Top 10 Worst SNL Sketches of All Time

Steven Seagal is regarded by many - including viewers, cast members, and series creator Lorne Michaels - to be one of, if not the worst host in “SNL” history. Not known for comedy, or having a sense of humor about himself, Seagal slept-walk his way through tortuous sketches without an ounce of comic timing. In this sketch, he plays a father sizing up his daughter's date, played by Chris Farley. As soon as Seagal enters, the laughter pretty much dies. There's absolutely no attempt made to riff on Seagal and his tough-guy persona. All that's left is an excruciatingly uncomfortable sketch that even leaves reliable cast members like Farley and Rob Schneider looking lost.

Adam Sandler is one of the biggest success stories to come out of “SNL,” but he didn’t host until 2019, more than two decades after he was fired from the show. While Sandler’s episode was generally considered a success, there was one pre-taped bit that was so bad, it brought the whole episode down a point or two. "Holes," a music video parody where Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett, and Sandler marvel about the hole-centric design of clothing through a power ballad, has one joke and it’s not a funny one. We know Sandler can do musical comedy, so the failure of this one stings evermore.

Programs like “SNL” have a long history of trying to pass off transphobia as comedy, and they’ve barely begun to make amends. In this commercial parody, aired in 2011, Bill Hader plays someone undergoing a gender transition with the help of hormone replacement therapy. Other male cast members, including Fred Armisen and Bobby Moynihan, are shown with feminine features and in feminine clothing, clearly mocking the very idea of someone being transgender. GLAAD blasted the sketch as "destructive" and "dehumanizing" and demanded NBC apologize. It might've been "a different time," but that doesn't mean it was ever okay.

Some “SNL” sketches function like irritating pop songs; they get stuck in your head, and it’s hard to get them out, despite how off-putting they are. In this sketch, Rob Schneider plays an office worker, Richard, who gives ridiculous nicknames to the employees who come by his desk to use the copy machine, including musician Sting. The joke is supposed to be that Schneider's coworkers find him and his nicknames to be incredibly annoying, but that irritation spreads to the viewer pretty easily. This wasn’t the Richmeister’s only appearance on the show, but one was more than enough.

“Mad Men'' star January Jones has been compared numerous times to the late Grace Kelly. So, it made sense to cast her as Kelly in a “Rear Window” sketch when she hosted in 2009. But even Alfred Hitchcock himself could’t direct this mess of a premise. An attempt to shoot a scene is continually interrupted by Kelly’s flatulence. Despite the best attempts of Jones, Jason Sudeikis, and Bobby Moynihan, the sketch is quickly dead in the water. We’re not saying fart jokes can’t be funny, but they at least need to be better executed than this. Ultimately, this sketch left a tremendous stink on the episode.

When billionaire CEO Elon Musk was announced as an “SNL” host, the dominant question was basically “How bad could it be?” The answer: mostly mediocre, but not as terrible as people might have anticipated. But there was one sketch that everyone agreed was a total flop. In "Gen Z Hospital," Musk plays a doctor informing a group of slang-using teens about the status of an associate who was in a car accident in their vernacular. It's a pathetic attempt by the show to try and seem "with it" but it just makes them look more out-of-touch than ever.

It’s very hard to make humiliation funny, as this sketch painfully demonstrates. Leslie Jones and Kevin Hart play a couple at a holiday gathering, and she's quickly shown to be a domineering force, determining what and how Hart gets to drink and demanding him to kiss a giant teddy bear. You can barely hear any laughter coming from the audience, and the whole thing feels less like a comedy sketch and more like a PSA about the dangers of abusive relationships. The only gift offered by this sketch is the fact that it eventually ends.

Speaking of humiliation, this Digital Short is embarrassing on multiple levels. On an overnight camping trip, a group of friends is greeted by the mystical creature known as “Bigfoot.” This quickly devolves into the Sasquatch abusing camper Mikey Day in a myriad of ways while host Sterling K. Brown attempts to explain what’s going on. It’s hard to imagine anyone finding this funny unless they’re amused by the notion of someone being demeaned in the most disgusting ways imaginable. We’re not sure what’s more implausible: Bigfoot being real or this sketch ever making us laugh.

Somehow, there's a relationship conflict sketch featuring Leslie Jones that's worse than "Christmas Party." Jones and host Chris Rock play a married couple sniping at each other and unloading years of emotional baggage on each other before an evening out. Once again, there’s no joke to be found in a premise built on hostility and insults. If this was supposed to be a scene from a Tennessee Williams drama, it might have some potential. But as a live comedy segment, it’s absolutely dreadful, and neither Rock nor Jones is able to give it any support.

Lorne Michaels stepped away from "SNL" for a period after the show's fifth season, and NBC brought in associate producer Jean Doumanian to take over, causing everyone in the cast and nearly the entire writing staff to leave in protest. The Michaels-less sixth season is considered one of the worst in "SNL" history, and this sketch is the absolute bottom. A group of rednecks prepares to go hunting for communists, and not even a minute passes before slurs are uttered. Even the most powerful sonar technology would be unable to register any laughs during this disaster, which was inspired by the real-life tragedy of the Greensboro Massacre. Anyone who claims “SNL” was only worth watching in its early seasons has clearly never seen this.