41x18 Julia Louis-Dreyfus with Nick Jonas

Julia-Louis Dreyfus has never really been my cup of tea. There's something very broad about her performances that makes me have trouble connecting with her as a performer. Dreyfus acquitted herself well enough here, but rarely was able to rise above the middling material she was offered.

Oddly enough, the back half of the episode was much stronger than the first. The sketch of the night was Vanessa Bayer's "God's a Boob Man" parody of Christian persecution films. The pre-taped bit perfectly captured the bafflingly ominous, self-assured tones of these trailers, and their assorted strawmen and soundtracks. The best actual live sketch was the "Who Works Here" CVS bit, which had a few cornball jokes, but for the most part got into that nice observational humor sweetspot with enough twists to keep it working. And the alien single women sketch at the end of the night was pretty basic in its premise, but the halting dialogue and freaky-voice effects on McKinnon and Dreyfus made it weird enough to be interesting and a little mesmerizing in context.

Plus, Weekend Update continues to be an anchor for the show. Che and Jost's riffs on the news (Jost's bit on how Bernie Sanders is the opposite of Trump in particular) have been a reliable source of laughs as the two have settled in. Though there was an odd semi-retrograde vibe to Che's jokes in the segment. As for the correspondents, the Barkley/Shaq bit didn't really work for me. There's a few good lines sprinkled in, but it's a little too broad for my tastes. That said, Aidy Bryant's Animal Expert had the right mix of cheeriness, strangeness, and darkness to make me crap up, and her bit about Che appreciating the Iguana's "equipment" was the right kind of left turn that really worked. But the absolute winner was Cecily Strong's "one-dimensional female in a male-driven comedy" character. It's such a well-observed critique, to the point that the audience seemed a little shell-shocked by it. Strong gets the delivery down just right to make the point, and I appreciated how she committed to the bit by "turning off" through the end of the segment.

Unfortunately, the rest of the sketches were just the doldrums. The worst offender was "Cinema Classics," which Kenan tried like hell to save with his off-beat commentary, but he couldn't make up for the absolutely tepid premise of an actress who needed to read her lines off of props to continue. This is community theater-level stuff. The cold open was trying, but didn't have anywhere new to go with the Hillary/Bernie stuff, and letting it devolve into a lukewarm Seinfeld riff-off didn't help. The same goes for the monologue, which does the usual "I used to be an unsuccessful actor, now I'm a successful one!" bit, but at least gives good ol' Tony Hale a moment in the sun.

What was left was a big sack of meh. Heroin AM had a decent enough premise, and captured the style of pharmaceutical ads perfectly, but didn't really go anywhere with the joke. Similarly, the Mercedes that runs on AA batteries felt like a thin excuse for some corporate synergy, and stretched a weak joke that might have worked for a 30 second bit far beyond its expiration point. (Though it did remind of the good ol' Colon Blow sketch.) And the giant jewelry sketch tried to survive on McKinnon's usual superb performance skills, but was the same lame joke "women from Long Island wear big jewelry!" over and over and over again. There was the germ of a good idea in Dreyfus's pool boy sketch in how the housewife put far more stock into the relationship than the aggressively agreeable Pete Davison character did, but that too went on for too long without enough of a payoff.

(Oh, and Nick Jonas sang a generic pop song that his co-star then came on to sing better than he could. This has been your latest indication that pop music is not intended for fuddy-duddies like yours truly.)

I may be underrating the episode because most of the crap was front-loaded, and it felt like the episode was on a rough trajectory from the start. There were some bright spots in the second half of the show. But they were few, and outside of "God's a Boob Man," not that bright. Definitely a skippable episode.