Who’s been your favorite? Who have you enjoyed the least? Who was the most surprising Saturday Night Live host?
For me the most surprisingly good was Justin Timberlake. While I suffer through his music, I was very pleasantly surprised by the fun energy he brought to the skits. He was a pleasure to watch. Catherine Zeta-Jones was also surprisingly good.
My favorites included Richard Pryor, Buck Henry, and Stever Martin.
Least favorites include Charles Grodin (too much schtick, too little funny) and Annette Bening (Boring skits. and stared at the cue cards too much).
A good host can at least partially save a bad night. A good host must be willing to look silly but not stupid, enthusiastic but not, well, jerky about it.
Your opinions?
Note - I haven’t checked to see if this has been done to death already. If it has, it wasn’t recently.
My favorite will always be The Rock hosting several years back, with the other WWE guys making cameos throughout the night. Rock’s got an unexpected eye for comedy, and he was clearly having fun.
Christopher Walken is always a trip, and Garth Brooks was a lot of fun the couple of times he hosted, too. Like The Rock, he threw himself into the comedy in a way I wouldn’t have expected.
I’ve gotta go with Christopher Walken on this. Just amazing.
Sylvester Stallone isn’t my favorite, but he popped into my mind because he was a surprisingly good host in '96 or so. Either that or everyone else was awful. No . . . no, he was pretty good. When Sly works at it, he’s actually pretty funny.
Rudy did host SNL, just not that episode. He hosted the Nov 22, 1997 episode. Reese Witherspoon was the host on Sep 29, 2001; Mayor Giuliani was a special guest.
That being said, the Rock is definitely one of my favorites. The first time Dane Cook hosted was pretty good too.
Indeed. During Giuliani’s turn as host (about half the sketches featured him playing himself), Will Ferrel (playing then-attorney general Janet Reno) got him in a headlock and demanded he admit that she was the boss of him. Definitely not post-Clinton material.
Will the box sets include such luminaries as Desi Arnaz, Sid Caesar, Louise Lasser, and – so bad I’ve heard Lorne Michaels insists he never hosted – Milton Berle?
I agree Walken is a trip, but it’s such a bizarre and self-aware trip I can’t be sure he’s actually funny. I knew Garth Brooks would be good because I’d previously seen him on “The Muppet Show” and he seemed willing to go pretty far for a laugh but his Coco the Old French Whore was farther than I expected.
Anyone who is self depricating is a winner in my book. To see these people that are up on a pedestal under normal circumstances only to have their face licked by Will Ferrell or Goat Boy is a good time.
One of the reasons there are so many legendary terrible hosting examples is SNL’s penchant for booking hosts based on popularity rather than their ability to host a show or do skit comedy. Considering how long they’ve been at it, that’s puzzling.
Alec Baldwin and Walken are my favorites. I like Timberlake in “Dick in a Box”, but my favorite skit from his hosting was “Barry Gibb Talk Show”. Jimmy Fallon steals it!
"I’ll put you in the ground! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!
Brian Williams was the host very recently, and I thought he was quite good, especially for a news anchor. And Luciano Pavarotti and Vanessa Williams performed Adeste Fideles on one of Alec Baldwin’s episodes, which was cool, I thought.
