I found Cleghorne, Cheri Oteri, and Chris Rocket pretty unfunny but Melanie Hutsell takes the prize. She was a vacuum from which no comedy escaped.
I found Cleghorne, Colin Quinn, Cheri Oteri, and Chris Rocket pretty unfunny but Melanie Hutsell takes the prize. She was a vacuum from which no comedy escaped. I think this is who you’re referring to, Enderw23.
My second post was the “director’s cut” comments.
All this talk of the worst SNL cast members and no one has mentioned Tim Kazurinski? (Talentless and annoying.)
All this talk of the best SNL cast members and no one has mentioned Bill Murray? (His nerd character alone should be enough to win him the title.)
I was going to go with Nora Dunn, but then I remembered one cast member whose mere appearance meant that we were guaranteed five minutes of absolute laugh-free viewing:
A. Whitney Brown. Not even anyone in the studio audience ever laughed at his “observations,” none of which was clever or insightful.
Can’t argue with those who said Dennis Miller, though. The best Dennis Miller moment was when Dana Carvey did his Dennis Miller impersonation right next to Miller.
Either bad or very unnotable:
[ul]
[li]Colin Quinn - He sucked on Remote Control; worse on SNL[/li][li]Terry Sweeney - drag queen who did Nancy Reagan imitation[/li][li]Pamela Stephenson - all I remember of her (besides her trying to grab a hotdog in the title sequence) was where her tits were dancing/moving around while she did an editorial about her tits.[/li][li]Denny Dillon[/li][li]Robin Duke[/li][li]Gail Matthius[/li][li]Ann Risley[/li][li]Andy Kaufman - Bugged the @!#?@! out of me on “Dick Van Dyke Show”[/li][li]Cheri Oteri - Cheerleader skit burned her out in my mind[/li][/ul]
Talentless? What are you talking about? He went on to a brilliant career as the unabomber!
What?
This is surely one of the best, funniest insults of an actress I’ve ever seen. I’m still giggling.
nineiron, I forgot who A. Whitney Brown was until you reminded me that he was the dork who did commentaries on Weekend Update. Why the hell was he on the show? The same could be said, to a slightly lesser degree, of Al Franken, who was both untalented and irritating AND adds the extremly irritating trait of being a rabid political partisan, which is never funny in a comedian.
Al Franken may not be much of a performer, but he and Tom Davis wrote for the show in the early years, long before they ever appeared on camera. Some folks may just need to stay behind the scenes.
Colin Quinn
I would have to agree with many of the above. Melanie Hutsell, A. Whitney Brown, Colin Quinn, plus many other names I fail to even recognize as I was probably busy washing my cat whenever they came on. One name I MUST put on here however:
Jim Bruer (sp?)
The next funny joke/skit this guy performs will be his first. Whoever told this guy to pursue a career in comedy should be the target of a class-action lawsuit by the American public. I would rather be dragged across af field of broken glass by my nutsack than endure another of his “goat-boy” sketches. The saddest thing about this is that he was a “feature” performer on SNL. Most of the others mentioned were bit players (for good reason).
Al Franken is a good writer, but heck, his “impersonation” of Paul Simon (the other one, not Art Garfunkel’s ex-wife) was a pain in the neck. And don’t even get me started on Stuart Smalley! I cannot believe they did an entire movie with the character, Stuart Saves His Family.
Hall of Shame =
Charles Rocket
Denny Dillon
Brad Hall
Martin Short
Terry Sweeney
Anthony Michael Hall
Billy crystal
Melanie Hutsell
(I am a little less familiar with some from the past few years)
Gotta disagree. I thought his impersonation of Senator Simon was spot-on (monotone “…and that’s why I wear…the bow tie.”). I liked Stuart, too – great parody of the maudlin, Deepak Chopra self-help crap that was popular at the time. But I have no intention to see the movie. Pretty much all SNL spin-off movies by definition suck (ok, except maybe the Blues Brothers).
I second the nomination of Gilbert Gottfried. What exactly is this man’s talent? Oh yes – he has an annoying voice. And? Well, he has an annoying voice…
Let’s play a game of “Flymaster sets himself up to be flamed”, shall we?
Worst:
Dan Aykroyd
Bill Murray
John Belushi
Gilda Radner
and, worst ever:
Steve Martin.
All of these people are comic GENIUSES off of SNL. Murray, Aykroyd, and Martin have made some of the funniest movies ever.
Belushi WAS the funniest college movie of all time.
Radner was…well…eh.
But I’ve never enjoyed any of these 5s work on SNL. Personally, I don’t get the whole “Original or near original cast was best” argument, myself. For my money, 92ish (Hartman, Carvey, Meyers, Spade, Rock, Farley, Nealon, Sandler, et al) was by far the best.
It worked pretty well as the parrot from Disney’s Alladin. But that was all.
Flymaster wrote
I’m speechless. Surely in this discussion, I would’ve assumed these would be in the indisputably cool category. Especially Steve Martin. Eye of the beholder, I guess.
Worst:
Melanie Hutsell
Terry Sweeney
Anthony Micheal Hall
Charles Rocket
Chris Farley
Rob Schneider
David Spade
Chris Farley
Colin Quinn
Best:
Phil Hartman
Darrell Hammond
Jan Hooks
Bill Murray
Question: Why are Harry Anderson and Andy Kaufman contained on this list? They were never cast members. They were ‘guest comedians’.
The 80-81 season and the 85-86 season were sort of the “lost seasons”, when cancellation seemed just around the corner. Lots of mighty bad performers in each. Still, every now and then you got a good, funny skit, like Lovitz, Quaid and Griffin Dunne on the serious-issue talk show, “You Can Pick Your Friends, You Can Pick Your Nose, But You Can’t Pick Your Friends’ Noses.” Dunne’s finger kept creeping toward Quaid’s face…that show also had one of my favorite game show parodies, “You Bet Your Finger!”, on which the guillotine kept malfunctioning. (“What do you think is the problem there, Brian?” “Looks like gravity, Bob.”)
Terry Sweeney was probably the most useless member of the cast, but that’s really hard to evaluate, since all he did was play either a gay guy, Nancy Reagan, or Joan Rivers.
My personal pick for “most unfunny” would have to be Kevin Nealon. He did a few funny things, but more often he was just annoying, and there were a few skits that were just unforgiveable. Take the game show “Comedy Killers”, which just reeked of his touch. A whole skit about things that aren’t funny? And he thought this was a good idea? He gets my vote for “worst newsreader”, as well. (although Fallon is showing promise in this area)
As far as favorites: I always thought Christopher Guest was sadly overlooked. He is one talented, funny dude.
By far, Colin Quinn is the worst. He is not funny at all, and he can barely read.
I think the most under-appreciated is Jay Mohr. He was just a part of the cast during a dry spell of sorts, and he didn’t get a chance to shine. I’ve you’ve ever seen his stand-up, you’ll understand.