Saturday Night Live Season 21 Reviews - Cast Rankings

It's time to rank the cast of season 21 from first to worst.  Also, I started asking this question with my season 11 recap, Would I save them if I started a fire in Studio 8H?  Since this was the biggest cast overhaul since season 11, I thought I would pose it again.  If Lorne Michaels decided at the last minute that this cast wasn't working and had Billy Martin set fire to the building, who would I make sure to send to my limo to guarantee their safety for season 22?

Norm MacDonald

MVP: Chevy Chase, Quentin Tarantino, Laura Leighton, Elle MacPherson, John Goodman, Steve Forbes

Now I am completely biased here as Norm is my comedy hero and very rarely misfires for me.  Even if I don't love what he's doing I still like it and respect it.  Not only was Weekend Update with Norm MacDonald a definite highlight of every show but if Norm appeared in a sketch, odds are it was going to be my favorite sketch of the night.  He also got a lot of mileage out of his Bob Dole impression this year, appearing in a lot of the cold opens.  He never attempted a recurring character, unless you count Stan Hooper, he just wrote funny sketches that he knew he could deliver.

Best Moment: Speaking of Stan Hooper, Norm's altar ego appeared 4 times this year.  Once getting his fortune told, once cheating at a bible challenge, once as the sketch artist for the Unabomber and in my personal favorite sketch of the year, Coma, as a man waking up from a coma to discover that his sister is hotter than his wife.  He struggles with the moral dilemma of the situation before running for congress to pass legislation making it legal for coma victims to have sex with their sisters.

Worst Moment: Nobody came off well in Cydney from the Laura Leighton episode.  She comes out for a perfume ad surrounded by most of the male cast on their knees portraying little people.  She calls them all midgets and they chide her for being politically incorrect.  It was one of the worst sketches of the season and I felt bad for everyone involved.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: Absolutely.  He was used sparingly in sketches the previous season but now that Weekend Update is firing on all cylinders he must have felt confident enough to write a sketch every once in a while.  Nothing Norm did this year failed.  He was the standout of the show even used in a limited capacity.

Will Ferrell

MVP: Mariel Hemingway, David Alan Grier, Madeline Kahn, Alec Baldwin, Tom Arnold, Phil Hartman, Christine Baranski, Jim Carrey

I'm not surprised that my episode MVPs seemed to alternate between Norm and Will.  I am surprised at how quickly Will Ferrell cemented himself as the go to cast member of the show.  Starting with the first episode, he was everywhere, appearing in the majority of sketches as both a silly character and a straight man.  We all know he can do silly but it was his ability to get laughs out of the thankless roles that really impressed me.  For instance, the first Mary Katharine Gallagher sketch starts with Will singing 'Message In A Bottle' by The Police.  After he leaves Molly Shannon takes over but I was kinda wishing we would have followed his character.  When you can show up in a sketch with two lines and get the biggest laugh that's when you know you have an SNL superstar on your hands.
Best Moment: Will had a lot of great moments this season but I'll give my favorite to the dumb genius of Get Off The Shed!.  A husband and wife try to have a nice cookout with their neighbors but are routinely interrupted by their children who refuse to stop playing on the tool shed.  Things escalate quickly and eventually the children are threatened with physical abuse and being sold on the black market.  The audacity Will had to try to make this piece of stupidity a recurring sketch just proves how fearless he is as a performer.

Worst Moment: Even when Will fails it's usually interesting but I will never understand nor care for the Bill Brasky sketches no matter how many times they bring them back.

Would I have saved him from the fire?:  Without a doubt.  It's hard to make that call and pretend I don't know that he will become everyone's favorite cast member but based solely on this season, he had a lot of great stuff.  He was able to connect with the audience through some of his recurring characters like the Spartan Cheerleaders but also able to tickle my funny bone with the more absurd bits.

David Koechner

MVP: Anthony Edwards, Christopher Walken

Koechner, along with Chris Elliott from last season, has to be one of the greatest SNL cast members who only lasted a season.  I doesn't make a lot of sense why they didn't keep him around.  He had a pretty great year.  He wasn't the greatest when it came to celebrity impressions but when it comes to his character work he was incredible.  He had Gerald "T-Bones" Tibbins, Gary MacDonald, and one of the two fops with Mark McKinney, who made numerous appearances.  If they let him hang around another year, who knows what he could have brought to the show.  Every time he was in a sketch, I was laughing.  He was also great, in that Will Ferrell way, of getting laughs out of thankless characters.  When they would put him in the background of sketches for one line, he would find a way to make that line funny.

Best Moment: Nothing made me laugh more this season than Gary MacDonald, Norm's nervous and untalented brother.  He appeared on Update 3 times and got his own sketch in the John Goodman episode.

Worst Moment: Nothing he did by himself really failed but I felt really bad for him in the season premiere when he had to play a male stripper in The Chicken Lady Show.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: Absolutely.  It boggled my mind that they let him go.  He was a dependable member of the ensemble that was poised to be a breakout member of the cast.

