Mike. (though Joel was great too.)
Not contrarian at all, I firmly believe the show got REAL funny when Mike took over. I watched “Time of the Apes” a couple of weeks ago, and I was generally underwhelmed by Joel, though a lot of it had to do with the writing style of their jokes. By the time “Mitchell” came around they had refined it a bit, and Mike’s presence really improved their delivery. Plus the host segments were slightly less stream of consciousness as time went on (that was also partially due to SciFi channel in seasons 8-10, and their requirement for their to be some kind of overarching “plot” in each episode’s host segments).