I didn’t laugh much during last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live starring guest host Paris Hilton. I don’t know if it was because I had only 4 hours of sleep or the fact that it just wasn’t all that funny.

I don’t know about that episode. There was some moments, but it just didn’t ring out to me as being earth-shakingly funny. Some of the sketches and bits also fell a bit flat with myself and the live audience. A series of commercials dealing with self-obsessed parents trying to raise their kids on dollars a day while living the high life didn’t get many laughs (child neglect=laugh riot). Additionally, the night ended with a Bear City short film where the gag is bears have taken over human roles in a town. The series of shorts only merited a bemused smirk and my desire to kill all bears.

I think part of the problem lies in the hosting duties by Paris Hilton. The hotel heiress has been living on the 15 minutes of fame her whole life. This phenomenon has been made fun of before by the SNL cast, but those gags were suspiciously silent last night. While they could’ve gone totally over the top in making fun of Hilton, they didn’t do much at all and Hilton didn’t really seem to a great host (which may be due to the fact that her claim to fame is being a celebrity). Her performances seemed fairly flat. While none the sketches really called on her to lampoon her success, they didn’t seem too challenging either.

It was a frustrating night all in all, but a few things stood out. One of the early sketches dealt with a phone sex line for adolescent science-fiction geeks and featured the female cast dressed up as sci-fi characters (which was fun but totally unnecessary for a telephone-based calling service). I thought it was a slightly amusing bit, but it got old fast (like the Donald Trump family one).

Also, while I like Paris Hilton wearing the garb of Doctor Who (specifically, the fourth Doctor played by Tom Baker), who’s going to get that gag when the show hasn’t been seen outside of a handful of PBS stations in 15 years (and DVDs)? So, I thought that bit was playing to the die-hard geeks out there.

Finally, sci-fi geeks and their lack of a sex life aren’t a hard group of people to take jabs at. Making fun of nerds — why that’s almost as easy as making fun of Paris Hilt… oh, wait. Never mind.