‘Saturday Night Live’: Reese Witherspoon, Louis C.K. to host final shows of season 40

“Saturday Night Live” has officially confirmed the final hosts for season 40, and we have to say that are overall feeling here is that of surprise.

Let’s start first and foremost here with Reese Witherspoon, who will be hosting the May 9 edition of the show. Witherspoon has done this before, and she is certainly talented enough to pull it off. No real complains here. The same goes for Louis CK, who is returning for the third time for the May 16 finale. Louis has been nominated for Emmys before for his past two hosting gigs, which we have personally found to be rather uneven. He is tremendous with the monologues, but sometimes the sketches have produced mixed results at best. The musical guests for these two shows are Wiz Khalifa, who is currently #1 on the charts with “See You Again,” and Rihanna for the finale.

The reason we saw “surprise” as our prevailing emotion here is mostly because we expected one major alumni on the show before the end of the season as host, such as maybe an Amy Poehler or a Kristen Wiig or a Jimmy Fallon. There has not been an alumni host since the 40th anniversary special, and there typically is one during the month of May. Louis at least does have some past experience working on the show, so that is probably the closest thing that we are getting here.

Complaints aside, these two plus Scarlett Johansson on May 2 probably will make for a solid month closing off the show. We at least know well already that all three of these characters can be good, capable hosts with the right material.

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