‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Schoolhouse Rock parody, Back Home Baller, more via Cameron Diaz

‘This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” had a challenge: How to follow up a great show hosted by Woody Harrelson, and how to do it with a host in Cameron Diaz who we didn’t have that much confidence in to be funny. The only things we consciously remember her for are “Shrek,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and being in a billion romantic comedies.

If you are looking to catch some videos from this show, come back in the morning! We will have them all included here then. This article is also going to be updated live with some further updates from the show as they happen, with a full grade at the end.

School House Rock cold open – Hilarious. We’re not sure that Kenan Thompson being pushed down the stairs three times was great, but the first two times we were rolling. A great combination of nostalgia and pop-culture savvy.

Cameron Diaz monologue – Lame. The “questions from the audience” bit has been done quite a few times now, and it is basically all the same. Nothing in really made us laugh beyond the few seconds of Bobby Moynihan.

Back Home Baller – It’s the sequel to “Do It in My Twin Bed.” As a standalone video, it’s great and a pretty fun representation of going home for Thanksgiving and doing absolutely nothing. As a direct comparison, it’s probably not as good as the original … but we do love the reference to Jean from the first one all over again. Hooray for continuity!

Annie spoof – This felt like obvious product placement for Diaz’s movie, but it was still reasonably funny thanks mostly to Leslie Jones committing to it. In just two weeks, she has redeemed herself completely from that busted sketch with Chris Rock.

Nest-Spresso – This was …weird. Who thought of the idea of an espresso maker, but with baby birds? It was almost as weird as the Bird Bible sketch from last season. There were some charming moments, but it’s not something we feel compelled to watch ever again.

Hipster theater – Kenan Thompson and Vanessa Bayer (who has a lot to do tonight) made this one funny. Watching these weird performers say something almost felt like a Britta Perry dream project. We went from hating it to really liking it with every scene … especially the hospital one.

Weekend Update – One of the weaker versions of Update that we have certainly seen over the season, mostly because only about half of the jokes were funny, though we at least like the show trying to take on controversial subjects like Bill Cosby. Angela Merkel is always a fine addition, and we don’t know enough about Charles Manson to have a strong opinion one way or another (talking about the impression here, not in terms of what Manson did).

Baby Boss – Let’s put it this way. You either love this Beck Bennett showcase, or hate it. There is no middle ground. We mostly loved this one, just because there was so much in the way of physical comedy for him.

Animal Hour – This was bizarre, but we really liked it! Like Baby Boss, it was just completely silly. Seeing real animals on the show was an interesting twist, and we give Cameron credit for letting a lemur walk all over her during this sketch.

The fight – We don’t get most of the Kyle Mooney / Beck Bennett sketches. It feels like they really went for the “so bad it’s good” angle for this “I’m going to fight Andy” bit, and it was ultimately too amateur for its own good.

Poetry reading – Once again, a little bit weird, but also at the same time relatively funny. This was probably Diaz’s biggest characters of the night, being a very different twist on the Vanessa Bayer character we’ve seen a few times now.

Hotline – It would have been a little funnier were the sketch a little shorter, but having this twist on the common 2:00 a.m. commercial featuring women you can “call” was an inspired idea.

Overall, we genuinely were surprised by most of the show. There were a few dud sketches, but we admittedly laughed at more than half of them. We thought it could be in the running for one of the worst shows, but instead, it’s somewhere in the middle. Grade: B-.

Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments.