- Source: Saturday Night Live season 20
The twentieth season of Saturday Night Live (also branded Saturday Night Live 20), an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 24, 1994, and May 13, 1995.
Much like the 1980–1981 season and the 1985–1986 season, NBC worried over SNL's decline in quality (and in the ratings) and initially decided that now would be the best time to pull the plug on the show once and for all. According to the prime time special Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation, Lorne Michaels credits this season as the closest he's ever been to being fired. In the end, the cast member firings and crew turnover resulting from this season represented the biggest involvement into the show's affairs by NBC executives since the 1980–1981 season and the biggest cast overhaul since the 1985–1986 season.
This season saw the deaths of two SNL alumni: season 11 cast member Danitra Vance (who died of breast cancer) and "Not Ready for Primetime"-era writer and occasional performer Michael O'Donoghue (who died of a brain hemorrhage after years of suffering from migraine headaches). The Sarah Jessica Parker-hosted episode featured a special appearance by Bill Murray, who introduced a clip from season 3, "The Soiled Kimono", aired in O'Donoghue's memory.
Cast
Preceding the season 20 premiere, longtime cast members Phil Hartman, Melanie Hutsell, Rob Schneider, and Julia Sweeney all left the show, alongside featured player Sarah Silverman. In their places, the show hired Late Night with David Letterman writer Chris Elliott, as well as stand-up comedians Janeane Garofalo and Laura Kightlinger, to the cast. Elliott and Garofalo were made repertory players, while Kightlinger was made a featured player.
Jay Mohr remained a featured player and Norm Macdonald was promoted to repertory status and made Weekend Update's latest anchor. (Though Kevin Nealon was no longer a Weekend Update anchor, he still remained on the show to the end of the season.)
As the season progressed, Morwenna Banks, Mark McKinney and Molly Shannon were added to the cast. (McKinney was hired from the then-recently ended sketch show The Kids in the Hall, which was produced by Michaels.)
Several cast members quit during the season. Longtime cast member Mike Myers left after the January 21, 1995 episode (exactly six years after his first episode on January 21, 1989) largely due to his increasing fame as a film star (notably with his role in 1992's Wayne's World). Garofalo quit the show following the February 25 episode, citing her unhappiness with the work environment and writing material. She would later call Saturday Night Live "... an unfair boys' club" and called many of the sketches "juvenile and homophobic." Longtime staff writer and cast member Al Franken's final appearance as a featured player was on May 6 following the box office failure of the SNL spin-off film Stuart Saves His Family.
Following the May 13, 1995 season finale, nine more cast members either quit or were fired: Banks, Ellen Cleghorne, Elliott, Chris Farley, Kightlinger, Michael McKean, Mohr, Nealon and Adam Sandler. Nealon, Cleghorne, McKean, Elliott and Kightlinger left the show at season's end on their own terms; Farley, Sandler, Banks and Mohr were let go after the finale.
In his book Gasping for Airtime, Mohr wrote that following the season, he demanded a promotion to repertory status, among other things; the network procrastinated his wishes throughout the summer of 1995 and he chose to quit the show. Mohr's account of his voluntary departure from SNL has been widely discounted, however. He was under a cloud of suspicion due to his admitted plagiarism of jokes during the season and his multi-year contract with NBC did not allow him to unilaterally quit.
This was also the final season for director Dave Wilson and bandleader G.E. Smith, who had been with the program since its first and eleventh seasons, respectively.
= Cast roster
=bold denotes Weekend Update anchor
Writers
Notable writers during the 20th season of Saturday Night Live included Jim Downey, Al Franken, and Tim Herlihy.
Brian Kelley and Norm Hiscock were hired as writers.
This would be Franken's final season as a writer (after having been one of the original writers from its inception in 1975 to 1980; and had been writing for the show again since 1985), as he permanently left the show after 15 accumulative years.
It was also the final season for fellow longtime/original writers Herb Sargent (who had written for the show from 1975 to 1980; and had been writing for it again since 1984) and Marilyn Suzanne Miller (who initially wrote for the show from 1975-1978; and wrote for the 1981-82 season, and returned in 1993 midway through season 18). Sargent presumably retired after 16 accumulative years with the show, while Miller left after seven accumulative seasons.
This was Downey's last season as head writer (a role he had been in since 1985) as he was forced out of the role, after 10 years. He did return to the show the next season, but as a producer for Weekend Update.
This was also the final season for David Mandel, Ian Maxtone-Graham (who both joined as writers in 1992, and departed after three years), and Lewis Morton (who joined the writing staff back in 1993), departing after two years.
The only writers to return to the show the next season were Downey, Herlihy, Hiscock, Steve Koren, and Fred Wolf (who would be named as the show's head writer next season in place of Downey).
Episodes
Critical reception
Negative critical reception of the show began building in season 18, after the departure of veteran cast member Dana Carvey. The criticism intensified after Phil Hartman left. Without Hartman and Carvey, critics expressed that SNL lacked an anchor to hold its sketches together, leaving Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade to carry much of the show. Critics also expressed the show was missing its signature political humor, and pointed out that veteran writers like Jack Handey, Robert Smigel, and Conan O'Brien had already left the staff. By season 19, the show's lackluster reputation had become a joke that was referenced by guest hosts during their opening monologue. Sandler himself criticized the show's writing when he told TV Guide "The writing sucks this season." Sandler later said he was misquoted.
Critics expressed distaste for the sophomoric, juvenile humor that characterized the "Bad Boy" era of SNL. In the New York Daily News, Eric Mink opined that SNL appeared to be exclusively catering to younger, male audiences with its humor. Critics also pointed to the large cast size as a problem, as African-American members like Tim Meadows and Ellen Cleghorne went underused. Another criticism was that the show had become much more interested in launching cast members into movie stardom than in the show's quality of writing and comedy. Hartman attributed the drop in quality to the show's decision to hire mostly stand-up comics, saying, "[Stand-up comics are] competitive, and they don't generally work as well in an ensemble of actors who come out of an improvisational background."
The critical drubbing culminated in a 1995 New York magazine cover story that detailed the dysfunction among cast and crew.
Norm Macdonald's first year as Weekend Update anchor was seen as a lone bright spot in an otherwise disappointing year.
Stuart Saves His Family film
Stuart Saves His Family, a film based on the popular Stuart Smalley sketches, was released on April 12, 1995. Cast members Robin Duke, Al Franken and Julia Sweeney appear in the film. The film received modest reviews from critics but was a box office bomb. During the season, Franken performed a Stuart Smalley sketch that parodied the film's poor box office returns. Stuart was depressed and bitter throughout the entire segment, eating cookies and lambasting the audience for choosing other movies (such as Dumb and Dumber and anything Pauly Shore had out at the time) over his.
References
= Works cited
=Shales, Tom; Miller, James Andrew (2002). Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0316781466.
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