WORST SNL ACTOR

I''m thinking Victoria Jackson is the worst SNL actor of all time. She wasn''t funny when she was on and she is a shrill fool now.\ \ Other nominees?

• Garrett Morris for me. Beyond the painfully unfunny "Chico Escuela" character ("Beisbol be berry berry good to me"), I can''t remember one other sketch in which he made an impression.

• Anthony Michael Hall was pretty bad.

• [quote]Garrett Morris for me. Beyond the painfully unfunny "Chico Escuela" character ("Beisbol be berry berry good to me"), I can''t remember one other sketch in which he made an impression.\ \ Well, he smooched O.J. Simpson in the Mandingo spoof.

• Joe Piscopo

• I''m going to encounter opposition here, but I never found Chris Farley remotely funny. I was mystified that other people liked Farley--I thought he was just an obnoxious sweaty obese asshole.\ \ I loathed Adam Sandler, but I did see he had some talent (whereas I thought Farley had none).\ \ There have been several people on SNL who made zero impression on me when they were on it and then went on to become quite good at other stuff: Sarah Silverman, Chris Rock, and Jay Mohr.

• Garrett Morris auditioning with a song for [italic]Gigi[/italic] director Peter Cook, was electric: [italic]"I''m gonna ... get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see!"[/italic]

• Billy Crystal\ \ Horatio Sanz

• I never got Chris Farley either. I just figured it was some straight guy thing I was immune to.

• "I think we have our Gigi."

• Colin Quinn, hands down.\ \ Why they continued to let him host Weekend Update for multiple seasons is beyond me. He could not deliver a joke without blowing the punchline. Just awful.

• Agree with OP''s choice. Victoria Jackson is a cunt who is not funny.

• Siobhan Fallon, anyone?\ \ You don''t remember her either, do you?\ \ Never created a memorable character, never did anything memorable, just walked around looking pissed and bitter for 2 years....

  Lorne "Dr. Evil" Michaels

• We should have a thread on [bold]The Dead [italic]Saturday Night Live[/italic] Cast[/bold].

• Dennis Miller

• Who was the one who only got a laugh as Jan Brady (and not a good Jan Brady at that) but fell flat in every other sketch? \ \ That one.

• Melanie Hudsell, R15

• I know this thread is about the best actors, but I always thought Terry Sweeney and his Nancy Reagan impression was brilliant. He was so underrated.

• Melanie Hutsell\ \ Allegedly she was hired for her dead on Jan Brady impersonation. The bad thing was that all of her characters were "Jan" with a different wig.\ \ I tried to find somehing from SNL with her, but evidently Lorne Michaels had all of the footage destroyed.\ \ She was on SNL from 1991-1994. Here she is in 2003 doing the same old schtick.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnBBzNN-Olg

• Wikipedia says Victoria Jackson was on there for six years. Good God. Nora Dunn and Jan Hooks couldn''t hide their contempt when they had to do a scene with her.\ \ Another stinker: Rich Hall. Besides being unfunny, he was completely hideous. Matt Groening used his face for a template when he created Moe the bartender on the Simpsons.

• All of them post 1993.

• I know Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was on SNL but I cannot remember one thing she did. I guess she wasn''t mind numbingly bad but not particularly memorable.

• Didn''t Julia Louis-Dreyfuss do Marie Osmond to Gary Kroeger''s Donny? I recall her also doing some kind of nerdy character, similar to Gilda Radner''s Lisa Loopner.

• She played Darla in the Buckwheat/Little Rascals sketches.

• Denny Dillon.

• Charles Rocket

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus was one of the Whiners ("But WAIIIII-TERRRRR! We want THAT table over THERRRRRRE!"), which I always thought was a funny skit.\ \ The worst of all are probably from the Jean Doumanian period: Charles Rocket, Ann Risley, and the absolutely loathsome Denny Dillon.

• Melanie Hudsell was bad, but her Monica Seles character (who exclaimed "WhaKAAAI!!" with every exertion) still makes me laugh.\ \ Agree with Victoria Jackson. Annoying voice, expressionless, and generally worthless.

• Oh, Jesus, I never understood how Denny Dillon ever had a career. (She was also on "Dream On".) I used to work under a V.P. who looked just like Denny Dillon and I HATED her immediately. Deserved? Absolutely not; she was a sweetheart. But my Denny Dillon hate blinded me for months--THAT''S how much I LOATHE that midget, big-mouthed bitch.

  Please Tell Me She''s a Republican.

• Wasn''t Melanie Hudsell also the key to the Delta Delta Delta sketches? I think she''s the one who said, "I love your earrings...they make your whole head SPARKLE!!!" in the perfect sorority girl voice.\ \ I like her just for her delivery on all of those lines.\ \ "Your hair is so shiny...it looks just like a SCARF!!!"

• \ Victoria Jackson, a standout among unfunny cast members. \ \ Her commentaries on Weekend Update were painful.

