After the disastrous Season 20, there is no way Saturday Night Live could return to its former glory, is there? Is there? As it turns out, there was a way. The show’s regeneration was found in a group of former Groundlings, most notably an unknown Irvine, California-based comedian named John William Ferrell. In Season 21, Ferrell joined… Continue reading

Remember Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s? Chris Farley! Adam Sandler! David Spade! How could it miss? Well, Season 20 is how it could miss. Beset by competing personal agendas, terrible press, and a plagiarism scandal, the show was ripped apart in 1994 and 1995, with all the behind-the-scenes drama affecting what was on the screen.… Continue reading

The Writers’ Room Struggles to Find Its Footing Dana Carvey left the show midway through last season, leaving a gaping hole in the cast. And with NBC needing to replace David Letterman, Conan O’Brien departed the writing staff, taking writer Robert Smigel with him. To take the football analogy even further: You know how, after… Continue reading

Plus: Carvey and Hartman still going strong, while the kids gain a foothold. If, as is commonly believed, five years is the expiration date for a star on Saturday Night Live, nobody told Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. In Season 17, both cast members are running at full capacity, carrying the show along as the young… Continue reading

Farley, Spade, Rock, Schneider, and Sandler: Here Come the Kids By the fall of 1990, the core cast of Saturday Night Live had spent four full seasons together, and clearly Executive Producer Lorne Michaels thought it was time for new blood. Gone were Nora Dunn and Jon Lovitz, while Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks,… Continue reading

The Diceman Cometh There was only one question coming in to Season Fifteen of Saturday Night Live: Could the show maintain the high quality that made Season Fourteen the best year in the show’s history to date? The answer? Not quite. With the entire cast back this year, the show brought back favorite characters like Hans… Continue reading

SNL Hits New Heights (And Who is this Mike Myers Kid?) If the strike-shortened thirteenth season of Saturday Night Live was merely an appetizer, Season Fourteen is the full course, stuffed with classic sketches and top-flight performances. The full cast is back this year, as well as almost the entire writing staff, which added names like Conan… Continue reading

Phil Hartman Levels Up, While the Ladies Struggle for Roles In previous seasons of Saturday Night Live, the female cast members have pointed out how much difficulty the male writers have had writing for them. In Season Seven, single-year cast member Christine Ebersole sang a whole song about it. But in Season Thirteen, the gap between men’s… Continue reading

Carvey and Hartman Usher in a New Golden Age In Season Eleven, Lorne Michaels tried something new with Saturday Night Live: he brought in a cast full of movie stars who hadn’t previously performed sketch comedy. And the results showed. Michaels famously ended the season with a sketch that trapped the cast and writers in a… Continue reading

Lorne Returns, Builds an Entirely New Cast, Then Burns it All Down The eleventh season of Saturday Night Live started entirely from scratch, save the return of the show’s original creator, Lorne Michaels. With producer Dick Ebersol and big-name cast members like Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest out the door, Michaels brought in a number… Continue reading