SNL Twenty

Tonight is the 40th anniversary special for Saturday Night Live, which means I’ve been watching the show for about thirty-six years. I've been a superfan for most of that time: I used to watch each week with my finger poised on the VCR remote to create VHS mix tapes of my favorite sketches. I've bought the oral history book Live From New York in three different editions. I owned a Wayne's World hat.

Like many of my long-time interests, I was probably first introduced to the show by my older cousins, many of whom were (and still are) Steve Martin disciples. I fought to stay awake and patiently waited each week for a sketch or two that had broad enough humor for me to understand, so I could laugh along with everyone else instead of only pretending I got the jokes. I know I watched it live back then because I remember the news breaking that the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players were going to be replaced by entirely new performers the following season, and couldn’t figure out why that was happening. I tuned out during the first round of rebuilding years, until Eddie Murphy’s stand-up album became the underground source of all dirty jokes retold at my junior high and everyone started doing Ed Grimley impressions. By then I was in for the long haul and consistently tuned in out of habit, even during the years the show was little more than a cast of unknowns all scrambling to establish the next big catch phrase.

When I saw Rolling Stone magazine had ranked all 141 cast members, I was immediately curious. John Belushi was predictably enough at the top, just like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles find their ways to the top of any music-based list Rolling Stone has ever published. I wound up agreeing with a lot of the spirit of what the list had to say, even if there were a few head-scratching moments: Dan Akroyd, the Joe Piscopo to Belushi’s Eddie Murphy, in the Top 10? Kevin Nealon, the Weekend Update equivalent of plywood, in the Top 100?? Robert Downey Jr. at the very bottom of the list, even below the 70s acid-trip versions of the Muppets that made occasional cameos??? He’s friggin’ Iron Man, for crying out loud! Even if he wasn’t that good on the show, you just DON’T disrespect Iron Man like that!!

But this is to be expected. Whenever Rolling Stone publishes any list of anything, I’ll read it and agree with some of it and wonder what they were thinking for the rest. So today I’m going to pare down their list of the entire forty years of cast members down to my twenty favorites. To be clear, the names on my list are here for what they did while appearing on the show and not because of whatever may have happened for them later in their careers (which I realize negates my earlier Robert Downey Jr. complaint, but if anyone deserves an asterisk, it’s Tony Stark). Keeping my list confined to the show wasn't always easy to do. It was impossible to predict that someone like Chris Rock, who didn’t make my list because he was so underused on the show, would go on to become one of the definitive stand-up comedians of the generation, or that a barely-in-her-20s Julia Louis-Dreyfus would grow up to become Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Normally I’d say “in no particular order” as a preface to my list, but these names are coming at you according to how they fell into place in the Rolling Stone ranking, only without their numbers:

Tina Fey - Honestly she almost didn’t make the list because she was defined by the Weekend Update anchor desk, with hardly any memorable sketch work to her name while on the show. Yes, while on the show -- the Sarah Palin impression came along when she was a returning guest performer, and not a regular cast member.

Mike Myers - He was obviously way too impressed with himself from the beginning, but Wayne’s World in its prime was one of my all-time favorite recurring sketches, to say nothing of Sprockets. But Coffee Talk? Such a black hole for me. They can’t all be home runs.

Bill Murray - I always thought Belushi was something of a one-trick pony. For my money, Bill was the best performer from the original cast, even if he was technically the first “new guy” to join the show after Chevy Chase left. And not that it matters for this list, but look at the career he’s had since. When was the last time you saw Dan Akroyd open a movie or get invited on a talk show?

Phil Hartman - Maybe the most reliable cast member the show ever had, to say nothing of what he did later on “The Simpsons.” Even with dead characters like The Anal Retentive Chef and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (what?!), he was so consistently great he demands inclusion.

Amy Poehler - As far as the show goes, I’d put her before Tina Fey. Tina is a better writer, but Amy had so much great sketch work and so many memorable characters she has to get the nod for her tenure.

