Every cast member of SNL's history, ranked from worst to best

I have not watched SNL more than twice in my lifetime, but as a fan of KEENAN on ALL THAT and then THE KEENAN AND KEL SHOW, I have a hard time believing he's worse than some other cast members that come to mind as people I dislike

 

PS I like that Victoria Jackson is ranked as the worst 

Pretty interesting. They got the Top 5 pretty much right. Hartman! No one else but Eddie Murphy could be #1 - the guy was untouchable.

 

Dana Carvey's Top 20, not Top 10 & Tim Meadows apparently has friends in high places cuz he belongs nowhere in the Top 50. He was always stilted &, the kinda funny Ladies Man aside, had no memorable characters or skits.

 

Kevin Nealon always gets the hose on these things. Dude was genius. His comic timing & delivery is second only to Hartman.

 

Also, I really hope that this list was made as an elaborate "F*ck You" to Victoria Jackson. She deserves it.

 

The entire 84-85 swain ensemble should be number one, collectively. That season (with Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Martin Short et al) is pure genius...consistently funny as hell.

Victoria Jackson could be legitimately funny and does not belong on there as the worst. Almost every single player from that one off season in the early 80s is worse.

Individually, Phil Hartman is the funniest and most versatile male performer that the show ever had.

I was done once I saw Chevy Chase at 25.  I mean, you're telling me Tim Meadows and Jan Hooks rank ahead of him?

 

Ferrell ahead of Belushi and Murray is a joke too.

The fact that Kristen Wiig is above Chris Farley, Chevy Chase, Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Kevin Nealon, etc. is ridiculous.

 

She's god awful.  She has one character and it's the same thing over and over again.

 

 

Nora Dunn ahead of Chase and Norm Macdonald. Okay pal, sure thing there.

 

And I know Dennis Miller has blown it with everyone since 9/11, but give the guy his due for his years on the show. Having him one slot below Chris Elliott's (who I otherwise love) one season stint is horseshit.

And really, a good 2/3 of these people are interchangeable.  Putting them at 90 or 80 really doesn't say much.

Murrphy deserves his number one. Phil Hartman was a genius, but Eddie Murphy was the show while he was on it.

 

Will Ferrell at #2 benefits from post-SNL success and a relatively weak supporting cast. That should be Phil's spot.

 

And I yield to no one in my affection for Tina Fey, but as a cast member she does not deserve #10.

Meadows is highly underrated. It's too bad that The Ladies Man became his breakout character because I'd have been first in line for a "Perspectives" motion picture.

I think we need to hit our knees on a nightly basis in gratitude that we never got that Sprockets movie.

I don't know, didn't Myers backing out of that force him to do CAT IN THE HAT instead?

I'd put Bill Murray at #1 myself.   No denying Eddie Murphy's superstardom of the 80's, but his trajectory since then has permanently stained his legacy, in my opinion.  Phil Hartman went too soon, or else he'd be a stronger contender for #1.  

 

1.  Murray

2.  Hartman

3.  Murphy

4.  Tina Fey

5.  Robert Downey Jr.  

Going over that list I realized that

 

1) It's been a LONG TIME since I've watched SNL

 

2) I didn't recognize many of the players who were on while I did watch

 

3) Murray for the #1 spot noquestion

I forgot all about Ellen Cleghorn. 

Edited by BlackyShimSham - 12/22/11 at 2:29pm

My "Wait... they were on SNL?" list:

 

Julia Louise Dreyfuss

Chris Elliot

Robert Downey Jr.

 

David Koechner

Chris Rock

Michael McKean

 

Janeane Garofalo

Anthony Michael Hall

Mark McKinney

Joan Cusack

Randy Quaid

 

For people that made little to no impact on the show, but were at least for a time culturally relevant off the show.

 

 

Finesse Mitchell at 72.  Jimmy Fallon at 80.  Atleast Fallon had Weekend Update.  How can they put him so high when he did nothing?

 

And Keen Thompson at 61.  Fuck him.

 

Bobby Moynihan at 47?  Again what has he done?  Plus being ahead of MaGruber/Falconer Will( 55)Forte is a travesty. 

 

And Tim Meadows belongs nowhere in the top 50 let alond 20. 

 

Hartman #1 all the way.

 

I hate lists like these.  Writer probably watches The Big Bang Theory over Community

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Simmons wrote a great article on Eddie that explains why he's rightfully #1. He's still the only cast member to host the show, while still a member of the cast.

I remember Dreyfus being in the Whiners and being Marie Osmond. I remember Rock as Nat X and Long Dong Silver. Everything else is a blur.

I'm pretty sure the only reason Eddie hosted that particular show was because Nick Nolte got sick and couldn't host, so they got "the other star from 48 Hours".  

For the most part the list seems fairly accurate. I would place Meadows lower and Forte higher, but that's about it. I had no idea poor Chris Parnell was fired twice. 

No doubt for giving terrible medical advice.

Keenan Thompson is good on SNL, his Sir Charles, Whoopy and What's up with that are some of my favorite bits from the show these days. Kristen Wiig is becoming the new Molly Shannon, the fact that she is in nearly every bit doing nearly the same thing really has become tiresome.  

I like her, but Amy Poehler is ranked way too high. I've got no problem putting Murphy #1 but Hartman should be second.

