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My Birthday Episode: Year 28

Somewhere between 1997 and 2000 we had a picture of Christina Aguilera hanging by the front door of our party house because of the great debate of which music video was better, What A Girl Wants by Aguilera that was chalked full of girls, or She Bangs by Ricky Martin who just one roommate felt, may have had way more men but it also had one of the hottest girls he had ever seen.

Keep in mind we were all in our early twenties when this type of debate was not only acceptable but expected from a bunch of young partying drunks. It was also around a time when a bulk of us had enough time to roughly learn the moves to Christina's song purely to annoy our roommate for his difference in opinion. This used to really piss him off, especially during parties when the video would randomly play and we'd all start to dance along, making us look like the fun ones as other joined in while he could do nothing but roll his eye and desperately try to explain his side of the argument.

Other than that, I didn't really follow Christina Aguilera because of all of the pop singers who I liked to be either ironic or quirky, she was my least favorite of them all. Keep in mind, even though I add that I liked/like pop singers to be ironic and quirky, there is still a lever of genuine like or else it would be torture and not a joke I'd be down for. At the same time, none of these performers made music that I'd actively seek out, I just chose to enjoy myself instead of proclaiming hatred whenever these songs would come on.

Of course, Christina is big enough that you don't have to do much seeking to passively keep up with her careers, especially during this era where we still mainly counted on airwave to be entertain. Now that there's a modern internet, I can stay blind to entire genres without even having to try. I think my issue with Christina was that she wasn't poppy enough and I've never been a huge fan of singers who really try to belt out their song.

After my midlife meltdown a couple years back that got me to move back home, I was reunited with Christina through The Voice when I started to watch prime-time television again with my mom, which is kind of interesting considering the musical guest was Adam Levine. Between the old Christina and this new one, I still think she's very talented but I've never once thought of her and the word comedy at all. I mean, she wasn't like Britney Spears who seemed to play up her silly side, at least before she had a meltdown of her own.

That's why I was surprised to find that right out the gate, Christina Aguilera turned out to be really fun. Granted, she still carried herself like the coolest person in the room throughout the entire night, which I kept expecting to get annoying only to find that I was constantly wrong. She might not have had the silly energy that I love but she approached each sketch with a confident commitment that led me to buy the characters that she was putting down.

I don't know if I'm now slap-happy from switching to the graveyard schedule that I've been talking about throughout the past couple of reviews but either way, I like what's happening because tonight makes five episode in a row that I really liked, changing my view on this season that I was starting to dislike.

Hopefully, this trend continues but we'll have to wait and see. Until then, it's now time for me to shift gears in order to share what I saw, as I give you...

The Wicker Breakdown:

This week's show started with another parody of Hardball where once again Darrell Hammond played Chris Matthews, this time to rant against same-sex marriage to Horatio Sanz as Rosie O'Donnell, Chris Parnell as one of the homophobic pundits from the time and Darrell Hammond, playing double duty as Arnold Schwarzenegger via satellite who may have been a bit insensitive but was all for any kind of love. Of course, with this being the opening sketch, it eventually led to the announcement of, "Live from New York..."
Christina Aguilera then officially opened the show with a monolog about how she was excited to host for the first time after being the musical guest twice before. Jimmy Fallon then quickly interrupted asking our host why she was dressed so conservatively when Christina called him out for not liking her look considering the things Jimmy's been known to say about her looks in the past. Jimmy denied this at first but then Aguilera presented a clip from Weekend Update in which Jimmy made fun of her skank appeal from an episode a while back. Meanwhile, Lorne Michaels was backstage wishing our host would do something to "whore up" her current wholesome appearance. When we returned to the stage, Christina wrapped things up with a performance of Beautiful.
This was followed by a parody of Sex And The City where we got to see a fictional final episode where Christina Aguilera as Samantha revealed that she was actually a man.
Do You Know Who My Father Is? was a game show sketch where a bunch of snotty young contestants used the clout of their parents to outdo one another in order to win the grand prize.
TV Funhouse then gave us another installment if Fun With Real Audio where Robert Smigel animated clips of Pat O'Brien who couldn't stop thinking, "What was Britney thinking," and many other pop culture questions along those lines as if the show had made this constant confusion his day to day way to talk.
History Channel's Celebration Of Women was the parody of a History Channel special where Darrell Hammond as Phil Donahue profiled Christina Aguilera as the first woman to stand up to her husband over demanding he was the boss back in the old-timey days.
Maroon 5 then took to the stage to perform This Love.
Once again, Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey gave us the news. This week, Will Forte dropped in as himself to comment on Black History Month because all of the black cast members were unavailable for racially stereotypical reasons.
We then got somewhat of a parody of You Got Served! In this version, Venice Beach weirdos faced off with their rivals in a dance-off.
We then went Backstage At A Christina Aguilera Concert where our host got visits from various cast member playing various celebrities who all loved her performance and encouraged her to be even more of a skank because she had the talent to back it up. Meanwhile, Christina didn't see herself as a skank at all, just someone trying to express herself the way she wants.
Besos Y Lagrimas was a parody of a Spanish soap opera where literally all of the acting was emphasized by overreactions and crazy contortions of faces while both delivering and reacting to each line.
We then got yet another repeat of the Huggies Thong ad that's already aired a few times this season which was a G-string for kids who didn't want embarrassing diaper lines.
You're Fired had Chris Parnell as a boss whose sandwich was stolen following the firing of Will Forte who played the company's belligerent slacker and stole the sandwich for revenge.
Maroon 5 then returned to the stage to perform Harder To Breathe.
Don's Apothecary had Horatio Sanz in the titular role to embarrass his customers who are shopping for very personal care items in his pharmacy/drug store. Once again it turned out that this was an ad for Walgreen's highlighting how bad things were in their competitor's store.
Finally, Christina Aguilera closed the show by thanking the audience and saying her goodnights.

As I said up above, tonight makes five great episodes in a row that I thought were really good which is impressive considering the line up of hosts. Then again, I may just be slap-happy from switching to a graveyard schedule. Either way, what made tonight's show so good were these three sketches that contained my favorite moments of the night. First, I loved Backstage At A Christina Aguilera Concert because it had a good feminist message while still being fun. Next, I really liked the Sex And The City parody because Christina did so good as Samantha that I had to keep double checking to make sure I wasn't confusing her for a member of the cast. Finally, I was a fan of You Got Served, even though it didn't turn out to be a real parody of the movie with the same name but I did still like to see the cast and our host dancing as freaks from Venice Beach.