Hot Air

January Jones has the kind of blank and pleasant beauty so mesmerizing it makes people forget she's a crap actress. In fact, just last week I had a girl crush on her. Because one second she's wearing a headband and white gloves and the next she's on the red carpet all avant garde with rocker studs and smokey eyes. So I'm loving the juxtaposition. But then she decided to do a little thing called not being Betty Draper. It started somewhere around mid-week with Jimmy Fallon, which she giggled her way through (briefly charming, then grating, then mind-boggling). After turning everyone's brain into jelly, she fell back on the old pretty girl trick of drinking beer like a dude. This was supposed to make us forget the fact that she had just spent seven minutes contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation and it did. So I was all set to give her a second look with SNL. Because why not root for the cheerleader with a heart of gold? It would be interesting if she showed up and bodyslammed it, proved Ashton wrong and gave the American public one more thing to puzzle over beyond her genetic jackpot of an appearance. But that didn't happen. Nope, not even a little bit. And instead I spent the entire episode with my mouth slightly ajar, fruitlessly attempting to coach her through her lines like a crazed stage mother. She broke character during the fart sketch, which was completely unwarranted (because-ahem-it wasn't funny). And can we talk about the closing sketch. She's lying on a picnic blanket with Jason Sudeikis and every word out of her mouth is like a non-sequitor on top of a bag full of oxygen on top of a black hole. Because that just about sums up the January Jones experience. And while I can't speak for the writers, I'm guessing that was no coincidence. Also-pretty sure she wasn't in on the joke.