• I think it was Robin Duke who did the Whiners sketches - though maybe Julia was in there at some point too. Dreyfuss used to do a vapid Latina character with Mary Gross. I remember them reviewing movies and naming the actors they wanted to sleep with. In reviewing "Ghostbusters" Mary Gross picked "the black one." Maybe it was a slam against the former SNL actors who starred in "Ghostbusters" but it was funny because even when the movie was current no one remembered there was a black/fourth "Ghostbuster."

• For some reason Lorne Michaels really has it in for Melanie Hutsell and you cannot find any of her skits on the web, EXCEPT for the Battle of the Bands between the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch which you can find on her own site.\ \ I always thought she was good, but very limited. the problem wasn''t that she did Jan Brady all the time; the problem was she did Tori Spelling (which was not like Jan Brady) all the time. The Tori Spelling character was great in the actual "Tori! Tori! Tori!" skit... I still remember the names of the perfumes she had created for her: "Forever Dylan," "Smells Like Shannon Doherty," and "Absolutely Tori" ("Because I asked my Daddy if he would buy me my own perfume factory, and he said, ''Absolutely, Tori!''"). The trouble was she did Tori Spelling when she was supposed to be doing Deanna Troi or Chelsea Clinton, and it didn''t make any sense.\ \ Still, I keep wondering what she did to Lorne Michaels that made him hate her so much.

• I must be the only person who liked Melanie Hutsell. Her Jan Brady was dead-on and the sorority girls were too (I was in college with the Delta! Delta! Deltas! at the time.) Sure her range was limited - her Tori Spelling ended up sounding exactly like Jan Brady - but there were so few women on the show then and the homophobia at a high point that I liked seeing a campy fag-hag type like her.

• Julie Sweeney was pretty bad. It''s Pat was funny for about 2 minutes and then everything else she did, including Pat, just sucked hard.

• I remember when they had heather Locklear as guest host they did a "Wayne''s World Goes to Melrose Place" parody, and Julia Sweeney was all excited and told the press how thrilled they were going to do this because "Melrose" was her favorite show... and she was AWFUL as the Daphne Zuniga part. David Spade was much, much funnier, and he was cast as Josie Bissett! ("Oh boo hoo hoo... I have the worst part on the show!")

• [quote]Garrett Morris for me. Beyond the painfully unfunny "Chico Escuela" character ("Beisbol be berry berry good to me"), I can''t remember one other sketch in which he made an impression.\ \ "May I present Lord and Lady DOUCHE-BAG!"

• Casey Wilson who they only put in a skit whenever they needed a second female. \ \ And let''s not forget Horatio Sanz.

• the fat black guy on now is hideous...he just reads his lines off the teleprompter with zero meaning.\ \ He went to Horatio Sanz''s school of acting

  LuLuLu

• Julia Louis-Dreyfus did a magnificent Linda Ronstandt parody - from the mid-1980s collaborations Ronstadt had with Nelson Riddle. (Don''t know if it''s available from [italic]YouTube[/italic].)

• R38,\ \ . . . Kenan Thompson.\ \ I love him. He''s exuberant. Especially dig his "What Up With That?" - and he was great playing Tiger Woods.

• Garrett Morris still makes me laugh as the interpreter of Weekend Update for the hearing impaired. "Our top story tonight..." "OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT!!..."

• For R31:\ \ "He would have been great Ghostbuster if they had given him great ghostbusting things to do. If they had said, ''Go do thees, and be thucthetthful weeeth it.''"

• Kenan Thompson started out on a Nickelodeon tween sketch comedy show.\ \ I never expected him to be funny, but I find him funny more often than not on SNL. His Steve Harvey impression is great.\ \ I can never decide if I actually liked Julia Sweeney on SNL, or if I only think that because I like what she''s done since.\ \ She''s clearly as mystified by Pat as anyone else, and she says so in "God Said ''Ha''"

  The Voice of the Night

• Jimmy fucking Fallon owns this thread. He was pretty, yes. But he broke character, looked into the camera, and cracked up laughing in every single sketch he ever did. I cringed every time I saw him in a sketch. And he had no memorable characters.\ \ How the hell did he get on the show?

• Victoria Jackson is a psycho shrill fundie now, but I don''t think she was while she was on the show. She was funny when she would play the guitar and sing. That "Where do you draw the line" song was hilarious. Does anyone else remember it?\ \ "What if the doctor said...I had an incurable disease...and the only way to cure it is to take a shower with you naked? Where do you draw the line between love and adultery? Do you love you neighbor? Or do you sleep with him?"

• Jimmy Fallon gets a pass from me for only one reason: the fucking hysterical "Sex and the Matrix" parody he did with Sarah Jessica Parker for the 2000 MTV Movie awards.

  The Voice of the Night

• [quote]Victoria Jackson is a psycho shrill fundie now, but I don''t think she was while she was on the show. \ \ She was, which was why the other women on the cast hated her.

  The Voice of the Night

• As much as I loved him on "Kids in the Hall," I think Mark McKinney was dreadful on SNL.\ \ Or maybe I was just disappointed by him.

  Binky, the "Lost" Von Trapp

• Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn HATED Victoria Jackson. HATED her.

