User:Benmite/Sandbox/MadTV

Cast
In its early years, Mad TV's cast was praised by critics for being especially diverse. Its first season starred Debra Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, Phil LaMarr, Artie Lange, Craig Anton, Mary Scheer, Bryan Callen, Orlando Jones, and David Herman. Wilson was the first cast member hired for Mad TV. She starred in the first eight seasons of the series from 1995 to 2003, making her the show's longest-running original cast member and its first and only Black female cast member during her time on the show. She later stated that her decision to leave the series in 2003 was motivated by her discovery that another white male cast member, who had joined the show after her, was earning more than her, and that her attempts to negotiate her salary failed.

Sullivan was added to the cast because Bahr and Small wanted someone on the show who "the audience would like to have dinner with". She starred on the show from 1995 to 2001 and left to star in the ABC sitcom Me and My Needs, which was not picked up by the network after its pilot episode. Herman had previously starred in the short-lived Fox sketch comedy series House of Buggin' before appearing on Mad TV, while Jones had written for the Fox series Roc. Jones, Callen, and Lange all left the show after its second season, and Lange later became well-known in the media for his struggles with drug addiction.

Michael McDonald starred on Mad TV for 10 seasons and was the show's longest-running cast member. Other popular cast members included Alex Borstein, who starred on the show for five seasons from 1997 to 2002; Ike Barinholtz, who joined in 2002 and left in 2007; Aries Spears, who joined in 1997; Mo Collins, who joined in 1998 and left in 2004; Stephnie Weir, who starred on the show for six years; Nicole Parker, who appeared on six seasons of the show; and Bobby Lee, who appeared on eight seasons of the show. Other cast members, such as Andy Daly, Simon Helberg, and Taran Killam, the last of whom was the youngest person to be cast on the show, found fame after brief tenures on Mad TV. Comedians Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key met after being cast on Mad TV in 2004 for its ninth season, and the two would later star together in the widely-lauded Comedy Central sketch comedy series Key & Peele. Peele left the series in 2008, while Key stayed until the show's final season.

Recurring sketches and characters
Numerous characters and sketches on Mad TV became notable for their frequent appearances. Michael McDonald played Stuart, an overgrown, spoiled child with a bowl cut, bright red cheeks, and a rainbow plaid shirt. His overbearing single mother, Doreen (played by Mo Collins), tries to get Stuart to do basic tasks with the help of someone else who eventually gets driven crazy by Stuart's antics. He has a number of catch phrases, including "Look what I can do!", "I don't wanna say," "Let me do it!", and "Dooooon't!", while his mother always mentions that Stuart's father left on Tuesday. Stuart appeared in 38 sketches in nine seasons from 1998 to 2008 and was described by Megh Wright of Vulture as the show's most memorable character.

Alex Borstein appeared in 44 sketches as the popular recurring character of Bunny Swan, better known as Ms. Swan, an immigrant nail salon owner and manicurist with a strong, exaggerated accent who annoys others by not being able to answer simple questions. She has a bowl cut and wears a muumuu and a rainbow plaid jumper; she also has catch phrases such as "He look-a like-a man". Although Ms. Swan was presumed by audiences to be Asian, the series identifies her as hailing from Kuvaria, the home of Santa Claus, while Borstein stated that her inspirations for the character were Icelandic singer Björk and Borstein's Hungarian grandmother. Elahe Izadi of the Washington Post included the Ms. Swan sketches on a list of the "20 defining comedy sketches of the past 20 years" in 2019, writing that they were "among the most widely remembered of Mad TV's work".

Vancome Lady, an emotionally abusive, racist woman who struggled to keep a job due to her ignorant remarks, was played by Nicole Sullivan and made over 25 appearances on the show. A sketch featuring cast member Anjelah Johnson as the irritable Latina fast food worker Bon Qui Qui, played by Anjelah Johnson, went viral on YouTube. Johnson has frequently reprised the character since, releasing the album Gold Plated Dreams as the character in 2015 through Warner Records.

Other recurring and popular characters included the hot-tempered gym teacher Coach Hines, played by Key; the sleazy Jewish film director Martin Tikva and the depressed Persian tow truck driver Mofaz, both played by McDonald; the middle-aged, hard-of-hearing Minnesota mother Lorraine Swanson and the fragile and infertile Trina, both played by Collins; the incompetent Asian interpreter Bae Sung, played by Lee; the Abercrombie & Fitch model Dutch, played by Barinholtz; the hyperactive delivery man UBS Guy, played by Phil LaMarr; the crazy 7-year-old Dot Goddard and the unintentionally prejudiced teenager Angela Wright, both played by Stephnie Weir;  the moronic Antonia, played by Sullivan; and the loud school nurse Miss Sylvia and the fast-talking Bunifa Latifah Halifah Sharifa Jackson, both played by Debra Wilson.

