I miss my MADtv

Posted by Daily Post from Bluxome Street on January 7, 2013 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

For 14 seasons, Fox Network had a little sketch comedy / live action / variety / animation show called MADtv. Call it the ugly duckling to SNL’s beautiful swan. MADtv was about the high schooler left in all of us.

I loved my MADtv. And here are three reasons why:

• The View the way I see the show
• The way The Wizard of Oz should’ve ended
• Oprah Winfrey Does Jackass and it doesn’t end well

Why MADtv and not SNL? I didn’t say that. I love SNL – well certain years. MADtv just was a bit more like SNL the early years. It was unfinished, unapologetic, and underrated.

The show was best when Debra Wilson, Michael McDonald, Mo Collins, Alex Borstein, Aries Spears, Nicole Sullivan, and Will Sasso were running point on the sketch. But even at its worst, it still made me head slap then chuckle.

For the MADtv-o-philes reading this, there were three periods to the show:

• 1995 – 2000: Alfred E. Neuman Era: the years the show made more references to MAD Magazine than it made later on
• 2000 – 2005: MADtv enters the 21st century: the sketch show now had a male dominated cast (with the departures of Phil LaMarr and Pat Kilbane and Nicole Sullivan and Debra Wilson writing more sketches)
• 2005 – 2009: MADtv the second decade: this was a period of change for the show with new cast members, characters, and culture

So MADtv is no longer with us live, but it lives on YouTube. And in closing, here is one more sketch. This sketch speaks to the football lover in me as well as the gay boy. MADtv gay straight guys or straight boy starter kit. I miss my MADtv.