• Melanie Hutsell''s big thing now is Paula Deen. And yes, her impression also has that same hint of Jan Brady

  http://www.melaniehutsell.com/Melanie/__Melanie_Hutsell__Paula_Deen_Show.html

• Melanie Hutsell may have a limited range, but it''s a very funny range.\ \ Any votes for Brad Hall? Tim Kazurinsky? Very bad period for SNL...

• Melanie Hudsell was on "The Comeback" Palm Springs show I believe as the girl who is hogging the pool chairs. She''s funny on that. Or maybe I''m confusing her with the girl who played Jan in "Brady Bunch Movie."

  Barkley

• Victoria Jackson: Once and forever stupid, fundie bitch. Her real-life persona is a bleach blonde, bubble-head, and that is the only "character" she eaver "played"...

  OP is right: Jackson owns the thread

• Add me to the Chris Farley bandwagonn. Basically he threw himself around the stage until his face turned blue and called it comedy. If he had lived, I doubt people would be calling him a comic genius, especially if they tried to sit through one of his movies again.

• I only hated the skits Fallon did with Horatio Sanz. It seemed Horatio was the Tim Conway to Fallon''s Korman.\ \ Hated Victoria Jackson with a passion then and now. She had to have been blowing someone to be on that show for six years.\ \ To the person who mentioned Garrett Morris kissing OJ in the Mandigo parody, I seem to recall Bill Murray kissing OJ as well in the same skit.

  Mia

• Chris Farley was great in "Tommy Boy" which is still a funny movie. I like him better than Belushi, who I always thought wasn''t funny. Belushi also didn''t think women were funny and hated Jane Curtin.

  Barkley

• If you guys read "Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live", it seems that everyone hated Nora Dunn and Jan Hooks while they were there. They were assholes to everybody. And also, Nora Dunn was having an affair with Lorne Michaels at the time. Victoria Jackson may not have been the best, but she had her moments like when she was Zsa-Zsa Gabor with Rick Moranis, Jan Hooks, and Nora Dunn as Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye Bakker, and Leona Helmsley making a prison break. She could be funny.

• Ah, the "Big Bull Dyke Bust-Out of 1991!" (I think that was the year), 57. One of SNL''s best.\ \ I thought Garrett Morris had a lot of funny moments. Most memorable was back when Jimmy Carter was President, SNL did a spoof of the Three Mile Island incident where Carter ended up getting super-sized by the radiation. Rosalind was already upset when Morris, as the newly-giant maid, pursed his lips at her as he held onto the arm of his/her new man, the giant President!

• This thread is more proof the DL will debate anything.\ Victoria Jackson is the worst - how this is debatable is beyond me.\ \ There is not one memorable skit or muted laugh provided by her. Not one! If you were going to rank SNLers on their careers after SNL - she ranks last - ever dead snlers careers have more merits. She was horrible on SNL and her life after SNL is only redeemable because she may have a mental illness.

• Fallon gets a pass from me for the "Barry Gibb Talk Show." \ \ I used to dismiss Farley as just a Belushi wannabee, but he had his moments: his awkward talk show interviewer ("Member when you were with the Beatles?" "Yeah." "That was awesome."), the Chippendale''s dancer, Todd from the Superfans, and motivational speaker Matt Foley. By all accounts I''ve heard from people who met him, he was a very nice guy who was gracious to his fans, but lonely and (obviously) self-destructive.\ \ Horatio Sanz will forever own the "Belushi wannabee" role.

• Hudsell was not on The Comeback.

  That is all.

• Victoria Jackson--now that you mention it, I can''t remember a single skit, but only the HORRIBLE voice. That can not have been real, right? She must''ve wanted a trademark and came up with that. \ \ I loved the Barry Gibb talk show!\ \ And Farley has a lot of memorable skits for me, one that is sort of obscure but is so funny is the girls who work at the Gap. He (obviously) played the fat girl who said she was dieting but kept taking her friend''s french fries. When the friend (I think played by David Spade) mentioned it, Farley screamed in a demonic voice, "I''M HUUUUNGRY!" The guest star was Darlene from Roseanne, and it is a really funny skit all the way through.

• Melanie''s character who was shopping at The Gap when Adam Sandler and David Spade played the bitchy Gap Girls. \ \ She comes back to return the jeans cause. She. Didn''t know how to cynch them. She says: I thought you were my friends! I almost told you about my sisters abortion!"\ \ Loved her. Lorne can suck my nuts!

  Zak, temporarily in Caifornia again

• I think the worst sketch I ever sat through was the Chippendale''s sketch with Farley and Patrick Swayze. It was the most obvious sort of negative comedy, involving laughing at this sad clearly self-loathing man. The damn skit had one joke, and it sucked.\ \ Watching it made me feel very sad.

