In case you were wondering why Ben Affleck was randomly tapped to host the season finale of Saturday Night Live despite the post-Oscar glow of his Argo victory having long since worn off, the almost immediate disappearance of his Terrence Malick adventure To the Wonder from theaters and the absence of any new projects in his career pipeline, the answer lies in the fact that this episode marked the departure of Bill Hader and his popular Stefon alter ego from Studio 8H. (Also Fred Armisen, but c'mon... he shoulda left three seasons ago.)

Now that he's less "bizarre" and more "kinda weird" to mainstream audiences thanks to a ton of exposure since the first time he hosted Saturday Night Live, Zach Galifianakis was able to pull off more experimental gags this week on SNL -- and they were less totally inaccessible than they were the second time he hosted. The former half of the episode was tight, funny and definitely a success by current SNL standards... the latter, not so much. Let's focus on the sketches worth watching:

This second appearance of Melissa McCarthy wasn't the worst episode of SNL that we've seen this season, but that's not really saying much. It mostly relied on putting McCarthy in ridiculous wigs and having her do really broad physical comedy. Having watched more of Mike & Molly than we'd normally care to admit, we know that McCarthy is capable of slightly subtler humor that doesn't rely on her wearing gigantic high heels and bad wigs or falling on her face... but the show went for the easiest common denominator. They also went a really long way with a North Korea joke in the cold open solely so they could have Dennis Rodman butcher the "live from New York" intro. We've ranked the bad hair that McCarthy sported, from best to worst:

It was yet another nostalgic outing for Saturday Night Live this weekend, as Justin Timberlake gained membership into the "Five Timers Club" for quintuple hosting gigs and the writers celebrated by raiding the show's back catalogue for (vaguely) fresh material. Some of these reunions with old friends were welcome, while others were... well, really kind of cringe-inducing. Here were the best and worst callbacks from an overall uneven episode.

After the Christoph Waltz experiment worked out better than anyone could have anticipated, Saturday Night Live retreated to safer ground this week, going with established comic Kevin Hart as host. Unlike its more offbeat predecessor, which went off in some strange, but amusing directions (in that way perfectly complementing Waltz's onscreen persona), this episode was standard Saturday Night Live fare, a series of underwritten sketches that lived and died on the strength of the cast and emcee.

This was a great week for Saturday Night Live, in no small part thanks to host Christoph Waltz's energy and stage presence (and you could say the same for Django Unchained). Unlike his recent costar Jamie Foxx, Waltz was actually allowed to play more than just one character -- and thank God for that, because "wacky Austrian" sounds worse than watching Quentin Tarantino try to act. They weren't all winners, but let's take a look at the scenes that Waltz and the SNL gang actually shone in. (And not for nothing, Alabama Shakes put on a great show, too.):

Maroon 5 frontman, The Voice host and American Horror Story murder victim Adam Levine tried his hand at sketch comedy over the weekend as a Saturday Night Live host. How'd he do? Well, let's just say he shouldn't quit his day job anytime soon... whatever that happens to be this week. (At least the writers clearly realized his limitations, writing around him as much as humanly possible.) Despite the night's overall suckitude, there were a few bits that worked. Here are the sketches we would have turned our big red plush chairs around for.

Jennifer Lawrence -- newly minted A-list star of The Hunger Games and current Oscar nominee for Silver Linings Playbook -- made her first appearance in the battle arena known as Saturday Night Live over the weekend. And just like her alter ego, Katniss Everdeen, she didn't get off to the smoothest start, botching her opening monologue (the Best Actress smackdown was a decent idea, but Lawrence seemed too nervous to really execute it) and struggling through the first few (admittedly terribly written) sketches. But around the halfway mark, she found her groove and finished strong with some pretty funny material. Here's a rundown on Lawrence's losers and winners:

It was a sweet and classy move to open the show with the New York City Children's Chorus singing "Silent Night" in honor of all the victims of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, but unfortunately, the classiness ended there and then it all turned into a string of jokes about sex and the numerous things you could call a woman's vagina. Still, this Martin Short episode (which might as well have been the Paul McCartney episode, as they probably had about the same amount of airtime) had a bunch of guest stars and some funny moments. Alec Baldwin as Tony Bennett, was not among them.

I imagine that when Jamie Foxx got his script (or read his cue cards? I'm not sure how this show works anymore) for this week's Saturday Night Live episode, every single one of his characters was described as an "over-the-top manic black man." If I had to say three positive things about this endeavor, I guess one would be that it kind of reminded me of old-school SNL episodes where Chris Rock used to also play various angry archetypes (though it was a lot more culturally relevant and satirical in the early '90s), two is that the Django Unchained trailer was fun and three is definitely every moment of Aidy Bryant. With that in mind, here are the highlights of the evening: