Maybe you’re a fan of Will Forte’s half-bearded face on Last Man On Earth or his often weird and wonderful late-night appearances, but to truly appreciate Forte’s bizarre brilliance, you have to take a spin through some of his lesser remembered and oddest characters and deep cuts (a place we more thoroughly explored before with Mike Ryan’s oral history of Forte’s potato-chip sketch). Sure, you remember the repeatedly doomed MacGruber, but how about Hamilton? How about these other strange favorites?
6. Jeff Montgomery, Trick Or Treating Sex Offender
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Jeff Montgomery didn’t become a recurring SNL character, but the sex offender who uses Halloween to fulfill his legal obligations was a hit before even uttering a word. Montgomery sounds somewhat similar to Ned Flanders’ “hi-diddly-ho” vernacular while cracking awkward jokes with Jon Hamm before exclaiming “Whaaat?!” Going as a sex offender for Halloween isn’t advised, of course, but going as Forte’s Jeff Montgomery, well, that’s sure to win you some points with any die-hard SNL fanatic right after they call the cops.
5. Hamilton
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Equally creepy as he was offensive, Hamilton might not have become a fan favorite like MacGruber, but the charmless Casanova fared well whenever he was able to eek out a few moments of airtime. With hobbies such as book burning and bayonet collecting, Hamilton possessed and uncanny ability to land highly successful women that were out of his league. This despite throwing out lines like “I went to the local Magic Johnson theater. I looked for a Larry Bird theater, but it didn’t exist.”
4. The Falconer
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This one barely counts since it’s probably Forte’s second most popular character, but it was too weird to leave out. The Falconer found Forte playing a former business executive who had abandoned his family to embrace hermit life in the woods. The sketch followed a simple, yet successfully goofy format and recurred a few times (most notably with the time travel sketch that featured everyone in the cast as The Falconer).
3. Father Swimcoach Scoutmaster
A true threat, Father Swimcoach Scoutmaster made perfect use of the week’s worth of sexual misconduct headlines. With the ability to throw out one bit of inappropriate sexual innuendo after another, the character was “every parent’s worst nightmare.” It’s important to note how effective Forte is when he is in the midst of playing a classically unlikeable character. Even Tandy on Last Man on Earth fits that description, but Forte finds a way to make the audience care.
2. ESPN Commentator Greg Stink
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Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis were a perfect team as a pair of ESPN commentators who would have surely been kicked off SportsCenter within five minutes. While Pete Twinkle (Sudekis) was at least somewhat aware of the women’s sports he was commenting on, Stink (Forte) was completely clueless. Besides offering insights on the weight of barbells “well, I don’t know, 100,000 pounds?” The biggest laughs of the sketch often came from the sponsored plugs, such as the Today Sponge, “Trying to avoid the stork? Well, use this little vagina cork.”
1. Andy From Reinhold Investments
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A definite deep cut from Forte’s SNL resume, Andy’s “Oh, nooo!” feels like it’s straight out of Fargo and milks the laughs as each utterance seems more tormented than the last. The sketch features Forte as the world’s most distressed receptionist who nearly drives his boss (Paul Giamatti) berserk with his two-word vocabulary. The incredibly goofy sketch made an impression on SNL writer Jorma Taccone, who was inspired by Forte’s silliness to create MacGruber for him, which was as responsible for Forte’s SNL legacy as his penchant for unique characters.