• [quote]Melanie Hudsell was on "The Comeback" Palm Springs show I believe as the girl who is hogging the pool chairs. She''s funny on that. Or maybe I''m confusing her with the girl who played Jan in "Brady Bunch Movie."\ \ You''re thinking of Jennifer Elise Cox. She was on that episode of "The Comeback". In addition to playing Jan Brady in the movies, she was also Nurse Pittman on "Will and Grace"- "Oh I don''t drive. I keep taking the test over and over and I''m all like ''This is hard''!"

• Horatio Sanz was easily one of the worst. The show should''ve ended in 1995. The best person post 1995 was Norm MacDonald doing weekend update. Barely anyone else worth mentioning after that.

• Colin Quinn was horrible at weekend update, but amazingly, Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon(and then Amy Poehler) were even worse. Astonishing how unfunny and lame their humor was. I don''t even know who''s been on the last few years, I couldn''t stand to watch.

• [quote]Still, I keep wondering what she did to Lorne Michaels that made him hate her so much.\ \ It wasn''t what Melanie Hutsell did, it was what she didn''t do.....ME.

  Lorne Michaels

• Actually, Melanie Hutsell is doing a damn good Paula Deen in that sketch. \ \ I''m horrified that someone here found uber-homophobe Norm McDonald funny.

• R60, did the people you know who met Farley say that he seemed lonely to them, or are you just talking about what has been said in the media?

• R64, really? I think the part in this skit when Farley begins posing and flexing again after being criticized is HILARIOUS:

  http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/farley_swayze_chippendales.php

• R18, it''s rare to find ANY SNL clip on YouTube, NBC goes after the clips on a daily basis, so they can instead show them on Hulu, with ad bucks...and only the limited ones they''ve chosen.

• [quote]Dreyfuss used to do a vapid Latina character with Mary Gross. I remember them reviewing movies and naming the actors they wanted to sleep with.\ \ Yep, they were called "Chi Chi and Consuela". They were really funny. They would always cry about how beautiful and happy various men in the movies were...and then comment upon why they were crying, and then comment upon the comments...it was very meta.

• Have we gotten this far without anyone mentioning Ellen Cleghorne - or did I miss the post?\ \ Her bug-eyed stare, combined with that grating voice, was horrible.

• The least talented SNL actor ever has to be Kenan Thompson. I hated him when he was on "All That"; even as a teen, I could tell that he was in way over his head. I just want to smack him until his googly eyes deflate and fall out of his head.

• Googly eyes? How dare you! HOW [bold]DARE[/bold] YOU?

  the ghost of Marty Feldman

• Fallon is not funny. Pretending to crack up in order to get people to laugh at you is tired.

• Looks like Adam Sandler has another bomb on his hands. \ \ "Adam Sandler spends more time laughing at jokes than making them in Grown Ups, perhaps the slackest, shabbiest comedy in the star''s increasingly dreadful oeuvre."

  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/grown_ups/

• Adam Sandler had some moments on SNL but many of bits became tiresome (Cajun Boy, Opera Man, basically any character he did on Weekend Update. He will always get a pass from me for being Canteen Boy in the scout skit with Alec Baldwin. "You know what I hate, Canteen Boy? Underpants!"

• Uh, other than Jane Curtin and Gilda Ratner all of the people who have been on SNL have sucked like a vampire bat! The show hasn''t been funny or relevant since the fourth season and should have been cancelled long ago.

• I always hated Norm McDonald. People can bitch about Colin Quinn''s Weekend Update, but I thought it was an improvement over McDonald who never made me laugh once. I actually had a friend who loved Norm McDonald and said he found the Weekend Update funny because it was obvious how much contempt McDonald had for the shitty material he was given. Only problem: the person who does Weekend Update is also the one who writes it. So McDonald was 100% responsible for the segment sucking ass.

• Has there ever been a film on RT that didn''t get one good review? I wonder of Grown-ups will be that movie? I don''t mind Sandler so I hope that doesn''t happen but GU looks like some knuckle dragging, male menopause BS.

• Hated Victoria Jackson, Norm McDonald, and Horatio Sanz. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

• C''mon...Garrett Morris gets a pass for doing his Tina Tuner impression alone.

• What about Rob Schneider? Aside from his "Richmeister" character ("makin'' copies"), did he do anything on SNL that was even mildly funny or made an impression?

• The was an actress who did a Valley Girl voice before there was such a thing as a Valley Girl. I can''t remember who she was, but she was PERFECT.

• That fat fuck Beluci.\ \ That bipolar weirdo Bill Murray.\ \ That obnoxious smug asshole Dennis somethingorother he''s right winger now.

• Apparently, I must have a horrible sense of humor, because I found all the women mentioned on this thread funny. Loved Melanie Hudsell as "Delta Delta Delta Can I help ya help ya help ya?".. loved Pat... loved Ellen Cleghorne as the talkative NBC page who gets resentful ("Don''t think I won''t cut you!")... even loved Victoria Jackson - I remember a very funny Oscar prediction bit she did on Weekend Update.

• Denny Dillon. She was on with Gilbert Gottfried back in the early 80's. Never cared for either of them.

