'Saturday Night Live' Recap: Dakota Johnson Throws Some Shade

Going into this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, both the show and host Dakota Johnson were riding high. SNL had just come off its blockbuster 40th anniversary show, which reminded 23.1 million fans just how much they loved (and, occasionally, loved to hate) the sketch comedy behemoth. Meanwhile, Johnson is the star of — and, really, the only good thing about — a little movie called 50 Shades of Grey. She also won the Oscars pre-show extravaganza with a hilarious red carpet interview where she visibly rolled her eyes at her mother, Melanie Griffith’s fuddy-duddy reaction to her involvement with Shades.

In other words, there was nowhere for either party to go but down. And the opening sketch — which fused the furor over Rudy Giuliani’s comments about Obama with a send-up of newly-minted Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman — didn’t exactly raise our hopes, and the show remained uneven all night. Johnson, on the other hand, gave a charming monologue, capped off with an expected but still amusing cameo by her parents, Griffith and Don Johnson. In fact, Johnson — who first demonstrated her comedic chops on the short-lived Fox sitcom Ben and Kate and uses them to great effect in 50 Shades as well — easily ranks amongst the season’s best hosts, gamely playing through sketches that didn’t come together and nailing the skits that were on point. The financial success of 50 Shades technically makes Johnson a star; this SNL appearance confirms she actually deserves to be one.

Best Sketch: “Say What You Wanna Say”
You couldn’t ask for a better illustration of Louis C.K.’s SNL 40 argument about the show’s filmed sketches being better than its live skits. As various women free themselves of society’s conventions and speak what’s truly on their minds (like not caring about ISIS or wanting to devour entire cookies), they’re celebrated with a blast of the Sara Bareilles anthem “Brave.”

Worst Sketch: “Fifty Shades of Grey Press Room”
Featured player Kyle Mooney introduces a new character — middle-school journalist Peter Scott Finley — and, boy, he can’t go away fast enough. A distant, far less amusing cousin of Vanessa Bayer’s dorky Bar Mitzvah boy Jacob, mouth-breather Peter asks Johnson (playing herself) a series of R-rated questions, each one dumber than the last. Airing footage from Johnson’s famously disastrous press tour with 50 Shades co-star Jamie Dornan would have gotten more laughs.

Best Use of Johnson: “Net Effect”
Johnson’s Emoji-loving tech blogger felt so realistic, we’re pretty sure we already follow her on Twitter.

Episode MVP: Sasheer Zamata
Even better than Jay Pharoah’s Kanye rap on “Weekend Update” were Zamata’s priceless facial expressions as his back-up dancer. She was equally hilarious reacting to Cecily Strong’s extreme cookie-noshing ways in “Brave” and as part of the eccentric panel on “Net Effect.” OK, writers — now give her some funny lines to go along with her expert face-pulling.

Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:35 p.m. on NBC.