Saturday Night Live is a hilarious breath of sunshine on an otherwise dreary television schedule. SNL provides steady, consistent viewing that never fails to get laughs. The show has always had terrific impressions and amazing original characters. Saturday Night's Weekend Update provides loads of laughs, doing a take on current news programs with Colin Quinn's witty comments on the latest happenings and scandals. All in all, Saturday Night Live provides the viewer with quality entertainment, if they are willing to stay up for it.
Mad TV is of course the television version of the hilarious magazine. Mad is constantly pushing the limits of the rude and crude late night television and the results are usually funny. Mad TV does not, however provide the laughs that are given out by the timeless magazine. So if you have a choice, I personally would take that comapany's great reading over its off-beat television version. Mad does provide laughs, but it is definitely not a consistently funny treat to the late night line-up.
Both Saturday Night Live and Mad TV are portrayed by amazing actors, but I think that the history that Saturday Night Live has really helped with the quality of the actors they have been able to acquire. Saturday Night has proved its talent by producing stars like Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and the late Phil Hartman and Chris Farley. You can take my word for it, there's a lot more where that came from. Mad TV has only been on the air for a few years and therefore does not have really well-known talent, except for Will Sasso who has appeared in numerous movies. I feel that Saturday Night Live has better talent, but if Mad can stay on the air for a while they could keep it close.
Both shows writers are very hands on with the sketches that are portrayed on each show. Saturday Night Live's writers have been consistently funny since the late seventies and are still pumping out witty, intelligent, sometimes crude sketches that don't fail to make you crack up. Mad is a relatively new show when compared to Saturday Night Live and its writers are quite inconsistent. They don't seem to care what's going on in the world, and what might offend groups of people. Also, Mad has many indifferent sketches, which aren't funny but aren't really serious. Mad needs to get its writers into shape or get rid of them.
Overall SNL is consistent and clever. Mad needs to develop better taste and get its cast to take the business a bit more seriously. I take Saturday Night Live in the long run.