In honor of Saturday Night Live‘s 50th Anniversary, we will be going through its rich and varied history and breaking down its legendary run into easy to digest eras. Some eras might last for years, others only one season. But each era is one that either marked a change in the show, were driven by a remarkable personality of a star, or marked a special part of the history of the program. Today, we focus on the return of Lorne Michaels and his failed first cast back.
Lorne Michaels came back, the official story goes, because Saturday Night Live was going to be cancelled. The story Michaels told the press was that he was wavering about coming back until he was told the show would end if he didn’t. He thought the show was too important to have its life cut short in such a way, so he made the noble sacrifice to come back and lead it back to respectability,
That narrative doesn’t really stand up under much examination. Yes, cancellation was considered during the disastrous Doumanian era, but it was Dick Ebersol, with help from Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal, who saved it from being cancelled. In fact, the season before Lorne came back, Crystal’s lone season, was considered one of the funniest in the history of the show and was considered a populist hit.
Could NBC have been considering cancelling SNL instead of finding another producer if Michaels passed? Yeah, I could see them doing something that stupid. But SNL was still a cash cow for the network. If they did cancel the show, their affiliates would likely run films, syndicated fare or infomercials in its place and NBC would get no money from that.
More than likely, Michaels was allowed to sell that narrative as a way to assuage his ego. Michaels left for greener pastures five years prior only to find that the pastures weren’t all that green. His biggest project after leaving, The New Show, was one of the biggest flops in television history. Portraying Michaels as a returning hero back to right the ship comes off better than him returning back to SNL with his tail between his legs.
However, Lorne’s return was almost over before it began, all due to his casting decisions.
Michaels seemed to take a cue from Ebersol’s last season by hiring actors with a modicum of fame already for his new cast. Who was in Lorne’s Steinbrenner cast? Let’s take a look:
- Randy Quaid: Quaid was perhaps the best known of the new cast. He was an Oscar nominee at the time-earning a Best Supporting Actor nod for his role in The Last Detail. Audiences knew him from his role as Cousin Eddie in National Lampoon’s Vacation.
- Anthony Michael Hall: Hall was also famous for his work leading up to him joining that cast, mostly from his many appearances in films directed and/or written by John Hughes: National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles and Weird Science. He was only 17 when he joined the cast.
- Robert Downey Jr: Downey Jr was also young, only 20, when he joined the cast, but was already veteran actor. The son of director Robert Downey, he first started acting at age 5. He was beginning to make a name for himself in films such as Firstborn, Tuff Turf and Weird Science.
- Joan Cusack: Joan Cusack was best known at the time as being John Cusack’s sister, but she had appeared in small, yet pivotal roles in films like My Bodyguard, Sixteen Candles and Class.
Rounding out the cast were Terry Sweeney, who was a writer for the show during the disastrous Jean Doumanian season, Danitra Vance, who spent some time with Second City in Chicago before mounting a one-woman show Off-Broadway, Nora Dunn, standup comedian Dennis Miller and former Groundlings member Jon Lovitz.
There was a lot of talent there. Quaid would go on to win a Golden Globe and be nominated for an Emmy. Cusack would be nominated for an Oscar. Downey Jr would win one! And Rolling Stone named him with worst SNL cast member ever! Why was this season so bad?
Most of the opening reviews put the blame on the writing. They called it “dull-witted,” “flat,” and not funny. Soon, variations of “Saturday Night Dead” started up again. But a lot of this season’s writers went on to write later, better seasons. The problem, I believe, and I am not alone in this belief, that the fault lied in the cast.
The cast been knocked for lacking chemistry, and I feel there is truth in that. As you see in their individual credits listed above, the cast did work together in a number of the same films. However, that doesn’t mean they had chemistry with one another. And they definitely did not have chemistry with the other members of the cast.
I think another mark against the cast is their lack of experience doing sketch comedy, especially improv. No cast in SNL had that 100% sketch experience, but the worst seasons, the Doumanian era and this one, had mostly actors or standup comedians in the cast. It was a skill that could have been learned, but there would need to be time to learn the craft of sketch comedy. Michaels only had a few months to put his cast together and they would never get the time.
Madonna hosted the first episode. It was a horrible episode. Then Chevy Chase hosted. He made a point of insulting most of the cast during his stay. And the season never recovered from that rough start. By the time Damon Wayans essentially quit on air during the 12th episode by adding a gay inflection to his cop character in a sketch, rumors of the show being cancelled were already being spread.
There were high points: Jon Lovitz scored with his Pathological Liar and Master Thespian characters, and Dennis Miller got good marks from the very first episode for his work at the Weekend Update desk. But a sense of impending doom was so prevalent that Robert Smigel wrote a cliffhanger ending to the season where the cast was trapped in a burning studio. The words “Who Will Perish?” were superimposed on the screen,
The answer, briefly, was all of them. Brandon Tartikoff made up his mind to cancel the show, for real this time. Only a last-minute effort by Michaels and his agent Bernie Brillstein saved this feature being a celebration of the show’s 50th anniversary and not a remember when article.
Michaels was granted a reprieve, but only if he took a more hands on approach to the show (His official title was “Executive Producer.” Al Franken and Tom Davis were the official producers.). Lorne fired most of this season’s cast and for the second time in two years he had to rebuild the show from scratch. But what he built would go on to become one of the best casts the show ever had. We’ll talk more about that in our next installment.
