Has Joss Whedon spread himself too thin? Consider the ratings positions of his 3 TV shows on their most recent showings: Firefly in last place. Angel in last place. Buffy in last place.
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!".
I have all sorts of thoughts when watching TV shows and movies. I'd like to share them here. Complaint and criticism are only too easy to do in life and so what I'd like to do here is to try to match every criticism and every dissatisfaction with hopefully constructive and useful suggestions about how my favorite shows could be made better.
I'd like to find out if any other viewers out there find these views agreeable and whether perhaps they even share some of the same reactions. Are my usual dissatisfactions with TV shows a result of having basically esoteric tastes in entertainment? Or are there large legions of dissatisfied all out there grumbling at the TV set with a similar set of dissatisfactions? It would also be great to get the attention of some the show producers to see if they might find some of my suggestions for improvements to be useful.
As for my tastes: expect to find posts here on science fiction and fantasy shows including Buffy, Angel, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda Ascendant, Witchblade, Dead Zone, and even Enterprise. Outside of science fiction and fantasy I watch a few shows because they are either sufficiently peculiar (Monk) or have cutting humour that I absolutely agree with (South Park).
Most of my criticisms will be aimed at TV shows for two reasons: First of all, I spend more hours watching TV shows than watching movies. Secondly, TV shows are recurring. Whereas its too late after a movie has been made and released to tell them how they might have made it better. So comments will be made here in the hopes that some of the suggestions may eventually have some influence on how some TV shows get made.
The types of comments to be offered will range from how to make the special effects or fight scenes more convincing to how to develop a particular character to make the character more interesting or authentic to problems with the general plot trend of a series.