(S35E13) The first time Jon Hamm hosted Saturday Night LIve, back in 2008, it was before I had seen his work on Mad Men and 30 Rock (the latter was due to the fact his guest appearances didn't exist at the time). I was super-excited that the seemingly perpetually serious Hamm actually turned out to be hilarious, and his performance led to one of the best episodes of the entire season. Taking all this into consideration, I was walking on dangerous ground as I prepared to watch Hamm's return to the SNL stage.

Were my expectations too high to be met? Did Hamm's pre-SNL beard somehow take funny away from him (I've heard beards can sometimes do that)? As it turned out, I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Hamm did yet another stellar job as host, bringing a level of charm and commitment that made just about every sketch work.

(S32E11) I'm familiar with very few of Jeremy Piven's projects, but, from what I've seen, he's a great comedic actor. Unfortunately, sometimes even the great funnymen of television and film can really -- for lack of a better phrase -- totally suck it hard when it comes to live television. In Piven's case, before the monologue was even half-way over, I knew he was going to do fine. Aside from a few very minor reading flubs (I think he said "contact" instead of "connect" in the monologue, and stumbled over some lines in various skits), Piven did a flawless job. All in all, I thought this was a fairly strong episode.

(S31E20) Hiya. This is Annie, filling in for Jonathan Toomey. It's probably better that he didn't get a chance to watch the episode because it was somewhat disappointing. I was expecting the season finale to end with a bang, but that was a really stupid thing to wish. Honestly, I'm not even sure why I was expecting that, because the whole season has been somewhat lackluster. However, this episode has cemented my belief that they need to dump their oldest talent (and Finesse) and immediately bump their Featured Players to full status. The host, Kevin Spacey, did a pretty good job with the material given, which wasn't much. Let's just say I'm not going to be pining for this show over the summer.