It was like a child rewarded for not having a fit at the dinner table.

And, like a child counseled to use her "inside voice," President Donald Trump succeeded Tuesday evening by rising to the most minimal (even negligible) of expectations and was rewarded with an outpouring of media affirmation. It wasn't just his beloved morning show, "Fox and Friends."

"I'm fascinated that Trump is being applauded for containing himself for an hour. The new 'presidential' is that he didn't insult, brag or blatantly lie for 60 minutes. Millions are celebrating a wooden performance," says Kelly Leonard, former longtime artistic director of the path-breaking Second City Comedy troupe, whose alumni include current A-listers Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Cecily Strong.

The paradoxes of the performance, when juxtaposed to his brief tenure, or even to remarks made only hours earlier, were captured well by reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker in The New York Times. Their take was part of a torrent of coverage that raised a basic question, even if inadvertently: Will the real Donald Trump please stand up?

But what about that performance before a joint session of Congress? Put aside the mix of high-minded aspirations, banalities, harshness and confusions. How did one assess a man standing there, improbably, largely due to television stardom?

"What's interesting to me is how different he was from even that morning's 'Fox and Friends' interview, when he's accusing Obama of being behind the town hall protests," says Jon Maas, a Hollywood producer-writer who did a 2000 made-for-TV movie about Washington, "The Last Debate," based on a Jim Lehrer novel. "He was clearly playing 'calm' and 'measured,' which is preferable to coming off like a raging lunatic whipping up the crowd. But in trying to be 'presidential,' he ended up being monotone. Everything had the same emphasis, nothing built towards anything, which made the thing feel even longer than it was. "

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"A politician's performance is critically dependent on the temperature of the room they're in, and Tuesday night Trump received the warmest welcome of his newfound political career, at least outside his recreational rallies," says Michael Phillips, movie critic for the Chicago Tribune and its former chief drama critic who parts company somewhat from Maas. "He's always been comfortable on camera, thanks to his reality TV stardom, so comfort isn't the variable with Trump. In this speech, though, he figured out a few things about modulation and pacing that seemed relatively new."

The speech strikes him as " a more relaxed, less belligerent version of his inauguration scarefest. Trump may never been temperamentally suited to uttering words such as unity' or 'peace' in public, convincingly; he prefers the braggart's sales pitch, which you heard last night when he promised that 'great, great wall' along the U.S./Mexico border. (Love that second 'great.' A wall that is merely 'great' is practically a loser wall!)"

"He may never get over those perma-congestion intakes of breath after longer passages. His confidence may always sound vaguely thuggish to a large percentage of the American populace. But Trump may be also learning the art of the rhetorical soft sell, even if it's just for the opener and the closer," Philips says.

But it remained odd, nonetheless.

"It's as if you bought a ticket to a Sam Kinison show and Garrison Keillor showed up instead. Trump ran and has been governing as Dr. Jekyll and this speech was delivered by Mr. Hyde," says Leonard, who remains a Second City consultant and runs a production firm housed within it. "Removing any context – he's not an orator, he drops words – he's ham-fisted when delivering his big lines ('radical Islamic terror' and 'repeal and replace Obamacare'), he still has trouble with the microphone – sniffing into it regularly. And the Mussolini-like pull back during his applause breaks is eerily disconcerting."

I'm sure there will be spin that this was his "most presidential" speech and that he struck a "conciliatory tone." Sure, but that feels like giving points because he didn't belch during the presentation.

Leonard found a performer who lost the thread of his narrative near the end, right after 10 p.m. Eastern. He was tired.

So while political pundits opined about the relative effectiveness of it all, an expert in evaluating presentation found the evening "a total clunker" from the entertainment perspective. He didn't insult anybody or blatantly lie, so he was praised for a by and large wooden effort.

"At least in the previous addresses – especially those on the campaign trail – the loose improvisational tangents and the quick jabs that were more reminiscent of an insult comic than the leader of the free world provided some punch," says Leonard.

But, as he concedes, what makes for good entertainment may not make for good governance. Boring has its attributes.

Chris Jones, Phillips' successor as the Tribune's drama critic (and a whirling dervish reporter), discerns how "Trump and his handlers clearly had figured out that pessimism does not serve their man well, not once he is underway. They further have figured out, it seems, that improvisation is similarly dangerous for him."

"So you had a scripted and upbeat and coherent speech, which generated the good reviews, and a speech that was light on specifics, which muted the criticism," says Jones. "He seemed to have turned over a new rhetorical leaf. He clearly has improved when it comes to understanding the power of the presidential pulpit and the gravitas it affords, assuming you lean into its benefits."

If you want to understand Trump performances, finds Jones, you're better off doing it through the language of negotiation in real estate. He does what he feels is necessary, at that very moment, to try to close a deal. On this night, at least, that thrust combined with the low expectations to create a sense for some of a potentially useful "pivot."

And then there were two of his most unavoidable onlookers: Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan, the two Midwest Republicans bound by ideology and identical blue neckties.

Ryan had that frozen smile, notes Maas, suggesting he was spending less time actually listening than focused on how he was perceived as far as listening.

And Jones, too, found "the optics of Pence and Ryan" to be fascinating. "Ryan, young as he is, seemed to gaze at Trump as if the president were a work in progress, a junior partner coming along. There was a look of condescension at times, and at other times a look of approval. He looked a bit like a dad watching his kid give a big speech; Ryan is all about positioning himself as the adult in the room."