‘Saturday Night Live’ ratings: Kevin Hart, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis show improves

While we found the Kevin Hart-hosted edition of “Saturday Night Live” to be one of the bigger disappointments of the year (at least when it comes to our expectations going into the show, there is still some good news when it comes to the ratings.

Overall, the show ended up drawing a strong 2.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is the show’s best rating since the show hosted by Adam Levine last month. This number was likely boosted by Hart’s devoted following (just look at the ratings of some of his BET properties for evidence of that), as well as the general interest in musical guests Macklemore & Ryan Lewis following the success of their hit single “Thrift Shop.”

So will “SNL” be able to keep it up? For one week, we’re sure that the answer here is going to be “yes.” After getting off to a pretty bad start creatively in 2013, there is quite a bit of stock riding on next weekend’s edition hosted by Justin Timberlake. The “Suit & Tie” singer has long been one of the show’s most-popular hosts, but he does not have the benefit this year of Andy Samberg being on the cast unless he turns up for a surprise appearance. The show needs to desperately take advantage of this opportunity if it wants to regain some of its momentum moving forward to the rest of the year, as we are not sure that there will be another show this year that picks up the same sort of ratings.

What did you think about Hart’s show as a whole, and are you surprised in any way by the numbers? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below, and you can read our full review of Hart’s show by heading on over to the link here.

Photo: NBC