Molly Shannon

MVP: Gabriel Byrne

One of the few holdovers from last season, Molly Shannon came late into season 20 and didn't really get a chance to shine.  Now that she's been given a whole season to grow she broke out with her high energy characters.  Some succeeded more than others but she was good more often than she wasn't, which is all I can ask from an SNL castmember.
Best Moment: Molly loved beating a sketch into the ground.  That may not have been entirely her doing but we got Mary Katharine Gallagher 5 times.  This was her first season so I'm not tired of the character and she always brought an energy to the show.  I also appreciated the physical pain she must have put herself through to pull of the stunts she did.  If I ran head first into a stack of folding chairs I would be laid up in bed for 3 weeks.

Worst Moment: Not all of her characters hit.  We thankfully only got one incarnation of What A Woman Wants which seemed like it was gunning for a recurring spot in the lineup.  I didn't really understand what the joke was here.  She's a teenage girl hosting a talk show about women for men but keeps getting distracted when men call in.  It didn't work for me and I'm glad we only got it the once.

Would I have saved her from the fire?: Yes, she was a star.  She did well in a lot of the thankless background parts but when she headlined a sketch, all eyes were on Molly.

Cheri Oteri

MVP: Danny Aiello

Whenever they talk about the women of SNL they always throw Cheri Oteri's name in the mix, and for good reason.  She was like a wind up toy that they would sometimes throw out on the stage to give a sketch a boost.  She very rarely faltered and was terrific when they had to cut to her for a quick reaction.  One of my favorite moments of hers was when she had one line in the otherwise forgettable Nancy Walls sketch where she played a church lady who talked tough.  Cheri stayed in the background only to run in real quick to try to break up the fight and got the biggest laugh of the sketch.

Best Moment: Although they wore out their welcome just a bit, I gotta give props to the Spartan Cheerleaders and her chemistry with Will Ferrell.  I'm not a fan of recurring characters and really don't like the ones where the same joke is repeated every single time.  The characters lived in the spot right after the monologue for most of the season so I came to expect them.  They were fun for what they were, I could have done without them, I always smiled more than I laughed but I always appreciated the effort.
Worst Moment: Not all characters need to be recurring and we got Althea twice when once would have sufficed.  It's not the most original creation, she's a little girl that annoys people.

Would I have saved her from the fire?: Yes.  She was able to take focus when she had to but also seemed to work well with the entire cast.  That's a valuable asset for an SNL cast member.

Darrell Hammond

MVP: David Schwimmer

Darrell Hammond is a weird person to hold the record for most seasons on the show, which has since been surpassed by Kenan Thompson.  He never had a breakout character on the show, unless you count his Bill Clinton impression.  He was just a guy who did a lot of impressions.  It got to a point in his SNL career where I kept forgetting that he was still on the show.  He would show up in a sketch and I would think that he was a special guest.  He never really fit on the show either, he seemed to only be called in to do a political impression.  He's just one of those guys who hid in the building when it was time to cut people and ended up sticking around for over a decade.

Best Moment: He didn't have any individual sketch that showed his strengths but he was very good at being a funny straight man.  None of his impressions displayed that more than his recurring Ted Koppel as host of Nightline he was able to interview silly people, have all the unfunny lines but still be the funniest guy in the scene.
Worst Moment: He didn't do anything this season that offended me, outside of putting on blackface to play Jesse Jackson.  From the season premiere they kept hyping his Jay Leno impression which he did a couple times most unsuccessfully in NBC's Christmas Salute To Our Bosnian Troops.  Here he brought on a slew of celebrity impressions and made out with Tim Meadows dressed as RuPaul.  He also did a lot of unfunny Jay Leno jokes and where Gary MacDonald succeeded in making unfunny jokes funny, Hammond as Leno just came off as awkward and unfunny.
Would I have saved him from the fire?: Hard to say.  He's right in the middle of the cast.  I don't think anyone would have noticed if he didn't return.  The only thing missing from the next couple years of SNL would have been his hilarious take on Bill Clinton which would be used numerous times once the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke open.

Chris Kattan

MVP: None

A late addition to the cast, Chris Kattan came out guns blazing.  In his first episode he got a sketch on the air where he not only starred in but got all the funny lines.  He kept that going in the rest of his episodes where he consistently got his stuff on.  His second episode introduced The Roxbury Guys who would go on to greater acclaim next season.
Best Moment: Kattan was always more physical than verbal and that was on display in Night Time Music from the Teri Hatcher episode where he performed a series of silly dances to entice the host.

Worst Moment: Kattan was always more physical than verbal and that was on display in Fast Talk where he spoke a lot of dialogue very quickly, which was cute but not that funny.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: In hindsight, yes.  Seeing as he didn't even get half a season it would be a shame to cut him so early.  I would definitely keep him around.

