'Saturday Night Live': Jude Law will kill you

Jude Law and a bunch of recurring sketches were the stars on "Saturday Night Live" on March 13.

Law did quite well in his second time hosting the show, referencing his recent run as Hamlet on Broadway in his monologue and in a post-"Update" sketch. The show also had a lot of fun with the resignation this week of New York Congressman Eric Massa, beginning with the show's cold open, where Massa (Bobby Moynihan) tried to explain himself in an exit interview.



It was a solid, and relatively brief, sketch. Law's monologue -- where he briefly re-enacted "Hamlet" with a detour into MTV's "Teen Cribs" ("It's like regular 'Cribs,' but with teens") -- worked pretty well too.

Hands down, though, my favorite sketch of the night involved Law playing a Spanish lothario who tries to seduce two American girls (Abby Elliott and Nasim Pedrad, both of whom got a lot of screen time this week), whom he also promises to kill ("I keel you"). Law managed somehow to play his lines perfectly straight and be a giant ham (as in the picture above) at the same time; it was a completely goofy sketch, but it had me rewinding a couple times to catch lines I missed while I was laughing.



The recurring/repeat sketches were a mixed bag. The show did another episode of the fake 1960s game show "Secret Word," featuring Kristen Wiig's crazypants Broadway actress and Law as a Soviet ballet dancer. It wasn't great, but Law did OK with his small bit, and it at least seemed shorter than previous the previous incarnation of it.

The "Kickspit Underground Rock Festival" was a repeat from an episode earlier this season, while a late-show sketch involving Fred Armisen's incompetent court stenographer was just as funny -- which is to say, not very funny at all -- as it was the last time (though, again, it seemed shorter).

"Weekend Update" featured the return of "Really?!?," and it was another good effort with Jerry Seinfeld joining Seth Meyers to heap some more grief on Massa. (And as a bonus, Seinfeld didn't overtly plug "The Marriage Ref.")



The digital short was another Andy Samberg music video, wherein he and his racing-stripe haircut spread joy and dance to a boiled goose-eating world via his boombox. It had its moments, but it wasn't up to "I'm on a Boat" or "D*** in a Box" standards.

The second "Hamlet"-related sketch was the best of the post-"Update" crop, with Law re-creating his audition for us and Moynihan, Bill Hader, Samberg and Jason Sudeikis playing other famous actors -- Nathan Lane, Al Pacino, Nicolas Cage and Sam Elliott -- in the room with him. Any sketch that ends with the line "The butts, indeed, are for pooping" is OK with me.



Law's episode makes three pretty strong weeks in a row for "Saturday Night Live," which is nice to see after a dull stretch earlier in the season. The show is off for the next few weeks, then Tina Fey will return as host on April 10.

What did you think of "SNL" and Jude Law?

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Photo credit: NBC