Many of the show's recurring characters were parodies of real people, typically celebrities, such as Will Sasso's portrayal of singer Randy Newman and Aries Spears's portrayal of Bill Cosby. Debra Wilson and Aries Spears frequently appeared on the show as married singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, who they portrayed as drug-addled, frantic, and "ghetto". Wilson earned fame for her recurring portrayals of Houston and Oprah Winfrey on the show. Other frequent celebrity impressions included Sasso's impressions of actors Robert De Niro and James Gandolfini, Lee's impression of newscaster Connie Chung, and Frank Caliendo's impressions of John Madden and George W. Bush.

"Inside Looking Out" was a recurring sketch that featured an interracial couple–Dontel LaMontrose (Jordan Peele), a color blind yet gullible Black man, and Pat-Beth LaMontrose (Nicole Parker), who is always unintentionally racist toward Dontel.

Reception
During its early years, Mad TV's was reviewed favorably by Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, who wrote that it "looked consistently fresh, with more energy, imagination and edge [than SNL]" and "rewards the effort of tuning it in". Ginia Bellafante of Time wrote that many of its film parodies were "especially clever" and that "it has steadily improved since its unpromising early episodes", but that many of its politically incorrect sketches were "so heavy-handed" that they were "virtually unwatchable". In 2016, The A.V. Club's John Hugar called Mad TV "eh" with "some memorable recurring characters" such as Stuart that relied on "excessively broad comedy". The Detroit Free Press's Julie Hinds wrote that the show "wasn't the most consistent vehicle", and that it "sometimes went too far with a joke but could still crack you up regularly".

Jesse Thorn of The A.V. Club retrospectively described Mad TV as "long-running" and "critically maligned". A review of the pilot episode by Tom Shales in The Roanoke Times wrote that Mad TV was "bad TV", criticizing it as tasteless and unintelligent. In a retrospective review of the show, Carleton Atwater of Vulture criticized the "recycling" of Mad TV's sketches featuring "goofy characters with signature catch phrases" like Stuart, Ms. Swan, and Vancome Lady, writing that the series "just seems so lazy and unambitious" and "appeal[ed] to the lowest common denominator". Aisha Harris of Slate wrote that the show "could so often be joke-writing at its laziest" and relied on "sophomoric, out of touch humor" and "unfunny and offensive sketches" that mocked minority groups. She also wrote that it "could also occasionally be very good and smart" when it struck a balance between "titillation, insight, and hilarity" with characters such as Angela and Nicole Randall Johnson's Darrel, a male harasser at a movie theater.

Caroline Gerdes of Bustle wrote that, although Mad TV "was often eclipsed by Saturday Night Live" due to their coinciding time slots, it "was not afraid to be offensive and it was a force to be reckoned with".

Criticism
Various celebrities have spoken out against parodies of themselves on Mad TV. Bobby Brown said in 2022 that the show's parodies of him and Whitney Houston "really offended" him, while Rosie O'Donnell shared on her self-titled talk show that she was offended by the show's parody of her, in which Borstein portrayed her as a closeted lesbian.

The show was also criticized by audiences and critics for relying on racial stereotypes. Borstein's character Ms. Swan in particular has frequently been identified by journalists and by Asian activists such as Guy Aoki and Margaret Cho as an example of yellowface. The character was protested by Aoki's organization Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA). In 2019, the Washington Post's Elahe Izadi called Ms. Swan an example of "the kind of 'problematic' stuff TV networks used to air" and "'edgy' comedy from the early aughts that more overtly trafficked in racial stereotypes". Candace Amos of New York Daily News wrote that Ms. Swan would "both anger and delight fans" and "was often called out for being racist", and Lara Zarum of Flavorwire wrote that "we're all in agreement that Ms. Swan, the nail-salon-owning, squinty-eyed, walking Asian stereotype[,] is a problem".

Mad TV also featured two instances of blackface: one in which Bobby Lee plays George Foreman's fictional half-Asian son, and another wherein Michael McDonald plays a magical busboy from a foreign island. Harry Connick Jr. was criticized for his appearance on the show in 1996 for portraying what audiences believed to be a stereotypical Black preacher.

Accolades
Anjelah Johnson was nominated for an ALMA Award for her performance on Mad TV in 2008. In 2007, Mad TV's eco-friendly Emmys campaign, VoteMadTV.com, allowed Emmys voters to view clips of the series online rather than being shipped DVD screeners. "Sad Fitty Cent", a musical parody featuring Jordan Peele as rapper 50 Cent, was nominated for an Emmy Award.