The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

The fifty greatest comedy sketches of all time from Nerve and IFC. All with video. Some highlights: SNL’s consumer probe & word association; Mr. Show’s pretaped call-in show, Upright Citizens Brigade’s ass pennies, The State’s porcupine racetrack, lots of Monty Python, some classics, and the inevitable winning sketch.

There’s no more sure-fire way to kill something’s intrinsic comedic
value than to try to examine what makes it funny. The minute you start
thinking, you stop laughing. So why, then, have Nerve and IFC.com
devoted an enormous amount of time, manpower, monetary resources,
server space and posh catered lunches to the pursuit of ranking the
boob tube’s finest sketch comedy offerings?
 

 

In part, we’re here because magical new technology
(*coughYouTubecough*) allows us to do more than just pontificate for
paragraphs on end — now we can pontificate for paragraphs on end and
provide audiovisual evidence to back up those pontifications. We
provide the context, share our thoughts and feelings, and let you
commence with the guffawing and, naturally, the disagreeing. After all,
the comedy sketch — short, sweet, completely silly or shot through with
social commentary — worms its way into the public mind like nothing
else, and has easily made the leap to the web when other forms have
faltered.
 

 

Any list is bound by the limitations set on it — consciously and
unconsciously — by its creators: we kept our 50 selections to stuff
that’s appeared on television by choice, and to what’s appeared in
English out of necessity. One must also bear in mind the availability
of material; who knows what comedic treasures are lost to us because
they simply don’t exist anymore?