The Night Steven Seagal BROKE Saturday Night Live SNL

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Once upon a time, a room full of idiots in suits came up with the idea of having Steven Seagal host Saturday Night Live. Those people, I assume, were fired the day after this episode was aired, and never given a job in Hollywood ever gain. And rightfully so. This was perhaps the greatest hosting performance ever captured on film. Not only was he a pain in the butt leading up to the filming, but he was absolutely useless on the day. No effort. Minimal preparation. Absolutely no skill. This, is the result. I have tried to include as much footage as possible without copping a strike, so it might be longer than usual, but I tried to give y'all as much footage as possible. This is a serious documentary. Kinda. It took me a while to get this past the copyright wardens, and this video has been hit with partial demonetization. This seems to happen to me a lot. The uncensored version is available on Patreon, and I will be uploading the full skits on there in the next couple of days also. Please support if you can. Thanks for watching legends, and have an awesome weekend! I hope y'all enjoy. Peace legends. Thank you all again for watching Seagalians. You are all legends and I appreciate the support and love.

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If you thought Milton Berle was bad, you haven't seen anything yet!

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There isn't even a close second. He was god awful lol.

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Steven Seagal is widely regarded as the worst host in the history of Saturday Night Live. So bad was his hosting gig that a full copy of the episode is hard to find. Some on Reddit have referred to the episode as being lost. However, I managed to get hold of the full episode, and I’m going to watch it live as part of a longer video I’m making about the episode.

I’m examining this episode sketch by sketch, starting with the cold open, Pumping Up with Hans and Franz, to the horrible monologue where Seagal sings Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting, to the infamous final sketch where Seagal beats up Kevin Nealon and Phil Hartman.

Al Franken, who was a Saturday Night Live writer and producer at the time, says Seagal had no sense of humour and refused to laugh at himself. Bob Odenkiek, also a writer at the time, said Seagal pitched the worst sketches he’d ever heard of, and hated working with him.

This isn’t actually the lowest rated episode of SNL on IMDB. Episodes with hosts like Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, and January Jones get lower ratings, I don’t think any of those hosts got the same level of hate from the SNL cast and viewers as Steven Seagal.

SNL 16E18 is infamous, but it’s not the only episode from the season that is notorious. Included in this season is the Roseanne Barr episode, where she was said by insiders like Jay Mohr to be the rude and unprofessional. But the season also has some legendary moments, like in the Patrick Swayze episode where he and Chris Farley hilariously audition for Chippendales.

With colossal talent like Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Chris Rock, Phil Hartman, and Mike Myers, it sounds like it would be impossible to have a bad episode. But Saturday Night Live is famous for being hot and cold - one week there’s a great sketch and the next week there’s barely anything worth watching on the show.

Together, let’s take a look at this notorious episode and even more notorious host, and see if Steven Seagal is really as bad as everyone says, if the episode has aged like milk, and if there are any redeeming moments from this episode with a terrible reputation.

(I had to stretch the SNL clips because a certain online video platform and a certain IP owner didn’t like when I uploaded them in their original 4:3 form so I stretched them to 16:9 to get them in.)