Kenan Thompson vs. Bill Hader: Who's SNL's Greatest Game Show Host?

On October 4, 2003, after co-leading Kenan & Kel for four years, Kenan Thompson made his debut on Saturday Night Live. He showed off his Bill Cosby impression for the first time on Weekend Update, and performed as an ensemble member in a couple more sketches with host Jack Black. Now, 20 years later, Thompson is the longest-tenured cast member in SNL history, with a stable of iconic characters and impressions, from French def jam comic Jean K. Jean to Whoopi Goldberg to O.J. Simpson. But if there's one area where Thompson has excelled and arguably revolutionized the show, it's in his various performances as game show hosts.

For much of the show’s history, in the '80s and '90s especially, the hosts in game-show sketches were usually the straight person in the sketch. They were a neutral spot on the game board who would grow exasperated or bemused by the contestants. Often, this was the role given to that week's guest host, who could allow the premise of the game to carry the weight of the comedy. Even when legends like Steve Martin and Phil Hartman hosted, they didn't steal the show.

That template began to change in the 2000s, but it wasn't Thompson who changed it. Bill Hader was the one who first made the SNL game show host a quirkier, funnier, often more sinister participant in these sketches, eventually shifting the role from wallpaper to actively being the funniest part of the sketch.

When Hader left the show in 2013, the bulk of the game-show host roles went to Thompson, who by this point was already a long-tenured and reliable cast member. Thompson took Hader's lead, delivering a string of host characters who stood as reliable highlights every week. Even setting aside the "Celebrity Family Feud" sketches where he gets to show off his Steve Harvey impression, Thompson has managed to elevate the role of game-show host to an essential comedic ingredient, often emerging as the funniest part of the sketch. He gives a decent variety of flavors to his hosts, too; his Reese De'What on "Cinema Classics" is erudite but fond of tangents; his Diondre Cole on "What Up With That" is a boundless ball of performance energy that can never be contained for long.

The irresistible question, then, is who is the true all-time great when it comes to playing game-show hosts on Saturday Night Live. Is it Hader, who first pushed the role to the next level, or is it Thompson who perfected it? We decided to break the competition down into a few essential categories.

Game-Show Host as Eye of Lunatic Hurricane

This is the closest relative to the traditional SNL model of game-show hosts. Here, the host needs to make an impression while allowing the other cast members, and most importantly the lunacy of the game concept itself, to carry the sketch. Thompson does this pretty well. In a sketch like "What's Wrong With This Picture," he grows increasingly frustrated with the contestants' stupidity until he's finally just yelling "Look at the milk!"

Bill Hader, however, is unmatched at this kind of sketch. He's able to sell a raunchy premise like Who's On Top? with straight-faced professionalism, matching deadpan-for-deadpan with Alec Baldwin. He lets Kristen Wiig take center stage in the '60s-themed "Secret Word," though when he's given the opportunity to sell a quick retrograde punchline about his wife, he nails it. But the all-time best moment of Hader hosting in the eye of a lunatic hurricane was, of course, the Super Showcase sketch, where Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph melted down, and Hader and Vanessa Bayer had to hold on for dear life to bring the sketch home.

Advantage: Hader

Celebrity/Regional Impressions

This is a highly specialized subset of the game-show host, but it's a necessary one to nail down. Hader's impressions were usually left to celebrity audition sketches or Vincent Price's Halloween specials, but he did manage to indulge in some Sopranos-esque Jersey stereotyping in "OHHHHH!" the New Jersey game show. But there's no beating Thompson in this category, as his Steve Harvey impression, all teeth and bemusement, is one of the best things Thompson's ever done on the show. In a way, Thompson's better than the actual Steve Harvey, whose befuddlement at the antics of the celebrities on the show always feels labored and affected, while Thompson really makes you believe it.

Advantage: Thompson

Host As Sinister Master of Cruel Ceremonies

For a show that's gone on as long as Saturday Night Live, it's foolish to speak in the language of firsts, since there's always some sketch waiting to be unearthed to prove you wrong. But if Bill Hader didn't invent this idea of the game-show host as faux-genial representative of a secret circle of hell, he certainly made it completely his own. Rather than simply allow a game-show's peculiar premise to stand alone, Hader's hosts always managed to twist the knife on the contestants. This more character-intensive host allowed the sketches to get more high concept, like this one based on Lifetime Original Movies, where Hader played the host as the threatening male figure in every abused-woman movie that Lifetime was famous for.

But the crown jewel of Hader as sinister game-show host is unquestionably "What's That Name?" where he plays a Venus flytrap of a man, luring the contestants into a name-guessing game before delivering a series of gotcha walk-ons: people in the contestants' lives whose names they absolutely don't know. It's a brilliant concept for a sketch, and Hader sells it perfectly. His gleeful disgust at the contestants self-centeredness is a work of pinpoint tone calibration.

Thompson's version of this kind of host has emerged in fits and stars — including the dating-show sketch where he badgers Jonah Hill about clogging the backstage toilet. But in recent years, this type of game-show host has been most prevalent in sketches that skewer some awful aspect of of social media ("Why'd You Like It", where Thompson badgers contestants for the real reason they liked an Instagram post) or modern politics (Republican or Not, perhaps the first SNL sketch ever about horseshoe theory).

Advantage: Hader

Signature Sketch

Here's where Thompson pulls ahead, because for as consistent as Hader was as a game show host throughout the years, he never produced a series of signature game-show sketches as good as "Black Jeopardy." As host Darnell Hayes, Thompson presides over a sketch that is exactly what it sounds like: Jeopardy! but geared towards Black people. And while these recurring sketches could easily be a tossed-off collection of IYKYK observations about Black culture, there's always some concept buried in each sketch that takes it to another level. One time it was Tom Hanks as a MAGA-hat-wearing Republican whose traditional values ended up dovetailing surprisingly well with Hayes’ (though the sketch smartly ends with a stinging call-out to Final Jeopardy's "Lives That Matter" category to signal this kinship is only going so far).

In the best version of the sketch, the late Chadwick Boseman played his Black Panther character, T'Challa, as an idealistic Wakandan who only knows his country's experience of Black excellence. The questions spotlight the gulf between Black American experience and the idealized Wakanda, but it's Thompson's facial expressions and reactions to T'Challa's earnest optimism that truly sell the sketch. T'Challa's answers should be right, and yet…

"Black Jeopardy" puts Thompson over the top, a signature sketch that he absolutely owns, and one that cements his status as Saturday Night Live's greatest game-show host.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.