Will Jon Hamm Be the New Alec Baldwin of Saturday Night Live

Although the suave, sardonic and sometimes edgy Alec Baldwin holds the current record for number of times guest hosting Saturday Night Live by a non-alumnus of the show with 14 SNL guest hosting stints, relative new kid on the block Jon Hamm may be nipping at Baldwin's heels. Hamm has hosted SNL only twice, the second time last night, but his performance turned the usual lackluster and insufferable Saturday Night Live skits of late into outstanding comedy sketches that did not make me want to zip forward to Weekend Update after the opening skit.

From his opening monologue, in which Hamm showed clips of old TV shows he supposedly appeared in (for instance, Hamm pretended he had appeared as a high school student in an early 90s sitcom, only he was clad in his dapper Mad Men suit and tie and played the role as a teenaged version of the arrogant Don Draper) to his impersonation of recently elected U.S. Senate hunk Scott Brown (in which Hamm cast his sexy spell on Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi and Barnie Frank), Hamm's charisma, comic timing and Hollywood handsome looks made last night's SNL episode an outlier in recent SNL history. The show was actually watchable for a change.

Jon Hamm as Sergio on SNL video short

Perhaps the most bizarre bit in which Hamm appeared was the video short in which Hamm played a long-haired, sexy saxophone playing fantasy guy named Sergio, who is actually a curse cast upon the Andy Samberg character by a homeless man as a punishment for not so much accidentally breaking his sacred talisman but for arrogantly refusing to make amends. The gyrating Sergio, whose shiny skin looks like it has been slathered with hair gel, pops up during inopportune times, such as a business presentation and romantic date, taking the spotlight off of the increasingly annoyed Samberg character. I won't spoil the ending in case you want to catch this episode on the NBC website (which I highly recommend), but my theory is the Sergio video is the kind of bit that would not have worked without someone of Hamm's comedic caliber in the role.

Hamm also managed to make musical guest Michael Buble come off as a half-way funny guy when the two did a skit about a new concept restaurant they were opening together, Hamm and Buble (pronounced by Hamm as Bubbly to the Michael Buble character's chagrin), a trendy restaurant featuring pig meats and champagne as the primary food and drink options (the most unappetizing of which was pig meat chunks in champagne). Throughout the skit, Hamm gave Buble several of his signature "don't even think of challenging me" looks, an intimidating stare he does so well and so often in Mad Men.

Could Hamm beat Baldwin's record for guest hosting SNL?

Whether Jon Hamm inspired SNL's snoozing writers to write better material or Hamm managed to make their anemic material sparkle is difficult to say. Either way, the synergy of Jon Hamm and Saturday Night Live is such that the Mad Men star is likely to be invited back on a regular basis and may one day even surpass Alec Baldwin's record for number of times guest hosting SNL by a non-alumnus. (Steve Martin currently holds the record for number of times guest hosting Saturday Night Live by an alumnus of the show).

Meanwhile, deep in his bunker at NBC headquarters, NBC President Jeff Zucker has to be kicking himself for allowing a hit show like Mad Men to slip through his fingers. Second tier cable station AMC is profiting handsomely from this award winning TV drama set in a Madison Avenue ad agency in the 1960's.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Timers_Club#Five_time_hosts
http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/01/31/review-saturday-night-live-jon-hamm-michael-buble/