and seemingly easy — whenever a former cast member returns to “Saturday Night Live” to host. There’s no learning curve to overcome, a certain ease with the remaining cast and in the case of Kristin Wiig, a boatload of characters to bring back to the show.
In her time, the versatile Wiig practically carried the show singlehandedly, so the question in her first hosting gig Saturday was how many of her characters she’d be able to squeeze into the show.
She got to Gilly in a pre-recorded bit in her opening monologue, another one of those intro-songs (a rewritten “I’m So Excited”) that brought her backstage one more time (a backstage we know as well as the stage itself, the ploy has been done so many times).
But at least this time, amid her not forgetting other cast members’ names, she opened the janitor’s closet door to her old dressing room to find another ex-cast member, the very pregnant Maya Rudolph, making out with Jonah Hill. Opening the door to find surprise guest stars: Very “Laugh-In.”
Soon, Wiig was back in “The Californians,” that weird Southern California soap that has its own code: blonde wigs for all, Valley talk so extreme some of the words can be tough to decipher, and an obsession with directions on the various highways. It was the kind of skit that got everybody smirking and breaking character, which either showed they were all so happy they were all doing this again, or that they didn’t rehearse all week.
The Lawrence Welk sister act featuring Wiig as a kind of deformed member, with a big forehead and teeny doll hands was back, and so was the Target Lady later in the show. And Wiig and Fred Armisen did their Garth & Kat bit on “Weekend Update” that was fun. I always thought the point of that sketch was that Wiig had to anticipate everything Armisen was going to say so she could sing along in unison, but he’d purposely throw her off with absurd lyrics and timing. This time, they looked like they actually did rehearse it, so it upended my whole theory.
Even with all these returning characters, Wiig was used in some other good sketches, two of which showed her alongside women who pretty much have taken her role on the show: in a funny Mother’s Day ad for flowers, where Kate McKinnon, as mother, drives her crazy in a way that seemed true to life; and alongside Cecily Strong late in the show as a couple of party girls from Ernst & Young who have found themselves flirting with a couple of sixth graders (Bobby Moynihan and Tim Robinson in good, restrained roles).
Wiig also starred in a short takeoff of a Disney Channel show, “Aw, Nuts! My Mom’s a Ghost” that was well detailed in its accurate Disney Channel color palette and full of special effects, like Wiig as the ghost mom, climbing the ceiling.
And there was time too for one of those pure-effects skits, when Wiig and Aidy Bryant ran an acupuncture clinic, where each pin prick caused a small geyser of blood in patient Jason Sudeikis. Contrast its precision with the sloppy projectile vomiting hose via sleeve that they may have still been using when Wiig joined “SNL.”
Finally, Wiig sang alongside Bryant and Strong as reality stars who put out their own recordings, greatly helped by AutoTune. There wasn’t much to it, but if this was the worst skit of the night, it wasn’t so bad either.
Just about the only thing Wiig wasn’t in was the cold open, which has lately been the dumping ground for all topical and political humor. Natural, then, that the Congressional hearing on Benghazi started things off, with the idea that Republicans were booking certain notorious names in order to make news outlets other than Fox News pay attention to the story: Thus Jodi Arias as the first to testify, soon to be followed by the guy accused of kidnapping women in Cleveland. Too soon? Maybe this one really was.
“Weekend Update,” for its part was, top to bottom, one of the best written of the season, with every joke working. And it included Anthony Crispino — one of two great characters Monyihan brings to “Update” (the other being Drunk Uncle). This one talks about news stories he misheard, such as Chris Christie getting “lapdance surgery” instead of lapband; or the Benghazi hearing turned to “Ben Gazzara lost his hearing” — all of them attributed to increasingly suspect sources, one of whom was “Cinnabon Jovi,” a name good enough to warrant its own sketch.
Likewise another “Update” punchline could have been its own skit — an “American Idol” type show to find all new judges for the show in light of them all reportedly being replaced, “American Idol Judge Idol.”
I had been almost as anxious to see the musical guest as the host this week. But Vampire Weekend was a disappointment. Their new sound is less distinctive than it was on their previous two albums, though the second song was better than the first.
Next week comes the season finale already with Ben Affleck and Kanye West, followed by another four months of reruns and maybe the opening of one of the five Wiig movies still supposed to come out this year.