• Melanie Hutsell had a brief scene in "Bridesmaids" playing tennis. Like R33 and several others, I loved MH. I've watched a number of those earlier 90's skits on Netflix where she's Jan Brady, Tori Spelling, sorority girl, etc. She's funny, the skits are entertaining but it seems like the writers never knew how to humorously write a skit ending.

• YES, R12. I fucking HATE Siobhan Fallon. She's so distracting and obnoxious in everything she does. I don't know why she keeps getting work.

• Victoria Jackson was, by far, the worst. And there have been some bad ones over the years.

  Jan Hooks & Nora Dunn

• Norm McDonald. Even though I though he looked handsome as hell in the suit for the newscast segment, he bombed it every time

• Dave Koechner and Jan Walls only survived one season. Janeane Garofalo was underused and quit in disgust.

• So many to choose from. Let's just say all the living ones.

  John%20Belushi%27s%20crack%20pipe

• Horatio Sanz- he was awful. Jimmy Fallon was bad. Chris Rock said the same thing about the Chippendales skit as the poster above- that it was degrading. But it was the very first thing Farley did that got him attention- it was the second or third episode of the 1990-91 season that he was in. It was also Chris Rock's first season. I didn't think much of Victoria Jackson but I did like her Audrey Horne from "Twin Peaks" and some very bizarre skit she was in with Sting in early 1991 where she plays a woman meeting her bf's parents for the first time and does stupid things like juggling a Ming vase (and breaking it) and dumping mashed potatoes in her hair and dancing.

• ROB SCHNEIDER. WHAT AN IRRITATING LITTLE MAN.

  Chevy Chase's Ego

• Horatio Sanz. Nothing funny about him at all.

• Garrett Morris would always flub his lines, his timing with the rest of the cast never seemed to click.

• Melanie Hutsell flubbed her lines all the time. Horatio Sanz could never get them out because he was too busy giggling. And despite how funny they were supposed to be, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler never impressed me until they left the show. Despite their being such cutting edge funny women, Lorne's boy's club never let them shine.

• R96 "I didn't think much of Victoria Jackson but I did like her Audrey Horne from "Twin Peaks" " Odd that they cast her as Audrey because Victoria would have made a better Lucy

• R84, Do you remember his HUGE package showing beneath that mini-dress? That was so tacky....

  Number%20One%20Tina%20Fan

• I agree with Binky; former KitH Mark McKinney was a bitter disappointment.

• R101, this was the Fall of 1990 and Nora Dunn had been fired at the end of the previous season so all they had left were Jackson and Hooks (Julia Sweeney didn't join until a few months into the season) and you know they really wanted to do a cherry stem joke.

• Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, Chris Kattan, Chris Farley (although I admit like the previous poster, it could be a straight frat thing I don't get), Chevy Chase... I loved Norm MacDonald, but I think his dry Anglo humour didn't always translate well. r81, MacDonald didn't write all his own stuff-they had writers. Jim Downey also had a say, as he was given a lot of autonomy by Michaels. I never liked Chris Rock as a sketch actor. I even thought MacDonald was better at it, and it wasn't his thing. I always thought they should have given him an Update shot, as he was better talking than acting.

• Victoria Jackson was only funny in two skits: her portrayal of Latoya Jackson being on an interview show with the real Spike Lee and as a woman who won "best sexy pout in a video" award on the Cable Ace show. Toonces had a more illustrious comedic legacy. Was Christine Ebersole very funny on the show back in '82? I remember her being outshone by Robin Duke in almost every sketch.

• Something about Abby Elliot made me want to punch her in the face.

• Sanz did one of the best bits during his era. He played Rosie during WU. Came on and was charming and funny. Turned his head and became Psycho Rosie. It was oddly on target. And bad as Victoria Jackson was/is, the worst SNL player I've ever seen was during the Doumanian reign of terror. Her name was Ann Risley and her only claim to fame was that Woody Allen recommended her. Little doubt why, since she was a total clone of Diane Keaton without any of her talent or charm. She sullied everything she touched. The SNL books paint her as a prima donna bitch. Once she told Eddie Murphy to get her a drink and Murphy didn't budge. She told him, "Listen, I've done Shakespeare, I've done Woody Allen."

• OMG, r108. I didn't remember that. One point in her favour, though, is that she is the one who finally let Eddie Murphy in the stage door he'd been hanging around. To me, that was a no-brainer, but TPTB didn't really see him as more than a young smart ass at first.

• Jim Breuer - useless, unfunny pothead. His best-known skit was the awful Goat Boy.

• I remember that. I hated goat boy.

• Goat Boy was one of the worst skits ever. Anthony Michael Hall and Chris Rock are two who did much better elsewhere than on SNL:

• Colin Quinn was awful - always stumbling over his lines on Weekend Update. He was so unprofessional it just made you cringe.

• A lot of actors have done much better elsewhere than on SNL. SNL has a knack for hiring people with talent and then sucking all of the talent and energy right out of them. Anthony Michael Hall, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Mark McKinney, Jeaneane Garofolo, and Michael McKean are all examples of people who had success either before or after SNL but were totally forgettable while on SNL.

