10. "Synchronized Swimming," Saturday Night Live, 1985
This fondly remembered mockumentary was a precursor to Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. Martin Short and Harry Shearer play brothers training to qualify for an Olympic category that doesn't exist, choreographed by Christopher Guest (who is obviously taking Guffman's Corky St. Clair out for a test drive here). "Men have never done synchronized swimming," says Shearer, and the reason why is evident from the duo's irresistibly silly routines. It's proof that, as a comic value, self-delusion stands the test of time. — MM
9. "Not for Ladies Only," Saturday Night Live, 1976
Start with the fact that these are two of the greatest comedians ever to share a stage. Gilda Radner's Baba Wawa was the first parody of a living newsperson, and the idea to pair her with the likewise phonetically impaired Marlene Dietrich (here, Madeline Kahn as Marlena Deutschland) was genius, resulting in this exchange, an interview segment in which the two women stumble over and around each other in search of an L. — MM
8. "Consumer Probe," Saturday Night Live, 1977
An early SNL talk-show sendup that's rarely been surpassed. A consumer-affairs reporter (Candice Bergen) confronts a shady toy manufacturer (Dan Akyroyd), who sees nothing dangerous about his products: Mr. Skin Grafter, Johnny Switchblade and Bag of Glass. — MM
7. "Nairobi Trio," The Ernie Kovacs Show , 1956
Ernie Kovacs was a sketch-comedy pioneer and visionary. On his shows in the 1950s, he experimented with visual effects and blackouts, choreographed orangutan operas and messed around with his closing credits, setting an ironic prankstery template for David Letterman and SNL. His most representative sketch was probably this one, in which he put three men in ape suits and had them mime to a twee piano tune. Like a lot of Kovacs's work, it's not exactly funny, just remarkably offbeat — and recognizable in dozens of comic descendants. — MM
6. "The Idiot in Rural Society," Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1970
While it doesn't have that born-of-chaos quality that marks the majority of Monty Python's most loved and quoted sketches, "The Idiot in Rural Society" remains one of their strongest bits. A mock documentary on the daily routine and role of a village idiot, it's five minutes of John Cleese playing a dignified rube discussing his history and training regiment for being a gibbering idiot who runs into things. "Idiot" embodies how smart the Pythons could be while being silly and how ably they could subvert just about anything. — JC
5. "The Coneheads at Home," Saturday Night Live
The visitors from the planet Remulak, who managed to live among earthlings as a nuclear family of immigrants "from France," sent up suburban conventions, consumption and cluelessness. Discussing the "gelatin pools of Remulak" over a meal of "chicken embryos and shredded swine flesh," they made the normal seem alien and vice-versa. This early sketch, featuring Steve Martin as an IRS agent, is probably the best. They set the bar for SNL "family" sketch characters; none others were done quite as well. They even managed to avoid the shitty SNL spinoff movie for longer than most: almost two decades. — MM
4. "Samurai Hotel,"Saturday Night Live, 1975
The best performance in a sketch ever? SNL's first recurring character was undeniably one of its greatest; John Belushi broke the mold for recurring characters with his Samurai, mumbling, grunting and gesturing in a secret language that elevated a parody of kung-fu movies into the comedy stratosphere. — MM
3. "Argument Clinic," Monty Python, 1972
The best Monty Python sketches have always revolved around a go-nowhere argument — a pet-shop clerk telling a customer his parrot's not dead, King Arthur arguing with a serf over whether she's his subject — so it's fitting that they eventually got around to "The Argument Clinic," in which a man pays a professional arguer (John Cleese) to have an argument with him. The argument becomes about what exactly constitutes an argument — the client thinks it's a collective series of statements that constitute a proposition, and Cleese thinks, no, it isn't. — WD
2. "Who's On First?" Abbott and Costello, 1942
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's most famous live radio bit, the ultimate paean to comic misunderstanding, was showcased in a couple of their films, many of their radio and TV appearances, and in a command performance for FDR. A simple request for the names of the St. Louis ballplayers creates more confusion the more information is provided, as Costello, a peanut vendor, fails to understand that Abbott, the manager of the team, is providing the players' names even though it sounds like he's randomly repeating back-question words. Though the joke's concept isn't original (the format was common to burlesque and the premise is about as profound as a greeting-card pun), the impeccable delivery and crafting make every "Third base!" seem divinely inspired. Pretty much every sketch group, comedy show and comedian since then has studied the sketch; many have reprised it, including Johnny Carson, South Park, The Simpsons and Kids in the Hall. And it's one of those jokes that's universally funny: who hasn't experienced the kind of escalating bafflement that makes you threaten someone with a broken arm or hit yourself in the head with a baseball bat? — Ada Calhoun
1. "Dead Parrot," Monty Python, 1969
The premise: a man (John Cleese) attempts to return his brand-new parrot to the pet shop, having realized that the bird is quite obviously dead. The pet-shop owner (Michael Palin) refuses to believe that the parrot is dead, and therefore refuses to let him return it. That's it. While many high-concept sketches have won a deserving place on this list, the Dead Parrot Sketch is something rarer: a simple conceptexecuted with pure comedic brilliance. Cleese and Palin are perfect foils, and much of the joke stems from the rational man growing increasingly hysterical, while the irrational one remains perfectly calm, offering one ridiculous explanation after another ("You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! Norwegian Blues stun easily.") Just as each new generation keeps discovering the Beatles, hundreds of thirteen-year-olds are right now watching this sketch on YouTube for the first time, and incorporating the phrase "pining for the fjords" into their vocabularies. Unlike that unfortunate parrot, this is one joke that will never die. — GW
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