Nicole Sullivan, Debra Wilson, and Will Sasso were all extremely talented and very entertaining. Debra was my favorite. Alex Borstein, Mo Collins, and Aries Spears were also very, very good. Then they all left by 2003 or so. Michael McDonald, whom I never liked, hung on like forever, and while there were some early replacements that were pretty good (I liked Stephanie Weir, Frank Caliendo, and Ike Barinholtz), these left as well and then we were left with crappy insufferable performers like Bobby Lee and Crista Flanagan, although I liked Nicole Parker and Keegan-Michael Key a bit -- if they were given good material to do. But the writing slid big time when the big performers left, and I think the last really funny inspired sketch was the iRack skit from early 2007. It was abysmal for so long since, while SNL was getting better and better. Bobby Lee was absolutely dreadful as John McCain, Bobby Lee's 24 skits were so unfunny, and pretty much everything with Bobby Lee was bad. Then in fall 2007, the network got rid of the set, theme song, and changed the whole format of the show. I guess the show was dead already and the network was just trying to dig a deeper grave. I know that all the fans on IMDB totally hated the format change. I was surprised it stayed on the air as long as it did.