Talk:List of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches

Untitled
I brought this up on the Gay Hitler page, but if anybody has any suggestions for categories that can include a number of these characters or sketches, please suggest them. I was originally planning on writing a stub for each of them in due time, but I think it would be smarter to categorize, and have larger articles. Possible categories:


 * Characters Appearing on Weekend Update
 * Emily Litella
 * Roseanne Roseannadanna
 * Point/Counterpoint
 * Father Guido Sarducci
 * Chico Esquela
 * Big Vic Ricker
 * Dr. Jack Badofsky
 * Siobhan Cahill
 * Patti Lynn Hunnsacker
 * Dwight MacNamara
 * Worthington Clotman
 * Wayne Huevos
 * Lew Goldman
 * Buddy Young, Jr.
 * Nathan Thurm
 * Babette
 * Mr. Subliminal
 * A Grumpy Old Man
 * Annoying Man
 * Hollywood Minute
 * Queen Shenequa
 * Jan Brady
 * Cajun Man
 * Buster Jenkins
 * Opera Man
 * Hank Fielding
 * Bennett Brauer
 * The British Fops
 * Joe Blow
 * Gary MacDonald
 * Lenny The Lion
 * Cinder Calhoun
 * Dominican Lou
 * Gunner Olsen
 * Jacob Silj
 * Jasper Hahn
 * Comedienne Jeannie Darcy
 * Gay Hitler
 * Drunk Girl
 * Fericito
 * Tim Calhoun
 * Billy Smith
 * Jorge Rodriguez

Tommy Flanagan, The Pathological Liar appeared on Update, but I wouldn't call him an Update character. He made 18 appearances, so maybe he just warrants his own page.

Other suggestions?

Character vs. Impression
There's been some controversy over whether impressions should be listed here. There's way too many impressions that have come out of Saturday Night Live to list them all. Many characters straddle the line, however. Baba Wawa, I would consider to be a character rather than an impression, seeing as she has a different name. There are also a lot of TV show sketches (Prince Show, Joe Pesci Show, etc.) that have a certain formula to them that makes them unique, so I think they're warranted. But things like Gerald Ford, George Bush, Lina Wertmuller, don't qualify in my opinion. Leadpipevigilante 00:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Well SNL has had a lot of characters and impressions over there years so I feel like impersonations should go up here SNLfan123 (talk) 22:31, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Carol!
When did Carol! (Horatio Sanz) first appear?

December 11th 2004 SNLfan123 (talk) 22:05, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Remember the Muppets?
I would love to see the original muppet routines included here. I thought they were a riot. If I understand these categories correctly, I would place them under short lived recurring characters.

The bits were called the Land of Gortch.

Revamping lists of recurring sketches/characters
In an effort to address the massive disarray and random formatting of Wikipedia's coverage of recurring SNL sketches, I've begun an effort to merge the various lists and pages into a single list of recurring sketches, split by their year of introduction (i.e., beginning with Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1975-1976). The content of the following pages would be merged:


 * List of Saturday Night Live musical sketches
 * Saturday Night Live animal sketches
 * Saturday Night Live characters appearing on Weekend Update
 * Saturday Night Live TV show sketches of the 1970s
 * Saturday Night Live TV show sketches of the 1980s
 * Saturday Night Live TV show sketches of the 1990s
 * Saturday Night Live TV show sketches of the 2000s

Among the issues that would be resolved are a) there would be a logical place for information about every SNL recurring sketch, instead of randomly highlighting those that happen to be about animals, music, or TV parodies; and b) it would be tremendously helpful in cleaning up the vast number of recurring-sketch redirects that currently go to pages that don't have any actual information about that sketch, because under the new format, we would know, based on the sketch's date of introduction, where information about that sketch would be located.

