Just saw a new SNL show and Sarah Michelle Gellar was the guest star. Well, this was a lousy show. The Christina Aguilera video parody was a good idea and could have been funny but it wasn't. The sexual harassment seminar was totally not funny. The segment on the police officers in the high school lecturing the kids in a class about sex and drugs was so not funny that it was pathetic. Sarah's opening monologue with the obligatory vampires in the audience was dull. The Weekend Update wasn't particularly funny. The jokes about American attitudes toward a war against Saddam were almost funny. The skit where Saddam sent his look-alikes out to get shot at could have been funny but it wasn't. When Saddam started sending his look-alikes out to get shot at something could have happened. They could have sent a look-alike to the window and had him get shot. They could have sent the look-alike up to the roof and had him get shot (background gun sound) and then shown a dummy's body falling down to the terrace behind them. Or something else could have been done in the skit to give it some dramatic humour. But they didn't. The skit with Tracy Morgan and Lorne Michaels trying to convince Sarah and Faith Hill to mud wrestle was dull and uninspiring. If there was something funny in the whole show I do not know what it was.

Surely the SNL writers are capable of better than this. Do they realise just how bad it was?

Update: Christina Aguilera agrees that the SNL piece by Sarah Michelle Gellar (bless her Buffy the Vampire Slayer heart) could have been better done:

The exaggerated juiciness of all this hasn't escaped Saturday Night Live, which recently satirized the video's hard-sell sexuality. It also played up the worst public image of Aguilera. As portrayed by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, she's a vain and trashy tyrant who keeps yelling at the director of the clip, "It's not skanky enough!!"

Aguilera says she was amused by the piece, but adds: "They could have done a better job with it."

In the same article in the Edmonton Journal Ms. Aguilera makes a heartfelt plea on behalf of oppressed and misunderstood blondes:

"It's funny how society places such strict standards upon young blond females," says the singer who fits just that description.

"We're supposed to play the clean-cut view the public wants of us. But I am not your little cookie-cutter virgin."

Ms. Aguilera has special reason to feel oppressed as new musicians who are not as blonde (or blonde at all) come along and attract attention. Avril Lavigne is acceptable for parents of young children and doesn't doesn't find a need to act like a skanky bitch (someone tell her to please Let Go). Brunettes Michelle Branch (or see here) and Vanessa Carlton (or see here) also don't need to do extreme exhibitionism in order to sell their music.

But hey, this essay is about what a tragedy it is that the lovely and talented Sarah Michelle Gellar went on such a terribly written SNL episode. The problems was that "It's not funny enough!".