Finesse Mitchell vs. Kenan Thompson
Battle of the Two New Black Guys on Saturday Night Live

It's not easy being the Black Guy on SNL. For verification, you could ask Dean Edwards, who lasted just two seasons. Most of his non-African-American fellow featured performers survived: Fred Armisen has the "I'm Just Keedin'!" character to cling to like a flutterboard; Will Forte has the bizarre but endearing The Falconer keeping him afloat; while Jeff Richards is hanging on by the hairs on the chinny-chin-chin of his party-trick-turned-character, Drunk Girl. Edwards, however, never got past being simply the Black Guy.

Or you could ask Garrett Morris, the Original Black Guy, who become famous for being one of the few original cast members who never became famous. Or you could ask the affable Tim Meadows, who lasted a record ten seasons on the show, but is remembered mostly as background colour in party scenes, or as O.J. Simpson. After a decade, he still couldn't cobble together enough airtime for more than half of a best-of special. Or you could ask Damon Wayans, who spent one unremarkable season on the show in the mid-'80s. Or Chris Rock, who endured three so-so seasons before leaving the show and becoming America's Best Standup Comedian.

Basically, SNL has never been kind to Black Guys. The show's been much better to Fat Guys. You had John Belushi, of course, and Chris Farley, and now Horatio Sanz, who's carved out a comfy niche as a kind of Farley Mini-Me. (Or "Maxi-Me.")

But for Black Guys, not so much. (And Black Gals, forget it -- just ask Ellen Cleghorne. Sure, Maya Rudolph rocks, but then again, no one was asking Ellen Cleghorne to play Donatella Versace. We're just saying.)

As far as Black Guys go, there's been Eddie Murphy and then there's been everyone else. For Black Guys, of whom there are quite a few funny ones (as In Living Color and MadTV have both proved), the history of SNL's been like a mini-million-man march. Brothers parade through the studio and then out the back door again, without so much as the echo of a catchphrase lingering in their wake.

This season, the show has two Black Guys as "featured players," (i.e. spaghetti to be thrown against the wall to see who sticks): Finesse Mitchell and Kenan Thompson. So far, one of them's played Gary Coleman, while the other played a Black Guy. No doubt they have a combined arsenal of great characters and sharp send-ups, which we may be privileged to glimpse if we ever bother to stay up for the last ten minutes of the show. Then again, we suspected Dean Edwards was funny too.

Of course, it's hard to pick between the two of them, but we hope at least one survives the nervewracking probationary period. Heck, we hope one turns out to be a gem, or at least funny enough that we have reason to remember his name past next summer. We're betting it's Finesse Mitchell, if only because we never bet against a man named Finesse.

Advantage: Sometimes you need a little Finesse