Shannon Elizabeth still has breasts. This is what one learned from her recent appearance on Thank God You’re Here, NBC’s competitive improvisational sketch comedy show, which throws together a new quartet of celebrities each week with a couple of holdover cast members.
Hosted by David Alan Grier and judged by Dave Foley, who presents the winner with a trophy of some sort, the show drops costumed celebs into both group and individual colorful scenarios in which they have no idea what will happen, except that they’ll be greeted by the titular phrase. I only caught this show due to a TiVo lag, but once I glimpsed the pain that was Elizabeth attempting improv comedy, I couldn’t avert my eyes. It was like tonguing the gaping hole of a newly missing tooth, watching a police pursuit and car accident, and inhaling deeply at the gasoline pump, all at once.
Appearing alongside George Takei, Tom Green and some other chick whose name escapes me, Elizabeth — who was dragged to momentary fame in American Pie courtesy of her bared breasts, then suffered the ignominious fate of costarring in a movie in which David Ogden Stiers ingests a human testicle (that would be 2001’s Tomcats) — evidenced absolutely no knowledge of the basic working precepts of improv. A fading, bitter sex symbol who’d receded from pop cultural memory over the past four or five years except for winning some stupid poker tournament, Elizabeth was clearly a called-in chit of her agent or manager, who probably said something like this: “No, she’s really, really funny, I swear! Did you see her guest spots on That ’70s Show? No? Oh! Oh, let me tell you…”
After delivering an eye-gougingly bad solo set, the show-closing group sketch found the celebs adorned in Viking get-up, and called before their chief, ostensibly to talk about his replacement. With nothing better to do, Elizabeth pounced on the guy and started grinding on and making out with him, which then led Tom Green to do the same. The piece devolved into a mock-outrageous orgy, with Elizabeth kissing everyone in sight and Foley even joining in on the action. Then, making her play for top honors, Elizabeth ran over and mounted a since withdrawn Foley, saying, “You’re the real judge!” Grier appeared embarassed by the whole episode, and an amused Foley only slightly less so. Look, Shannon, play the sexpot card or not, but don’t constantly bitch about the parts you’re offered, pose for Playboy and then talk about how much you regret it, or insist you’ve so much more to offer other than your body or looks and then disingenuously reach into the hootchie grab-bag when you’re painted into an improvisational corner. And most of all, please stop trying to be funny… you’re killing me.