It’s been more than six months since La La Land famously won best picture until it didn’t, and that’s long enough that even Ryan Gosling can get in on the joke about his character—a white guy who just loves jazz so much. In his opening monologue for his second Saturday Night Live hosting gig, Gosling pulled up behind a piano to reminisce about “how I saved jazz.“

Several people attempted to set Gosling straight about what, exactly, he’s done for jazz, Kenan Thompson among them—but none were as effective as his La La Land co-star Emma Stone, who popped by at the end to stake her own claim, while holding a cigarette that miraculously revealed a plume of smoke at the perfect moment.

But the opening monologue wasn’t really about La La Land, or jazz, or even Blade Runner 2049, the movie Gosling is ostensibly on the show to promote. What it was really about was the opportunity to see Gosling crack up while pronouncing New Orleans as “Nerlins,“ a classic moment of breaking on live TV—the sort Gosling has turned into an art after just two S.N.L. appearances. When he first hosted in 2015, the most viral sketch was technically a showcase for __ Kate McKinnon__ and her unforgettable weirdo with a story of alien abduction; what made the sketch a classic, though, was Gosling’s inability to keep a straight face through the whole thing, and the way the giggles managed to infect everyone else in the sketch.

So it was no surprise that the show‘s first sketch after the monologue was alien abduction all over again. And as much as professional comedians may claim to hate breaking on camera, no one wants to leave a giggling Gosling opportunity on the table. The premise of the sketch remained the same, with McKinnon, Gosling, and Cecily Strong as three dummies telling their tales of close encounters. But McKinnon, fresh off her second Emmy win, managed to up the ante by telling a story just as bizarre and gross, but with added physical demonstrations. Even facing away from the camera, Gosling couldn’t hide the laughter.

Gosling was a major part of nearly every sketch of the night, and took on a wide variety of roles, some of them far sillier than what he would usually do on screen and some of them much more in his wheelhouse. All of them, at some point or another, forced him to crack up. See “Guy Who Just Joined Soho House“ on “Weekend Update“ (though the dark sunglasses helped him get away with a lot of it):

Or the flute player in the “Dive Bar“ sketch, which aired at a point in the night when no one else in the cast seemed capable of keeping it together either:

In the sketches in which he lost it the most, though, Gosling was helpless in the face of his female scene partners; there was McKinnon in the alien abduction sketch, and then later in the night, Cecily Strong as an outraged Italian restaurant patron making way too big a deal out of the food at Terrazano’s being replaced by Pizza Hut.

The most ridiculous, though, may have been a film noir-inspired sketch featuring Gosling and Aidy Bryant as a chicken in love with a man on the run from the law (yes, really!). It started off as a classic situation of love gone awry, something right out of Gosling’s more serious movies like Gangster Squad or Ides of March. But by the end, the whole thing had gotten so silly that neither Gosling nor Bryant could keep it together.

Then again, how can anyone keep a straight face while kissing someone wearing a chicken beak?