Christoph Waltz, loser of the “Best Villain” 2010 MTV Movie Award for his role in Inglourious Basterds, hosted Saturday Night Live this past weekend and was a charming, odd, especially game treat. Though he struggled a bit and, with all due respect, sometimes came off as more of a coked-up Austrian you met in a bar who is just very excited to be included in something (and maybe he can stay on your couch tonight? and do you have any more friends he can meet?) rather than an Oscar nominee MTV Movie Award nominee, he was fearless and unselfconscious enough to overcome the awkwardness that usually comes with watching someone try to read a cue card while surrounded by a team of too-big-smiling professional sketch comedians. Almost all of the sketches were fun and enjoyable, the “almost” being necessary mostly because of the return of Regine. Arrggg-nooooo! (I understand that Christoph Waltz is not in Argo, but it is still maybe a good pun? Both his thing and Argo are nominated for various Academy Awards.) (If not that, how about: DjangNOOOOOO!) Ugh, Regine. The thing about turning a character into a recurring sketch even though you don’t have any new jokes for the character or any new direction in which the character can go is that you don’t have to do it! No one is going to punch you in the face or talk about you behind your back if you don’t! With that said: Let’s talk about a few of the good ones!

The poop cruise cold open was very good. In cold open tradition it did go on for a very long time, but I thought it had enough going on within it to give reason for the length. All of the separate bits were funny (the newspaper bit was my fave bit. also Fred Armisen’s “Michael Jackson” bit.) and Jason Sudeikis and Cecily Strong’s cruise directors, Dean and Diana, held it together well. Gr8.

Pope Retirement

“Djesus Uncrossed”

Christoph Waltz was at his silliest and most excited during the “Jamarcus Brothers” sketch, and it pushed it from coming off as fine and funny enough (the song titles are very good) to coming off as a REAL TREAT!

Kate McKinnon did a very good job as Weekend Update’s “Olya Povlatsky.” I thought her appearance here was one of the best parts of the episode, EVEN THOUGH I personally dislike jokes about “Who Let the Dogs Out” and the milkshake song so much, even when they are included in order to show how behind the times a Russian village is. Dislike. Otherwise: LIKE.

A quick scan of blogs and Twitter shows that not many people liked “Tippy” this week because she seemed too much like characters we’ve seen many times before (most recently with Kristen Wiig). That is more than a fair argument, and it is totally true, but also I liked “Tippy”! She felt classic! And I laughed! So shut your mouths! Or keep them open, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion about “Tippy”! But I thought she was enjoyable!

“Secret Admirer Letter,” the final sketch of the night, was my favorite. So good. Very, very good.

Finally, Alabama Shakes performed and they did a great job. Also Christoph Waltz said their name correctly 0 times.