Tim Meadows

MVP: Teri Hatcher

The best joke Tim Meadows had all season was when he came out in the Teri Hatcher episode and said he's been a cast member for 6 seasons and has nothing to show for it.
Best Moment: We did get one more, and probably the best, incarnation of Perspectives.  This is one of my favorite recurring sketches where Lionel Osbourne interviews guests that he has no idea of who they are.
Worst Moment: Tim Meadows was one of the whitest black guys ever in sketch comedy and no sketch displayed that more than I Wanna Git Witchu where he tried to pick up Laura Leighton with gangsta slang.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: I don't know how he survived this long.  This was his 6th season and he still hasn't broken out.  How did he stay so long when others get one season and disappear into obscurity.

Jim Breuer

MVP: None

Jim definitely had a desire to break out but his brand of comedy never quite worked with me.  He was funny in his two Update pieces that were obviously taken from his stand-up act.  He also displayed his ability to put his body in physical harm like in the sketch where he literally beat himself up and when he stole a fall from Chevy Chase.
Best Moment: No real single sketch stood out for me but I did specifically like New Traits where he got his performance review and was told to grow muttonchops and talk in a British accent.

Worst Moment: Thankfully we only got Mrs. Kogen once.  This is his "hilarious" drag character who didn't realize that her son was a criminal.  This seemed like something left over from Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider and I thought there was a reason they got rid of them.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: No.  He's definitely on the bottom rung of the current cast ladder and I wouldn't really miss him if he was gone.

Nancy Walls

MVP: None

With Molly and Cheri taking most of the focus, Nancy kind of fell into the background.  None of her characters really clicked with audiences and there was always a sense of her being funny but a little limited.

Best Moment: She did get very silly as an Australian sex phone operator in 1-600-AUSSIE.  I wish we saw more of this silly and goofy Nancy Walls rather than the straight laced Nancy Walls she presented in most of her sketches.

Worst Moment: In the David Schwimmer episode we got a sketch late in the night called Such A Pretty Face where Nancy plays a salesgirl in a plus size clothing store who was transferred from half shirts.  I understood the premise but her character really needed some comeuppance at the end.  As it stood, Nancy just fat shamed a few ladies and ended up looking like the good guy.

Would I have saved her from the fire?: No.  The show ended up getting Ana Gasteyer in the next season who was a much better fit.

Mark McKinney

MVP: None

I had Mark McKinney ranked fairly high in my season 20 rankings.  He came in late in the season and proved himself as both a funny guy and a reliable straight man.  This season he was consistently my least favorite part of sketches.  None of his character pieces worked for me, his celebrity impressions were weak and I found myself disliking him more than liking him.
Best Moment: Although they wore out their welcome real quick, I initially liked Lucien Callow and Fagan, the two fops who gush over their idols.

Worst Moment: The Phil Hartman episode was almost perfect.  Every sketch worked except for the turd at the end of the night that was Taddli

Would I have saved him from the fire?: No.  The only thing I found memorable about him this season was how much I didn't like him.

Colin Quinn

MVP: None

This hire makes no sense to me.  I get it if they brought him on as a writer and he sneaked on to the Update desk every now and then to deliver a commentary about the news but as a performer he had the most limited delivery.  All of his characters were exactly the same which you can see on display in all of his Update characters that were just Colin Quinn in different wigs.
Best Moment: His gruff no-nonsense almost humorless delivery worked really well in the Roofers sketch from the Steve Forbes episode.

Worst Moment: Every time we saw Joe Blow either in his 3 Update appearances or his sketch where he delivered local news from his basement, I wanted to fast forward so badly.

Would I have saved him from the fire?: No.  He brought little, if anything, to the show

Fred Wolf

MVP: None

Here's the guy who did the least on the show this season.  He wasn't bad but he was very forgettable.

Best Moment: He got to do his stand-up act on Weekend Update once which was funny but not all that memorable.

Worst Moment: Remember when Fred Wolf played a shirtless midget in the Cydney sketch from the Laura Leighton episode?  I wish I didn't.
Would I have saved him from the fire?: No.  I like him, I think he's probably a funny guy but he's probably best used behind the scenes.

David Spade

MVP: None

Ugh.  Spade said he hung around for another season to act as a bridge from the old cast to the new cast.  So he took up airtime from the new cast by doing some lame shtick in the middle of the show via his Spade In America segment.  What he could have done was use this piece as a showcase for the new cast by interviewing their characters, like he did once with Lucien Callow and Fagan.  What he did was remind everyone how lame the show was and validate the fact that they fired everyone.

Best Moment: He had a few funny moments when he would do the Hollywood Minute

Worst Moment: The two times he brought out women to his Spade In America segments.  He did a Hollywood Minute with Jennifer Aniston and then interviewed Teri Hatcher.  This was just gross as I just got to see Spade pawing over a lady he obviously wanted to bone.
Would I have saved him from the fire?: No. He couldn't burn fast enough.

Up Next
I haven't decided yet.  After doing this rebuilding year I'm considering doing season 12 which was the ultimate rebuilding year or season 16 because it was Chris Farley's first year on the show.  I'm open to any suggestions.