Amazingly, SNL didn't suck it this week!  Awesome! (Photo: NBC.com)

For the past month, the Comedy Examiner has watched in horror as Saturday Night Live has gotten less and less funny.  What was once a proud institution housing some of the funniest comedic performers and writers in the country has turned into a lame, "MAD TV"-level TV show in its 35th season.  Last night was the latest episode, with Gerard Butler hosting.  How was it?  How was he?  The answers may surprise you.  Read on, my gentle Examiner readers...

Cutting to the chase, last night's episode of "Saturday Night Live" was a huge improvement on what's so far been an enormously obnoxious season.  Host Gerard Butler more than held his own as a comedic perform against the likes of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, which was a big improvement over the previous weeks' hosts Megan Fox and Drew Barrymore. 

Oh, and all those much-discussed Budweiser commercials?  Well, even they weren't that annoying, and provided several laugh out loud moments with their old footage from dress rehearsals and unused sketches.  Go figure.

We were fully prepared not to enjoy this episode, and with the "The Rock Obama" sketch that opened the show, we felt our suspicions were going to be confirmed.  But once the monologue got going-- wherein Butler showed off the voice he hasn't had to use on-screen since his work in "Phantom of The Opera", combined with him fighting a bunch of ninjas (you had to be there)-- the show started gaining steam, and the steam boiled over after a not-terrible fake commercial for "Skank-Ho Champagne" (which was reminiscent of "Tropic Thunder"s "Booty Sweat") in a sketch featuring Butler as "Beast" from "Beauty and The Beast".  The whole idea for the sketch was that "Beast" didn't consider himself the "beast", but rather "Beauty". 

As we're describing that, it doesn't sound that funny, but it was.  Any sketch that includes the line, "How does she know we call it the 'Ass Castle'?" gets my vote.  And the sketches continued to be funny for an amazingly long stretch.  There were slow moments here and there, and there were definitely parts where you could feel the pace of the show being threatened by a shoddy performance (Bobby Moynihan, suck it), but overall the whole thing held together quite while.

We're not ready to pronounce this a "comeback" for SNL-- it's far too early for that-- but we will admit that we laughed at this week's episode, and that's saying a helluva lot after the crappiness of the past few weeks' episodes.  My grade? B+, with last week's being a D (as a point of comparison). 

Hey, while you're here, check out these other recent articles from the Comedy Examiner's Office:

"Bill Murray ain't afraid to headbutt you (and other stories)"-- in which we read a really funny, informative article about Bill Murray and pass some of it along to you.

"Jon Gosselin getting sued so hard, his momma gonna be broke! (with bonus video)"-- check out our latest "Jon and Kate + Snarky Commentary" style article here!

"What big-name star just joined the "Sex and The City" sequel?  Find out here!"-- in which we learn which hot star has joined the cast of HBO's sequel-comedy about Cosmo's.