Two-time Oscar nominee (!!) Jonah Hill returned to host Saturday Night Live for the third time, resulting in an episode that was consistently...decent. It lacked the element of pleasant surprise of last week's Drake-hosted outing, but Hill always brings solid comedy chops to the show and has even created his own recurring character by now. Some of the episode's best moments involved a couple of surprise guest appearances from Hill's famous actor friends, but there were some solid sketches, too.

As has been the trend lately, the front half of the episode had most of the good stuff; where the back half used to house the bizarre and interesting sketches, lately it's felt like a lot of filler.

Sketch Highlights

• "Cold Open: Men's Figure Skating" - Spoofing the recent anti-gay remarks made in regards to the upcoming Winter Olympics, SNL opened the show this week with a sketch that combined live in-studio sketch with pre-taped ice skating footage. I was a little worried when Bobby Moynihan showed up as the first figure skater that this was just going to be a rehash of the famous Chris Farley ice skating sketch from the '90s (when Jason Priestley was hosting), but the show had something else on its mind. While the transitions were a little rough and the sketch just gave up before the signature "Live from New York...," there was a lot of funny stuff. Moynihan is always funny, but my favorite was the look on Jay Pharoah's face before he even started skating. The most impressive thing about this sketch is that it showed just how many SNL cast members are pretty good ice skaters. (Watch the "Men's Figure Skating Cold Open" video)

• "Jonah Hill Monologue" - Jonah Hill is a good host of Saturday Night Live, because he's able to play characters without making the show entirely about him. His monologue was a little rough to start -- just some fairly lame humble bragging about being nominated for his second Oscar -- but Leonardo DiCaprio (Hill's Wolf of Wall Street co-star and fellow Oscar nominee) came out and saved the whole thing. There's something about seeing someone not just of DiCaprio's star power, but of his status as a dramatic ac-tor that makes it more fun to see him on the stage of Studio 8H. Huge credit for DiCaprio for even selling the hacky Titanic joke, which was totally predictable (can anyone believe that movie's almost 20 years old?) but worked because DiCaprio was game. (Watch the "Jonah Hill Monologue" video)
• "Benihana" - Hill has become one of the few guest hosts I can think of that actually has his own recurring character (a la Tom Hanks' "Mr. Short Term Memory," Alec Baldwin's Pete Schweddy, Steve Martin's Czech Brother, etc.). The first time he hosted it was just a sketch, the second time it was a repeat, but this week's appearance of his six-year old character cemented it as a real thing. I guess the third time is the charm, since I've never loved the sketch but warmed to it this week; maybe it was Hill's passive aggressive interactions with his stepmother (Vanessa Bayer) that made it funny. It certainly wasn't the repetition of "I'm six!," which was run into the ground early. Not sure why Nasim Pedrad had to do that racist Asian voice, but the rest of this was solid. (Watch the "Benihana" video)
• "The Hit" - There's so much of this Digital Short that I like in theory -- particularly the first turn, in which Kenan Thompson (playing one of three hitmen waiting to do a job) observes that he feels like he's living in his own snow globe. It got progressively sillier but also more obvious, and the use of MURDER as a punchline was predictable and cheap. It's unfortunate. (Watch the "The Hit" video)
• "Boss Dinner" - Probably the strongest sketch of the night. SNL figured out a long time ago (I'm thinking back when Sarah Michelle Gellar first hosted?) that awkward silences punctuated by the sound of silverware on plates is pretty funny, but that wasn't what carried this sketch. The look on Jonah Hill's face each time he asked to be excused was really, really funny, and I like that the sketch found different places to go each time he went backstage. The makeup was a particularly nice twist. It even had a punchline (Kate McKinnon's line about the salad), even if it was awkwardly added via voice over. (Watch the "Boss Dinner" video)
• "Couples Quiz" - Another sketch that began with great promise. SNL loves to do game show sketches, but this one wasn't about the game so much as the business beforehand. I laughed because I could just hear the pitch for this one in the writers' room: "Wouldn't it be funny if..." Another sketch that got a lot of mileage out of Hill's deadpan humiliation. Also another sketch that had no ending and just kind of gave up by ending the game. (Watch the "Couples Quiz" video)
• "Spike Jonze Trailer" - The second of three pre-taped sketches this week basically redid the trailer for Her, recasting Jonah Hill as a guy who falls in love with his OS, which is also him (it was called Me...get it??). Really, though, it was just a lot of buildup towards the moment when Hill's Superbad co-star Michael Cera could make a cameo as a sexual surrogate (it makes sense if you've seen the movie). It wasn't particularly funny (the best joke was Hill saying "I guess I'd start with little butterfly kisses to your testicles..."), but I did get a kick out of seeing Hill and Cera reunite. (Watch the "Spike Jonez Trailer" video)
• "Inside SoCal" - This is a tough one. There weren't any big laughs in this one -- or even any real "jokes," per se -- but there was something very well observed and funny about the very specific subculture captured here. I know Kyle Mooney isn't going to get a lot of recognition for his performance in this sketch, but it was incredible. I love how he starts selling his "brand" even as the thing is ending. This was almost too subtle and sly to work, but it was secretly great. (Watch the "Inside SoCal" video)
• "Lamborghini" Well, it's been a few weeks since SNL last dragged this one out, so I guess it was time for Cecily Strong and Vanessa Bayer's former porn star salesgirls to show up again. This one is always the same -- the host does the same exact thing ("Not yet...") while the two girls get away with saying the dirtiest things on network TV. Strong and Bayer are always funny in it, but once the shock value wears off there's not much left. This outing lacked even the sometimes dark poetry of previous installments. They should have convinced DiCaprio to come out again and ended on a high note. (Watch the "Lamborghini" video)
• Original Air Date: 1/25/14
• Host: Jonah Hill
• Musical Guest: Bastille