Chris Pratt Hosts SNL: Best, Worst, and Weirdest Moments | TIME

Chris Pratt on Saturday Night Live on Sept. 27, 2014.Dana Edelson—NBC/Getty Images

Host Chris Pratt lacked good material, but not enthusiasm

Here is a question that I didn’t think I’d have to ask: Did anyone at Saturday Night Live know who Chris Pratt was before he agreed to host last night?

The season premiere, SNL‘s 40th, played way more to the idea of Pratt (handsome, open-minded blockbuster-er) than to his human Slinky strengths, which kept being hidden behind wigs, like the wigs were the joke. He is the joke! But too many of the sketches expected him to do so much with so little; or, worse, didn’t expect anything much from him at all. (When his chest flashed across the screen in the final sketch, the audience roared.) That said…

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

The best joke came in Pratt’s monologue, otherwise an affair not quite louche enough to be lovable. After a word or two, he pulled out a guitar, but warned the audience: “I know I’m not half the singer that Ariana Grande is, but I am technically three times her body weight. So the math works out.”

The best sketch, and Pratt’s best moments, played expertly on two things: 1) that everyone in America has seen Guardians of the Galaxy and 2) that we all love the same two things about it.SNL puréed that into a marketing video touting a new slate of films under the banner, “Marvel Can’t Fail.” Coming soon: Bus People, Marvel’s Pam, Pam 2: The Winter Pam, and Some Shopping Carts, with the footage all cued to the strut down the hallway from the original Guardians trailer, with “Hooked on a Feeling” playing in the background. It’s a joke that’s easy to over-explain, but funniest — like here — in endless variation.