I have begun drafting these new pages in my userspace; the first is at User:Theoldsparkle/snl1 and they go sequentially from there (up to 10 right now). I would ask that any comments be centralized at User talk:Theoldsparkle/snl1. Theoldsparkle (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: pages moved. Apparently uncontroversial. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:35, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

– As one of the main people who work on the recurring SNL sketch pages, I find the chronological list to be much more useful and more navigable, as well as better maintained, than the alphabetical list. I thus think the chronological list should be the "main" one. Theoldsparkle (talk) 16:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches (listed chronologically) → Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches
 * Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches → Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches (listed alphabetically)
 * Hm. How useful is it really to have separate articles? Merging may be more appropriate here. --BDD (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see how there'd be anything to merge; the two pages should have exactly the same information, as of right now. It did occur to me when posting this RM that people might question the need for multiple lists, and I don't personally have much of an argument for keeping the alphabetical page at all. (And in the interest of full disclosure, there's also Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches (listed by cast member), which hasn't been kept up to date like the other two.) The chronological one is the one that I like; it makes much more sense to me that someone would want to view sketches from a certain era vs. sketches that happen to start with the same letter. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:46, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Since it doesn't seem like there's any objection to the move, could someone go ahead and make this happen? If anyone wants to propose that one or more of the lists be deleted, they can always do that at a later point. Theoldsparkle (talk) 14:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Sketch titles -- any thoughts?
Some sketches don't seem to lend themselves to easy titles, for purposes of listing them. I was wondering if anyone might have thoughts or suggestions about better ways to refer to these:

Just wanted to put the question out there in case anyone has an idea. Theoldsparkle (talk) 14:09, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The "Bring it on down to ____ville" sketch -- I titled it "Mascots", for lack of a better idea, but I don't think that's very good. Maybe "Competing Street Advertisers"? Just call it "Omeletteville"?
 * Porn Star Commercials (the commercials for crystals and champagne by the former porn stars)
 * Employee Termination Call-Outs -- apparently the main characters are named Niff and Dana, according to snltranscripts.jt.org, but I'm pretty sure nobody would know what the title "Niff and Dana" was referring to.

Screen Test sketches: added or not?
There are a few sketches over the seasons involving "never before seen" screen tests of famous movies (Back to the Future, Star Wars, The Lion King, Top Gun). While these are different movies, they have the same idea. Would these be added to the recurring sketch list? Rosalina2427  (talk to me)  04:10, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

SNL screen test
I agree I agree because SNL has had a lot of parody screen test you can say and I actually do think they can be a "Recurring" sketch. SNLfan123 (talk) 22:36, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1975–76 into List of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches
All of these lists are very small and contain a lot of unnecessary information. These should be merged to this article in a table format, something like Name, Debut Date, Principal Actors, and Description. Unless the sketch is notable enough to have its own article, there's no need for expanded lists of episodes for these minor sketches. I can't imagine all combined would be overly large, but they could be split by decade if the resulting page is overwhelming. Starting with just season one for now to make sure it's not a waste of time. TTN (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No comments either way, so I guess I'll attempt merging soon unless anyone disagrees. TTN (talk) 13:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1995–96 into List of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches
Same as the other one. If this one receives no comments as well, I'll try one more and proceed to merge them all if nobody opposes. TTN (talk) 23:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose this merge (and the previous) – Sorry I didn't see this sooner, but I think the seasons' "Recurring" articles are quite helpful (and fine as is). Since most seasons' "Recurring" pages for have enough content to justify the "Recurring" page being separate, it's jarring and awkward for a few seasons to be merged in the main page. WP:NOTBROKE. Paintspot Infez (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * - The ultimate goal is to merge all of them. The reason I've only done only two is to make sure there is support (or no opposition) before I waste all the time merging them over. If multiple go off without any issue, then the rest can be merged without trouble. In terms of the usefulness of the pages, what would you say that is included on the individual pages that makes them necessary? List of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches is the merged version of the last revision of the article. The only thing that cannot reliably be merged would be skit appearance lists, but those are ultimately unnecessary unless said skit has its own article. I think the table format makes more sense to give the core necessary information needed for a list. TTN (talk) 18:22, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 2015–16
Why doesn't Season 41 have its own page with the list of sketch appearances anymore? I remember there used to be one for Season 41 like the other seasons, what happened to that one? Also should there be the same thing for every season that doesn't have one yet? 2600:8805:E007:1A00:E153:D54B:F19A:118B (talk) 02:20, 25 April 2023 (UTC)