41x16 Peter Dinklage with Gwen Stefani

5.5/10. This was something of a waste of Peter Dinklage. When they let him branch out from playing a fairly generic straight man, he did some great comedic work, and even when they slotted him into some more generic roles, he added some subtle, humorous touches that helped sell a lot of the weaker material. I'd like to see him come back and do this over again, hopefully with better material.

The best episodes of the night were the ones that featured him the most prominently. The "Space Pants" bit plays off of one of my favorite sort of comedy premises -- something serious happening in the foreground while something ridiculous happens in the background. Dinklage went whole hog on both the ridiculousness of his attire and dance moves, and his pure commitment to the song and the performance. The Mafia guys' incredulous but eventually into it reaction was a big boost to making the sketch work as well. The other bright spot was the final sketch of the night, featuring Dinklage as the boss at a company routine who takes playful ribbing at a magic show too personally and too far. It's the kind of character-based comedy that the show doesn't do enough of anymore, and Dinklage's uptight boss routine (alongside the weird specificity of he and his wife dressing the same) was perfect in an awkward sort of way.

The two worst sketches of the night were probably the first two out of the gate. The Winnie the Pooh sketch had promise, and I'm usually on board with sketches that combine classic, somewhat staid settings and films with something that clashes tonally (Arianna Grande's Sound of Music sketch is a good recent example), but this, and the Leslie Jones Naked and Afraid sketch quickly devolved into the joke being "white people act differently from black people" without any of the careful hand or insight to make it feel like anything but lazy humor. The runner up was the Vacation Nightmares sketch, which had one joke, which wasn't particularly good to begin with, and then spent the length of the sketch driving it into the ground.

There were a few of other decent-if-unspectacular sketches. The mandatory Game of Thrones sketch wrung a little bit of humor from Bobby Moynihan as an overacting CGI Dragon stand-in, and there was some enjoyably macabre humor in the undersea hotel sketch (with Dinklage in particular selling the obsequious nature of his cruise-director type character), but there wasn't much meat on the bone in either in terms of the comedy. The glory hole restaurant was pleasantly weird, but they didn't really have anywhere to go in a sketch that was built entirely on props and thus made the laughs seem a bit cheap. The same goes for the cold open with the CNN interview of a female Trump supporter. McKinnon and Strong are great performers, and they breathed a lot of life to their exasperated anchor and bright-eyed nutbar respectively, but Trump is such an easy target that the jokes feel too much like layups to have much punch. And the monologue had its moments ("If I'm not in the scene, Petey no read-y."), but was mostly scattershot with tired jabs at George R.R. Martin.

At least Weekend Update is still strong! Jost and Che brought the right mix of commentary and comedy to their take on Trump's problems with women, and their silly, non-topical material like Jost's R&B album or Che calling the Elton John joke "so lazy" and Jost replying "lazy and specific!" was delightful. Pete Davidson continues to do his thinly-veiled stand up routine at the update desk, and while his take on the Hulk Hogan Gawker scandal was clever enough, it wasn't one of his strongest outings. I've never been a big fan of Kenan's David Ortiz riff, since it's mostly premised on the idea that spanish words sound funny, but his pitchman schtick was actually pretty funny, so I'll give it a pass.

And hey! Gwen Stefani! She showed up in the space pants sketch for an amusing cameo, and then sang two forgettable, generic pop songs that felt like a pair of warmed-over, disco-inspired ballads. Ah, for the days of No Doubt, or at least the slightly embarrassing-if-catchy Hollaback Girl. What can you do?

All in all, a weaker episode in a season that had been doing a little better than par as of late, with a performer who showed he had the comedic chops for something better.