The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Emma Stone

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Almost completely built on recycled sketches and heavy on the potty humor, the only thing that made last night’s Saturday Night Live bearable was the adorable, fresh-faced Emma Stone. She displayed a Melissa McCarthy-like willingness to make a hilarious fool out of herself, and managed to instill a little life into even the weakest of skit ideas, stealing the show more than once. All in all, we think it came out to be one of the better shows so far this season. Click through to watch the skits we thought were great and skip through the skits we thought were terrible, and make sure to let us know if you agree or disagree with our assessments in the comments!

Best:

Someone Like You

It’s true, everyone with a heart and an iTunes account really does cry to Adele. Also: “Last night I watched the series finale of Friday Night Lights and it really messed me up.” We feel this whole sketch top to bottom.

Garth and Kat

We usually hate this sketch, and there was no hope that a Thanksgiving theme would freshen up anything other than those terrible vests, so we nearly skipped it — but we were glad we didn’t when the charming Chris Martin made a cameo, all smiles, British accent and endearing mistakes.

Bridal Shower

Though this sort of gross-out humor isn’t our cup of tea, we’re no fools. Emma Stone was amazing in this sketch, and even though she was pretty much the only good thing about it, her performance carries the whole thing into the ‘best’ column with room to spare.

Note: one of the very best sketches from last night, “Les Jeunes de Paris,” a reprisal of the popular sketch from Stone’s first stab at hosting, sadly isn’t available online. Count that among our picks for the best if it does turn up.

Worst:

Emma Stone’s Monologue

We were totally getting into Emma Stone’s opening monologue, especially with comments like “[I play Gwen Stacy], who is a dynamic and brilliant science student. Not to be confused with Spider-Man’s other girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, who is a skank and doesn’t love him like I do,” but then Andy Samberg, who was uncharacteristically all over the show last night, er, dropped in and ruined it. Then they brought on Andrew Garfield, which was basically pointless as far as we’re concerned. We wish they had just let the brilliant Stone serve up some more of her wry humor and hilarious one liners without any interruption.

Secret Word

Again, Stone was great in this sketch, but like every time SNL does “Secret Word,” it was mostly boring and predictable and full of unlikeable characters. We did enjoy it when Stone made out with her ventriloquist dummy, though.

Technology Hump

Well, it’s current, we guess. And there were a couple moments where we smirked in spite of ourselves. But really, come on you guys — this is the lowest common denominator of humor, whether cloaked in its thick layer of irony or no. You can do better.