Dana Carvey - Another “where are they now?” victim, but he was the first breakout during one of the rebuilding casts and one of the few along the way who it can be said kept the show alive when it was on shaky ground.

Will Ferrell - Fearless and without shame, he could take over a sketch simply by changing the inflection in his voice.

Bill Hader - I defy anyone to try and argue there was ever a better impressionist on the show. One of the best performers they ever had. He could lose himself in any character and had such a variety of them, it was always a little jarring to see him turn up in a movie playing the straight man to someone else’s wacky guy. I’ve never laughed at the show harder than when he would break character as Stephon and laugh at some of the jokes on the cue cards he hadn’t seen coming.

Kristen Wiig - For my money, the strongest female performer the show had. Even though I found some of her recurring characters to be little more than annoyances (“Don’t ask me to sing!”), she was always strong.

Chris Farley - Sometimes he did little more than yell and throw his body around, but he worked as hard as anyone to earn every laugh he got.

Adam Sandler - Yes, his movies are mostly awful. But Opera Man. Cheap Halloween Costumes. Canteen Boy. The Hanukkah Song. Lunch Lady Land.

Jon Lovitz - Like Dana Carvey, he was a breakout in a dry spell that helped keep the show alive. Pathological Liar? Annoying Man? Master Thespian? A good actor with some really original characters.

David Spade - Kind of a two-trick pony, he was either a snarky little weasel or a detestable butt-kisser. But it could be argued that with the number of comedians who have tried to replicate the his sarcastic voice made him, for better or worse, one of the most widely influential performers the show had during the 90s.

Seth Meyers - Like Tina, Seth’s time on the show was mostly defined by the Update desk. But he owned it, and did for so long that he made it a centerpiece of the show.

Dennis Miller - I stuck with Dennis Miller through his own failed late-night talk show and his much more successful HBO show because he owned the update desk in the 80s just like Seth did in the new millennium. He may have dropped out of the mainstream, but back then he was killing it every week. If people think I have something of a sarcastic streak to me -- and they do -- I’m sure 80s Dennis Miller was one of the inspirations for that.

Jimmy Fallon - There’s a reason Lorne Michaels lined him up for The Tonight Show. Much better at sketch comedy than he was at the Update desk, he had a lot of great characters and memorable moments, a few of which didn’t even involve him breaking character and laughing at the sketch. And he was no Hader, but he was also (and still is) a pretty solid impressionist.

Will Forte - He was capable of being both a completely normal guy and someone who was so off the rails bizarre you had to laugh even if you didn’t understand what he was trying to do. And let’s not forget that his Weekend Update politician character Tim Calhoun looks so exactly much like Ted Cruz that it wouldn’t surprise me if Ted Cruz had actively used that look as an inspiration.

Horatio Sanz - More Jimmy Fallon’s partner in shenanigans than his second banana, but he was at his best when it was the two of them together, just because they had such chemistry.

Chris Kattan - He dropped right off the map when he left the show, but he was fearlessly funny when he was still in the cast.

Norm MacDonald - I might be in the minority here, but I thought Norm MacDonald was absolutely hilarious. His Weekend Update delivery and nearly every character he did was so perfectly deadpan it was almost as if he was daring the audience to laugh at how absurd the jokes were.

Going beyond my 20 to look at the current cast members, because I still watch, I’d have to single out four. Kate McKinnon and Taran Killam have already proven themselves to be strong, while Leslie Jones and Aidy Bryant always get my attention when they show up on screen because I know whatever they do is going to make me laugh really hard.

I’m looking forward to the anniversary show tonight, but I know there is so much from 40 years I would like to see I can’t imagine how it won’t be at least a little disappointing, from certain cast members not showing up or certain characters or sketches not being acknowledged.

But if I get a few seconds of Annoying Man trying to shove a finger into Dennis Miller’s ear, I’ll be happy.