• R109, I think it was the first SNL book that gave her no credit at all for putting Murphy on the air. It was all NBC and they were getting desperate. They reran the season a few years back on VH1 and one moment from the book was completely correct. It was during the terrible WU with Charles Rocket. Murphy came on and did some impressions and the audience started roaring and applauding. He finished and Rocket started back up. Dead silence to the end of the bit.

• Colin Quinn was the worst Weekend Update anchor ever and never made me laugh once in my life until I saw his Twitter. It's just constant trolling but he's D-list enough (and about half of his followers are dumb enough) that people fall for it

  https://twitter.com/iamcolinquinn/status/272800861607051264

• I never found Rich Hall or "Sniglets" remotely funny. Horatio Sanz, WTF? Stoned fat guys are a dime a dozen. Chris Farley was the Laurence Olivier of comedy compared to him. Charles Rocket just creeped me out. I was startled to learn via Wikepedia that he was found dead in a field near his home in Connecticut in 2005, with his throat cut by his own hand.

• Pretty much all of the cast from the 1980-81 season (Charles Rocket, Dennie Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, etc). I watched the first two episodes of that season and didn't watch again until about 1986. Terrible. Victoria Jackson was whiney and horrible too. I also disliked Terry Sweeney. Very Annoying.

  Chino

• Jason Sudeikis is cute, but not really that funny. I don't like Jay Pharoah or Kenan, except for Kenan's "Wazzup wit dat" sketch.

• Dennis Miller. All I remember him for was weekend update, and that was just sarcasm, not comedy.

• I don't know who was worse. All I know is that this stupid thread is taking up precious space. We need more threads about Harry Styles and Anderson Cooper, god damn it!

  Twinkie Fan Boy

• A 16-way tie, in rough chronological order: Charles Rocket, Gail Matthius, Ann Risley, Christine Ebersole, Mary Gross, Gary Kroeger, Tim Meadows, Beth Cahill, Colin Quinn, Nancy Walls, Jim Breuer, Chris Kattan, Dean Edwards, Jeff Richards, Finesse Mitchell, Casey Wilson

• The Farley/Swayze Chippendales thing was funny but I agree with Farley and Fallon.

• I haven't watched much SNL in the past decade, and don't remember anything of what Casey did there, but she's great on Happy Endings.

• Cheri Oteri was one of the better talents but some reason has had minimal success post-SNL.

• Denny Dillon was in the funny "Survival Trip" episode of "Designing Women." To start 2013 on a more positive note, let me submit my votes for the best: Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, and most of the original cast.

• I wonder how SNL would have been if Lorne Michaels had managed to snag most of the SCTV cast as he tried to do. In his book, Dave Thomas describes how one person from SCTV (I think it was Catherine O'Hara) went to NY just as a trial and she left so depressed and dejected. I guess the atmosphere changed a bit by the time Martin Short was on. Either that, or perhaps he was getting paid much more. (Tony Rosato and Robin Duke had gone from SCTV to SNL in the early 1980s, but they were always bit players in the former.)

• I had forgotten about some of these people--I hated Goat Boy too! There was a guy a few years back who pretty much only had one memorable character..."Drunk Girl".. Jeff something? I liked Melanie Hutsell and Ellen Cleghirne. Bummer they never did much after SNL.

• Rebecca de Mornay and Mary Gross are... FEDS!

  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095145/

• Jimmy Fallon thought you had to fake crack up at everything to be funny. Not funny.

• Garrett Morris (shameful that he was hired as a token black!) Gilbert Gottfried Chris Kattan Chris Farley Goat Boy - don't even recall his name I loved Horation Sanz (who, incidentally, is HOT now that he has lost weight! and I love Kenan Thompson. I don't know why these two are getting hate.

• I forgot Melanie Hutsell. Not only did she suck and play the same character all time time. She was a mouth breather.

  131%20again

• Kenan Thompson is easily the worst SNL performer of the modern era. Truly execrable.

• I hated Dennis what's-his-name, the snarky now republican WU host. Hated him then w/o knowing his politics. Agree that Victoria Jackson was among the worst, but so many cast members are completely un-memorable--that's got to count for something. Agree Mark McKinney was supremely disappointing after coming off of KITH. Kenan Thompson has his moments, though mostly he just mugs for the camera. Farley also had his moments, but unfortunately his main schtick just involved breaking a piece of stage furniture in some way. Meanwhile, Tracy Morgan was HORRIBLE. I liked the Jack Fellowes skits, but otherwise--so annoying.

• all great candidates R122 I do enjoy Ebersole's singing.

• R131 - "Garrett Morris (shameful that he was hired as a token black!" Garrett was good. He may not have been as good as Belushi and Ackrod, but he was better than most. He definitively was better than Larraine Newman, the weakest link of the original cast.

