Brittany Murphy SNL skit pulled

A “Saturday Night Live” sketch that satirized the actress Brittany Murphy has been pulled from Internet sites like hulu.com, provoking disagreements among viewers about whether the video should be allowed to remain on the Web, and whether “SNL” should have performed the skit at all.

In a segment that appeared on the Dec. 5 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Seth Meyers, the show’s Weekend Update anchor and head writer, noted reports that Ms. Murphy had recently been fired from a film project called “The Collar.” He was soon joined at the Weekend Update desk by his castmate Abby Elliott, who was impersonating Ms. Murphy. The fictional Ms. Murphy seemed to be disoriented and still under the impression she was on an episode that the real-life actress had hosted in 2002. (“You are not the host,” Mr. Meyers told Ms. Elliott throughout the skit.)

Though video of that sketch was posted to hulu.com soon after the show was broadcast, after Ms. Murphy’s death on Sunday, it disappeared from the site. A message on hulu.com reads, “Unfortunately this video is no longer available, but here are other related videos to watch.” (Bootlegs of the skit have turned up on other blogs.) A news-media representative for “Saturday Night Live” declined to comment.

As news of Ms. Murphy’s death surfaced on Sunday, many bloggers noted that what seemed like a curiously timed sketch two weeks ago — when Ms. Murphy was not much in the public eye and had not had a new movie to promote in many months — seemed to be in especially poor taste given her sudden demise and the uncertain circumstances surrounding it.

The Los Angeles County coroner has said that an official cause of Ms. Murphy’s death might not be determined for some time.)

As Michael Roston wrote at TrueSlant.com: “This is looking sort of extra-unkind. As a condolence gift to Murphy’s family, perhaps S.N.L. and Hulu ought to pull this clip down.”