Mad TV (stylized as MADtv) is an American sketch comedy television series created by David Salzman, Fax Bahr, and Adam Small.

The show was intended to compete with fellow sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL), which was experiencing declining viewership and poor critical reception.

[9][10][11] Sketches often featured celebrity impressions and occasionally contained political satire, and Fox executive Joe Earley called the series "an equal opportunity offender".

[14][11] Fox executives and Mad TV's showrunners often shot down sketch ideas that were viewed admirably by the staff writers, who wanted the show to be "edgy".

[1] In November 2008, Fox confirmed that Mad TV's 326th episode during its shortened 14th season would be its last, telling Salzman that the show was too expensive considering its ratings and time slot.

[1] Its first season starred Debra Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, Phil LaMarr, Artie Lange, Mary Scheer, Bryan Callen, Orlando Jones, and David Herman.

[29][30] Michael McDonald starred on Mad TV for ten seasons starting in 1998 and was the show's longest-running and oldest cast member, also occasionally directing segments.

[44] Michael McDonald played Stuart Larkin,[45] an overgrown, spoiled child with a bowl cut, bright red cheeks,[46] and a rainbow plaid shirt.

[52][47] Although Ms. Swan was presumed by audiences to be Asian, the series identifies her as hailing from Kuvaria, the home of Santa Claus, while Borstein stated that her inspirations for the character were her Hungarian-Jewish grandmother, and Icelandic singer Björk.

[53] Borstein briefly reprised the role outside of Mad TV for a parody of the trailer for the 2010 film Black Swan and for a video about the 2016 United States presidential election.

[47][46] Debra Wilson and Aries Spears frequently appeared on the show as married singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, who they portrayed as drug-addled, frantic, and "ghetto".

[75] In 1996, Mad TV was reviewed favorably by Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, who wrote that it "looked consistently fresh, with more energy, imagination and edge [than SNL]" and "rewards the effort of tuning it in".

[76] Ginia Bellafante of Time also wrote in 1996 that "it has steadily improved since its unpromising early episodes", but that many of its politically incorrect sketches were "so heavy-handed" that they were "virtually unwatchable".

[70] After the end of the show's fourth season, Terry Kelleher of People wrote that Mad TV was "not a bad product" but had a "policy of putting recurring characters through the same tired paces".

[63] Entertainment Weekly's Alynda Wheat was critical of the show's finale, writing that "maybe it was time for Mad TV to go" due to "how thin its material has grown".

Club's John Hugar called Mad TV "eh" with "some memorable recurring characters" such as Stuart that relied on "excessively broad comedy".

[40][38] The Detroit Free Press's Julie Hinds wrote that the show "wasn't the most consistent vehicle", and that it "sometimes went too far with a joke but could still crack you up regularly".

[22] Common Sense Media's Lucy Maher gave the series three out of five stars, stating that it "purposely pushes the limits of decency to the breaking point" but that it had "moments of brilliance".

[78] In a retrospective review of the show, Carleton Atwater of Vulture criticized it as "so lazy and unambitious" and wrote that it "appeals to the lowest common denominator".

[10] Aisha Harris of Slate wrote that the show "could so often be joke-writing at its laziest", but that it "could also occasionally be very good and smart" when it struck a balance between "titillation, insight, and hilarity".

[79][80] Luke Winkie of Vulture wrote that, despite not having the "live kinetic energy" or "the all-star glitz" of SNL, "most children of the '90s have a special place in our hearts for MADtv".

[81] Terry Kelleher of People wrote, "It would be easy to dismiss [Mad TV] ... as the poor man's Saturday Night Live.

"[63] Cast and crew members later stated that Mad TV lacked the "cool factor" and "hipness" that SNL had, but noted that it instead appealed more to "the average person" and to middle-class people of color.

[1] Ginia Bellafante of Time wrote in 1996 that Mad TV had a "more balanced cast" than SNL and "an edginess that Lorne Michaels' once revolutionary show has long lacked".

[86] In 2019, the Washington Post's Elahe Izadi called Ms. Swan an example of "the kind of 'problematic' stuff TV networks used to air" and "'edgy' comedy from the early aughts that more overtly trafficked in racial stereotypes".

[87] Nevertheless, the series identifies Ms. Swan as hailing from Kuvaria, the home of Santa Claus, while Borstein stated that her inspirations for the character were her Hungarian-Jewish grandmother, and Icelandic singer Björk.

[2] It ran for eight hour-long episodes on Tuesday nights and starred eight new cast members: Carlie Craig, Chelsea Davison, Jeremy D. Howard, Amir K, Lyric Lewis, Piotr Michael, Michelle Ortiz and Adam Ray.

[9][36][79] The reboot placed a greater emphasis on political comedy than its predecessor and included parodies of former U.S. Presidents such as then-candidate Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, the latter of whom had been spoofed in the original series several times during the late 1990s.

Ray Rahman of Entertainment Weekly wrote that it was "inconsistent and lack[ed] any urgency" while "fail[ing] to justify its existence", calling its humor "not just lame, but also stale".

"[79] IGN's Jesse Schedeen gave the revival a score of 3.2 out of a 10, writing that it had a "simplistic, toothless brand of humor" and failed "to recapture any of the show's old spark".