• There are too many to mention but the worst have mostly been women and not without reasons. I am a friend of Catherine O'Hara and she did not belong in that snake pit. It was a very tough gig for women for a long time. Catherine is pretty content and way too creative, humble and odd woman to regret missing out on SNL. I am sure Tina Fey had a lot to do with turning things around. Not because she is funny - there was never a shortage of funny or popular women on the show, but because she is smart and had power and turned that show inside out without anyone on the outside knowing. I am just gonna say that Jan Hooks and Phil Hartman were the best, ever.

• Handsome Charles Rocket cut his own throat and died in CT.

• We want to PUMP YOU UP, was the all-time most redundant and awful sketch ever endlessly performed on SNL.

• Do any of the people , other than Christine Ebersole, still have a career not involving K-Mart or McDonald's?

• I think the season that had Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr and Joan Cusack were the absolute worst and I was a fan of all three at the time. Patently unfunny. I think it's harder for actors who have already made their mark as individuals to go on to an esemble like SNL because their personal voice is missing. I think that's why Mark McKinney, Jeananne Garafalo and Michael McKean were terrible in their seasons. R122, Wasn't Michael Richards on "Fridays"?

  Dimitra Vance

• R141, it was Danitra, not Dimitra. Sadly, she died in 1994 of breast cancer at only 40 years old. Lesbian, apparently, according to her bio.

• Of the current cast, Bobby Moynihan is the worst. So fucking annoying. Will Forte, from a few seasons back was pretty awful too.

• Horatio Sans

• I just cant watch SNL anymore. There's something so cringeworthy about watching an improv actor who's starving for attention, trying to be funny and failing.

• Does anybody recall Rob Schneider's complete nudity in a baseball sketch? He held a popcorn box in front of his naughty bits. Kenan Thompson is actually quite funny most of the time...c'mon, the Reba McEntire imitation? Hilarious...best of all is "What's Up With Dat?" very silly and hilarious, imho.

  moi

• The actors are not bad. It's the writing that is terrible. I can never understand why after so many horrible seasons, that the show is still on the air.

• Tina Fey was made head writer because there was a firestorm at the time about SNL being boy's club. Women had to fight like hell to get decent on-air time. Hooks and Dunn had the personalities to fight, but people like Garafola did not. This went on for twenty years until it was pointed out by former female cast members that they were relegated to second class status. Lorne Michaels said that he wasn't sexist, it's just that the alpha males came in and took over and the women didn't have the guts to do the same thing, so it was the women's fault. The very remark was sexist, so he quickly appointed Tina Fey head writer. And Amy Poehler decided to play the alpha male role and rode along on Fey's coattails.

• I never thought Tom Davis of Franken and Davis was funny.

• Kenan sucks

• The show still has a problem with women. They'll find one funny woman (Wiig) and it's her show for the next few yearswhile the other women are filler. I am more than aware of Mad TV's limitations, but I did like it and they always, always gave the women more than enough to do on par with the men.

• I seemed like the women ruled MadTV. Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, Mo Collins, Stephnie Weir, etc... were funnier than the men.

• [quote]I forgot Melanie Hutsell. Not only did she suck and play the same character all time time. She was a mouth breather. She was hired on the strength of her Jan in "The Real Live Brady Bunch", which was a sensation in NYC in the early 90s and kickstarted the Brady Bunch nostalgia wave. Beyond that, she didn't have much to contribute, or at least she didn't know how to fight behind the scenes to contribute more. I do remember one skit they did based on "The Crucible" in which she played a Dutch woman and said a line that ended in "...just because we're from Holland!" My friends and I watching at the time laughed hysterically at that for some reason (drunk), and it's remained a catchphrase among us all these years later.

• Melanie Hutsell had a tiny role in "Bridesmaids", for about 15 seconds of screen time, as one of Kristen Wiig's tennis partners.

• Someone mentioned Terry Sweeney, and I looked up his wikipedia entry out of curiosity... I was interested to read this: "While at SNL, he faced many hardships from both the writers and cast because of his sexuality, especially from Chevy Chase." Anyone know what that's about?

• I thought Terry Sweeney's Nancy Reagan was pretty unfunny and off-target.

• [quote]"While at SNL, he faced many hardships from both the writers and cast because of his sexuality, especially from Chevy Chase." [quote]Anyone know what that's about? Chevy Chase guest-hosted during the 80s and was a complete homophobic cunt to Terry Sweeney.

• Charles Rocket killed himself by cutting his throat with two box cutters, one in each hand going in opposite directions. Guy really wanted to die. He was the best thing about the terrible "It's Pat" and really made you believe he was in love with Pat.

• One if the things Chevy Chase did was suggest to Terry Sweeney that the latter do a recurring bit where he was weighed each week to see if he was losing weight due to AIDS. I'll always like Bill Murray for the fact that he threatened to punch out Chase after Chevy returned to SNL as host and picked on the women.

• MADTV was almost always much funnier than SNL. And yes, women (mentioned by R152) were given equal time on MADTV, along with some great male performers, esp Michael McDonald, Will Sasso, Ike Barenholtz, Phil LaMarr (so cute!), Andrew Bowen (cute!)

  MadTVfan

• Taran was also on MadTV but I don't even remember him. If Lorne was going to go after him, why not Debra Wilson, who'd smoke everyone on the cast?

