Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL Podcast

In this episode, available for free to all listeners, we discuss Season Ten, the season of Saturday Night Live in which Executive Producer Dick Ebersol brought in a slew of high-priced, proven talent to give the show a boost.

Those new cast members included Billy Crystal, who effectively became Eddie Murphy’s replacement in Season Nine, hosting two of the final five shows and showing up as a special guest in another. Ebersol also brought on Martin Short, who had a suitcase full of plug-and-play recurring characters from his years on SCTV.

Ebersol also mined the previous year’s smash hit movie This Is Spinal Tap for talent, bringing on performer Christopher Guest and former SNL cast member Harry Shearer. As you may recall, Shearer did a mercurial stint on the show in Season Five, where he battled the writers and other cast members. Season Ten turned out to be no different; by episode ten, Shearer had quit the show.

The season relied heavily both on pre-filmed bits and sketches starring recurring characters. Episodes were loaded with sketches featuring Ed Grimley, Joe Franklin, Jackie Rogers, Jr., Fernando, Frankie and Willie, and on and on.

Even with all the new cast members, a handful of performers from the previous season returned: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gary Kroeger, Mary Gross and Jim Belushi were all back. But if they intended on ascending to the top of the show after the departure of Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, they were mistaken.

The “B-Team,” as they were called, were completely shoved to the side in favor of character bits by Crystal and Short. Finally, in their last season on the show, JLD and Gross developed their first real recurring characters, two unfortunately stereotypical Latinas named Chi Chi and Consuela. They are among the worst recurring characters in SNL history.

Ultimately, this writer’s strike-shortened season ended up being the only year the heavy-hitters performed on the show. Yet because of its recurring characters and reliance on pre-filmed bits, it is often ranked as one of the greatest SNL seasons ever.

But is the product on-screen worth such praise? Listen to find out, and subscribe to hear our recaps of seasons 1-9!

Replacing Eddie Murphy is no enviable task, but in Season Nine of Saturday Night Live, producer Dick Ebersol attempted to do just that.

Before the season, it was clear that Eddie - now the biggest comedy name in the world - wouldn’t be able to make all the shows. So Ebersol and Murphy struck a deal - Eddie would tape a number of sketches before the season started and the show would run them as if they were live.

Naturally, this irritated a number of the cast members, who thought it betrayed the “live” concept the show’s name promised. Further, they were losing air time to a guy what wasn’t there.

Ebersol also began to plot life on SNL without Eddie, bringing a new cast member with a famous name on board. Jim Belushi, brother of John, joined the cast in Episode Three and immediately made an impact, showing up in just about every sketch in his first few episodes.

Murphy appeared in his last live sketch in Episode 14, leaving Ebersol to fill the hole left by his enormous presence. He did so by bringing on a name from the past - Billy Crystal, who was supposed to perform on the show’s very first episode, but who was cut for time. Crystal did not officially join the cast in Season Nine, but he appeared on three of the final five episodes, twice as host.

But even with Eddie fading into the background, the women on the show continued to play bit parts - they were handed almost zero recurring characters, and the ones they did get were hardly memorable.

Season Nine also features a number of hosts from the classic era of TV comedy, such as Jerry Lewis, the Smothers Brothers, and Flip Wilson. But it was another comedy legend, Don Rickles, who would host perhaps the most controversial episode of the season. Throughout his episode, Rickles hammed it up, ad-libbing lines and destroying sketches while breaking character.

With Eddie effectively gone, the season was uneven in its quality - but a bright light shone in the sketches written by Andy Breckman, a Late Night with David Letterman writer who joined the show and immediately began cranking out some of the season’s best sketches.

We discuss all these issues, including our awards for the best sketches, best cast members, and most memorable hosts on this episode.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

And please, feel free to chat with us here:

In many ways, Season Eight (1982-83) is the natural progression from Season Seven. Eddie Murphy continues to grow, eventually taking over the show to the point at which he actually hosts the show while being a cast member.

