There's nothing funny about Saturday night

About two weeks ago, a fairly well-known group of performers appeared on live television for over five minutes gamely trying to use the premise that "Cajun accents are funny" to entertain America. Though it seemed like some improv act gone terribly wrong, the skit, which relied on the repeated use of the phrase "simmer down now," actually went out live to nearly every home in the United States.

This abomination, so unfunny that it made C-Span look like Monty Python, actually aired during the first half hour of "Saturday Night Live," which is theoretically where the "good" material goes. This means that had I stayed up for the rest of the program, I would have seen stuff that was worse-though short of showing live surgery, I can hardly imagine what that could have been.

Though "SNL" lists a dozen writers in its credits, it seems unlikely that even one contributed to this mess. Perhaps they spent too much time before the show trying to get through to the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" hotline and they had five minutes to fill. Or maybe they have lost touch with what's funny so completely that they actually believed a wacky accent and ramming a new catch phrase down people's throats will get them that movie deal.

I'm sure every person in the writing room hopes to be part of the next It's Pat, or perhaps create the new Stuart Saves His Family. This has blinded them to the fact that they're writing a show which actually makes you long for the high comedic concept of Pat.

Once, at least briefly, the proudest source of American comedy, "Saturday Night Live," has slipped into a comic abyss formerly only occupied by sitcoms on the WB. Perhaps the producers could employ the criterion "Would Jamie Foxx find this funny?" before putting something on the air, but that's setting the bar so low that anything short of Al Gore reading from Jewel's poetry book would probably pass.

It seems that "SNL's" writers have gotten lazy from years of filling the show with sketches that star recurring characters the audience recognizes and therefore laughs at. At least in the past, some of those characters had an amusing premise or were spun off from funny skits.

In today's version, the writers usually just go for over-the-top wackiness with no particular attempt at creating fleshed-out characters. This leaves the audience with third-rate comedians doing second-rate Chris Farley, who was himself a fourth-rate John Belushi.

Where we once had the Blues Brothers, Buckwheat and even the Church Lady, we're now stuck with the Cheerleaders, Mary Catherine Gallagher and the inexcusable Goat Boy. Sometimes the gag isn't even a developed comic premise; it's more of an actor with a funny voice or a weird facial expression. Because of this, Lorne Michaels has actually staffed the show with actors who look like their parents were brother and sister, or at least first cousins.

While this has provided gainful employment for Chris Kattan, a performer whose only talent seems to be his possession of silly-looking pointy ears, it hasn't been very good for the rest of us.

Since nothing new has come out of "SNL" in a long time, Michaels and NBC should pull the plug. Instead of trotting out a new lame cast every year, why not round up the underemployed stars from the show's glory year and head off to Branson, Missouri? I'm sure Chevy Chase is just waiting by the phone.