• From what I heard, Michaels had a policy of "if you were on Mad TV, you'd never be on SNL." Taran Killam was only on Mad TV as a featured player for a handful of episodes years earlier and when SNL hired him, Mad TV was already long gone. Obviously, many of the cast members of both shows must have known one another before they started on either as they all came from the same improv background. (And, of course, Seth and Josh Myers are a given.) Still funny whenever Mo Collins pops up on "Parks and Recreation" to give Amy Poehler trouble.

• For me it was Norm McDonald. He spoke with the same flat monotone in everything and his stint at the Weekend Update desk was painfully bad. I don't think I laughed at a single thing he ever did and I never understood his popularity.

• Horatio Sanz owns this thread.

• [quote]Taran was also on MadTV but I don't even remember him. He was only 19. He basically just played kids.

• I always loved the original cast but hated Chevy Chase. Mainly because I knew him in the early '70s and found him to be a pile of shit as a person. Very arrogant, rude, self-serving, selfish, and I never found him to be funny. Maybe because I knew him to be such a prick. I know people in the business who say he's actually gotten worse with age. I feel for them.

  R

• Phil Hartman had the fortune of being handsome as well as being funny. He had many characters which he owned and who probably couldn't be played by anyone else. He also had the success of going from SNL to another popular show, "Radio News".

• Horatio Sanz and Jimmy Fallon ruined every skit with their selfish laughter. It's funny when the actor fights to keep from laughing (like Rachel Dratch in the Debbie Downer skit at Disneyworld). But when two fools hijack a sketch, stealing focus in the most unprofessional way, it's not funny. Although my straight male friends found him hilarious, I never laughed at Chris Farley. A fat person screaming, throwing himself into furniture, and breaking props is not funny. Bobby Moynihan, who plays the same child-like character in every skit, smiles at the camera, and seems to beg for laughs, is not funny.

• I have to go with Chevy Chase. As a kid, I laughed at Dan Ackroyd's Jimmy Carter; he had the voice and persona down pat. But I never got how or why we were supposed to think that Chevy Chase was Gerald Ford. He just played himself and then fell.

• [quote] He also had the success of going from SNL to another popular show, "Radio News". That's NEWS RADIO.

  Lionel Hutz, Esq.

• Pretty much all of them since 1979/80. The show needs to die off in a bad way. They keep it on cause there is nothing else at night on..IF you're even home. It SUCKS mad donkey balls. MAdtv was way better. As was In Living COlor. At least they died with dignity.

• keenan Thompson Keenan Thompson Keenan Thompson Keenan Thompson

  Kel

• Phil Hartman was amazing. He did the definitive Clinton - the one with him walking into McDonalds and talking to folks while chowing down on their food got to the essence of Clinton. He was also great at inventing characters.

• I loved Phil Hartman, he was a brilliant comedic actor. What a horrible, sensless death.

• I love Chris Rock, but never thought he was funny on SNL. They never gave him any good material.

• Garrett Morris was older than the rest of the cast, as well as Black. I think he got shut out of moments to shine and because of that was willing to do the drag bits, Chico Esquela, etc. Victoria Jackson--can't remember a thing she did. I'd imagine she was as crazy then as she is now.

• I loved Kenan as a child actor, especially on Kenan and Kel and his guest spots on The Steve Harvey show (also with Kel Mitchell). I think though that Kel was the better comedian of the two and I have no idea why Kenan is the one whose career took off. As an adult Kenan has not nurtured his talents and his delivery is just flat. He has no versatility and brings the same energy and tone to every character he plays. Also, as someone who used to watch BET a lot, the What Up With That sketch is stupid, no such show exists or has existed on that channel in the 20 years that I have watched it. If you are going to mock a tv station, at least be accurate and mock it for the actual debaucherous mess that it is, not some ignorant unrelated stupidity imagined in the mind of someone who clearly has never watched the channel. I have the same critique for that Prince sketch. Oh, and sorry but John Balushi was never funny to me.

• I agree that Kel was definitely more talented, R177. Googly-eyed, one-note Kenan is just terrible.

• There was a period where MadTv was much funnier than SNL, especially with the "Pretty White Kids with Problems" sketch and the Whitney and Bobby sketch. Then they fired everyone who was ever funny on that show (all at once too) and it all went to shit. Deborah Wilson is brilliant and an example of why SNL's no black women ever policy is stupid. (yeah I know Maya Rudolph is mixed, but most people can't tell).

• Nora Dunn was on tonight's episode of "The Neighbors."

• Tonight's "Suburgatory" was a regular SNL reunion. Regulars Chris Parnell and Ana Gasteyer, with guest Tim Meadows.

• R181 - who?? *yawn*

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

• Ellen Cleghorne, R179?

  Anonymous

• You have got to be kidding r183. In the entire history of that show they have had 3 black female cast members and that's only if you count Maya Rudolph who looked ridiculous playing Oprah. They have a good long list of black men that have worked on the show, but in over 35 years just three black women.