My Top 10:

 

1. Eddie Murphy - a phenomenon; easily the most popular cast member ever, transcended race while commenting on it

 

2. John Belushi - had a presence greater than anyone else on the show

 

3. Phil Hartman -the 80's Akyroyd, always an anchor, in the 90's he finally got the great characters

 

4. Bill Murray -it took him a while to come into his own, but when he did few were funnier

 

5. Will Ferrell

 

6. Dana Carvey -his Church Lady was iconic, but I prefer Lyle, the effeminate heterosexual

 

7. Chevy Chase -he was all over legendary first season as one of the chief writers and the break out performer

 

8. Dan Aykroyd - a master of saving dying sketches, he was, like Hartman, brilliant at disappearing into character

 

9. Gilda Radner - every female performer on the show after her took a little from her

 

10 Jon Lovitz

 

Honorable Mention: the mad genius Mr. Mike, Michael O' Donoghue and Norm MacDonald

You had me until # 10 Elvis.

 

(And I'd swap Aykroyd and Carvey's places.)

Kevin Nealon at 27? Higher than Adam Sandler? What the fuck?

 

 

 

 

No, the Buh-Bye flight attendants definitely appeared more than once.

Bewildering, pointless, and universally despised? "Goat Boy" will always come in second to the recurring "Delta Delta Delta Girls" sketches from around the same time. Horrid.

Murray, Murphy, Belushi and Ferrell are the legends that could always be counted on. Murray is the one who has pissed away his talent the least over the course of his career, so he'll always have the number one spot.

And Hartman, who was the dictionary definition of dependable. While the guy couldn't make everything funny, he could make just about anything work. It's also easy to forget that it took quite a while for Ferrell to really find his niche. For several seasons pre-Cowbell & his patented "Get off the damn roof!" escalating anger-guy characters, we had to suffer Ferrell in those lame Cheerleader, Music Teachers & Roxbury sketches.

Lovitz is kind of love him or hate him, but I always found him unorthodoxically charming and funny. He almost single-handedly kept the show afloat during the disastrous 85-86 season. His liar character was a pop culture sensation, and I loved his Master Thespian, and most of all his deliciously politically incorrect Harvey Firestein impression.

 

Also, his virgin Trekkie, hanging his head when Shatner asked him if he ever kissed a girl, was the hilarious heart of my fave SNL sketch of all time.

 

Oh, and Hanukkah Harry!

 

Lovittz as "The Devil" & his "Leering Single Guy" bit (done to perfection with Tom Hanks) was aces too.

Don't get me wrong, I think Lovitz could be funny.  I just wouldn't put him up that high.  Granted, the definitive choices start to get slim surprisingly quickly.

Whoever typed that article must have gotten really tired of coming up with ways to hide the fact that they weren't qualified to rank about 70% of those performers. "No one knows who this is." "Didn't have much to do." All code for "I didn't know about these people when I started writing, and I didn't have time to find out."

I'd put Aykroyd ahead of Ferrell, actually.

 

And a lot of it depends on how you're judging.  Do you factor in longevity?  If not, as many have said, that Crystal-Guest-Shearer trio was nigh on perfection for that one glorious season.  And I don't think post-SNL careers should factor into it.  That's a different list.

 

Although, didn't Rock leave for ILC, only to see it canceled before his first season as producer/showrunner/whatever?  I seem to remember that happening.

 

 

 

 

"Get off the shed" was actually one of Ferrell's audition sketches. Maybe it took a while for Lorne to be comfortable with his style.

 

Yep. A really interesting idea, put together in the laziest way possible.

 

Watching the SNL Best of Lovitz a few months ago, his style has aged pretty poorly. He's way more broad than I'd remembered, although I loved him at the time. (I was 10.)

 

 

If I were going to rank these people based on who made me laugh the hardest when they were employed on SNL*, I think I'd rank Andy Samberg as #1 and Tracy Morgan as #2

 

The DIGITAL SHORTS ("Bakers Dozen!") and the Brian Fellows character ("If I had a bug like that, I'd make a coat out of it") are the only things from SNL I've ever seen that have actually made me LOL

 

 

*I'm no SNL expert so I'm sure there are plenty of bits I've not seen

No, they didn't.

 

Also, anyone bemoaning Wiig or Shannon on the show (which I wholeheartedly agree with)... just wait on Bayer.  She'll be worse than both of them combined.  She's being groomed as Wiig's "replacement".  Why that's a good idea to them (or anyone else) is beyond me, or anyone I know who watches the show.  And she's from my hometown!

 

The problem with Wiig as far as I can tell is that while she's not good enough to carry the show through an extended fallow period, she's just talented enough that hanging the show on her recurring bits keeps seeming like the best option available.

There's no growth in her recurring bits either.  There's no new wrinkle, no twist, nothing.  Just the same concept done to death.

Personally, I'd rank Ana Gasteyer as the top female that the show ever had. I'd call her the female Phil Hartman , actually. She frequently was the sole redeeming feature in many of the skits, salvaging laughs while the other cast members floundered. Her recurring characters were consistently funny, and she had great interplay with the stars of the show. Amy Poehler and Jan Hooks are numbers 2 and 3 for me.

Rock was just a "special guest star" in the final Wayans-free year of ILC. He didn't do a whole lot as the show was pretty much coasting to oblivion by that point. Carrey was still around but I imagine he was more or less taking a knee and waiting for the clock to run out once ACE VENTURA was released in the middle of that season.

Yes, they did.

The thing is, can you really separate any comedian's work on SNL from Loren Michaels? He is the show runner and apparently has decided that a strict format of running one note characters into the ground is the safest most sure way for SNL to succeed. If he doesn't like a player, they don't get bits.