SNL: Bill Hader is the World’s Worst Detective

It seems like there are two ways to craft a great SNL sketch. You either have to write a funny scene filled the jokes that work and put the right performers in it...or you can just let Bill Hader do his Bill Hader thing for two minutes. And by "Bill Hader thing,' we mean give him a character and just let him run with it in any absurd direction. Last night, Hader was able to break out his noir P.I. voice and the result was just a little glorious.

The scene is a familiar one to anyone who has seen even a handful of detective movies or TV shows in their life. A man (played here by the always game Joseph Gordon-Levitt) visits the office of a private investigator to learn if his wife is having an affair. Naturally, she is...but the P.I.'s methods are a bit peculiar, to put it mildly. Rather than take photographs of his cheating wife, he sketches caricatures, which are for sale, of course. From there, it only gets weirder.

Any episode of SNL that lets Hader use an old-timey voice is a successful episode, but an episode that lets Hader antagonize Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who is putting on a wacky accent of his own)? That's just about pefect.