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Saturday Night Live

There are two characters Bobby Moynihan has played in 2015 that, taken together, exemplify much of what he brings to Saturday Night Live.

The first was on the show’s 40th anniversary special in a sketch called “It’s a Date,” a Dating Game parody that featured three contestants competing to win a date with a character played by Vanessa Bayer. In a bending of conventional game show rules, two of the three were made up of teams, allowing for the across-the-generations All-Star mash-up of Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd’s Festrunk Brothers – the “Wild and Crazy Guys” from the show’s early years – and Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake’s “D*** in a Box” pair.

Moynihan was the third contestant.

The catch to the sketch was that while each pair engaged in behavior that should have given a rational woman pause, Bayer was game. Bill Hader, as the host, was impressed as well. The only person not on board – since he was being soundly rejected by Bayer – was Moynihan, the sketch’s “nice guy,” and the game’s clear loser.

But as with many of his characters, Moynihan here was a step above your average schlub. Hardly clueless, he sensed every moment of impending failure, as the writers cleverly included his interjections – “Seriously??” “Oh, I’m gonna lose” – as the antics of the teams progressed. By mid-sketch, he was cut off, abandoned and left for dead, the rest of the game’s participants embroiled in a collective mind-set that had no room for him.

The other was Riblet, introduced during Weekend Update on the show’s Blake Shelton-hosted episode in January as a high school friend of Update co-anchor Michael Che’s. In a sense, Riblet is the friend we all had in high school, the one who always talked a big game but never backed it up, brimming with unjustified confidence and a blissful ignorance of the world.

Decked out in a track suit and sporting bushy, overstuffed pigtails, Riblet speaks with such a heavy “neighborhood” accent – specific to no neighborhood I’m aware of – that he almost creates a new language in the process. (Since the Oxford Dictionary has proclaimed an emoji as its word of the year, its surprising they didn’t make his “jorb” official as well. “Jorb: a job, as spoken by someone who knows they can do it better.”)

Riblet declares that he could do Che’s “jorb” better than Che, and gives us a taste, with Moynihan switching to his real voice to read several Update news items. And, what do you know, it turns out Riblet might have been right.

Considering the ongoing uncertainty about the Michael Che/Colin Jost Update team, Riblet’s interruption read like a Moynihan audition for Update anchor, and a solid one at that. Some on Twitter and Reddit, and in other corners of the Internet as well, discussed how Moynihan’s delivery was funnier and steadier than those of the current anchors, and wondered if a job change was imminent for all involved.

But Moynihan at the Update desk would be a shame, as it would mean the loss of such characters as Riblet, second-hand newsman Anthony Crispino, and Drunk Uncle, Moynihan’s most popular character, and a perfect evisceration of casual (and not-so-casual) racism.

Moynihan is SNL’s everyman, an actor who can give his regular guy many different shades, playing the lovable loser who just can’t seem to catch a break (see the recent sketch were he plays the schlubby winner of a walk-on role in a television crime drama, and winds up characterized as a pervert in the show’s ads), as well as the pleasantly dim schemer who claims to know it all, a la Riblet and Crispino.

While calling him the show’s MVP would overstate the case – at present, that would be Kate McKinnon – Moynihan’s departure would cost the show more flavors, more nuance of character, than any other cast member.

His ability to lose himself in a part is up there with the show’s best, and he’s been equally adept at creating memorable new characters and crafting signature impressions, such as those of Guy Fieri (see above), Chris Christie, and Snooki.

Moynihan’s time on the show, which began in 2008, recalls the tenure of fan favorite Chris Parnell, another everyman/lovable loser type who showed a diverse range and a sharp sense of the absurd,qualities he continued to display after leaving the show, as Dr. Spaceman on 30 Rock.

But Moynihan’s range is wider than Parnell’s, as the latter didn’t go big the way Moynihan can. There is something of a comparison here to Phil Hartman, who, while never the show’s singular star, became a legend for the sheer breadth of the people he could portray. Moynihan’s blue collar anxiousness is worlds apart from Hartman’s pervasive sense of authority – Hartman was the man with all the answers; Moynihan, the man with none of them – but the ability to give life to an exhaustive range of characters is one they share.

Perhaps due to the sheer size of the cast (currently 16, including featured players), Moynihan has been a bit less dominant so far this season. He’s taken on Mike Huckabee (link: ), and given us the dim wonderment of Fox News morning show anchor Brian Kilmeade (“I always agree with whoever’s the loudest”).

Drunk Uncle appeared in the recent Donald Trump episode, and it was a perfect marriage of character and cultural moment, as Drunk Uncle is the quintessential Trump voter. Moynihan shed clarifying light on Trump’s candidacy, with Drunk Uncle declaring himself Trump’s #1 fan, exclaiming, “Finally, someone is saying the things I’ve been thinking – as well as saying,” with Trump himself just down the hall.

But the talent that brings him over the top is that in the midst of all this, Moynihan has the capacity to be utterly ridiculous. His Kirby Buttercream – the astronaut obsessed with his kitty cat – is a demented and inspired creation, infuriately arrested in his development yet beaming (inappropriately) with warmth and love.

Whenever a cast member is needed for maximum embarrassment, it’s usually Moynihan, as with the 2013 Miley Cyrus episode where he wound up swinging naked on a wrecking ball, only to learn his bit was cut.

Despite the success of his tenure, Moynihan has yet to see great opportunities beyond the show, a la castmates McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Cecily Strong in the upcoming Ghostbusters. Given that, plus his range and reliability, it will be no surprise if Moynihan winds up with one of the show’s longer all-time runs, such as with Kenan Thompson, currently in his 13th season, or Darrell Hammond, the longest tenured in the show’s history at 14.

I hope he does. While the prospect of seeing Moynihan stretch out in other projects is intriguing, his leaving the show, even with such a large cast, would feel like we’ve lost a large stable of relatable, hilarious, irreplaceable characters.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. His greatest wish is to see Stefon enjoy a cheeseburger at John Belushi’s diner. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.