(This is almost entirely the result of a mix-up in which Nick Nolte, Murphy’s co-star in 48 Hours was supposed to host but pulled out. Nonetheless, the choice of Murphy to host and the fact that he launched the show by declaring “Live From New York, it’s the Eddie Murphy Show” caused some hurt feelings among the other cast members, specifically Joe Piscopo, who wanted to host the show as his Frank Sinatra character.)

Season Seven is a transitional one for the show - after the Season Six debacle and the firing of just about everyone involved, it had to show that it could still be funny enough to warrant a spot in NBC’s lineup. And the pressure was on Dick Ebersol to make a product that carried the momentum of the final show of the previous season, his first show as a producer.

In are newcomers Christine Ebersole, a veteran of musical theater, Mary Gross, a Chicago Second City performer (recommended by John Belushi), and Tony Rosato, a minor SCTV cast member. They were joined by Robin Duke and Tim Kazurinsky, whom Ebersol brought on for the final episode of Season Six.

And then, of course, there were holdovers Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. This duo would eventually take over the show in Season Seven, casting the rest of the members aside. In the middle of the season, Ebersole actually sang a song on the show bemoaning the fact that the women on the show were only being given degrading roles.

But Murphy’s air time domination was warranted. Every week, he cranked out a new classic sketch, from Buckwheat to Velvet Jones, to Tyrone Green, to Mr. Robinson. When people say he single-handedly saved the show, they are not wrong.

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

But under Ebersol, the show underwent a number of structural changes. The “Live from New York” cold opens were now gone. The show featured a lot more variety, from magicians to jugglers to dramatic readings by William S. Burroughs.

This season also marks the return of two staples of the first several seasons of SNL: Writer Mike O’Donoghue and cocaine. Both would cause much behind-the-scenes drama throughout the year.

We discuss all these issues, including our awards for the best sketches, best cast members, and most memorable hosts on this episode.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

And please, feel free to chat with us here:

While an atrocious season of SNL makes for painful viewing, it also happens to make for a fun, lively episode of “Wasn’t That Special.”

This week’s show picks up where the last one left off: Both producer Lorne Michaels and the original cast are gone, with Jean Doumanian taking the reins and picking an entirely new set of cast members.

The show immediately goes in the tank, reaching previously unimagined depths of awfulness. But behind the scenes, the cast members - many of whom thought simply making it onto the show was their primary accomplishment - were fighting with the writers, who in turn were fighting with Doumanian.

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new shows and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The most objectionable of the new cast members was a smarmy former news anchor named Charles Rocket, who Doumanian had pinned as the next big star for the cast. Rocket mugged his way through “Weekend Update” and poisoned sketch after sketch with his cocky-yet-desperate affectations.

But amid the chaos and the comedic squalor, the show did produce something of value - a 19-year-old kid named Eddie Murphy, whose talent immediately caused other cast members to resent him. Murphy’s singular presence would go on to save the show, while every other cast member except for Joe Piscopo would get canned at the end of the season.

After the twelfth episode, Doumanian and most of the cast was shown the door, with Dick Ebersol returning to the show to take over as producer. After a five-week break, Season Six resumed with a new cast and a new outlook - but the momentum only lasted one week, as a writer’s strike ended the season.

Ultimately, Season Six can be summed up with an anecdote told in the book “Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live” by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad. Harry Shearer told the authors that Jean Doumanian had courted Shearer as a writer, but he demanded she also hire some friends of his that he said “really know what they’re doing.” Doumanian responded by saying, “I’m not sure we want people who know what they're doing.”

Mission accomplished.

We discuss all these issues, including our “awards” for the best sketches (there aren’t many to choose from) on this episode. There isn’t much on the screen to commend, but the backstabbing behind the scenes makes for some fun stories.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

Season Five was a watershed moment for SNL; at the beginning of the season, the cast said goodbye to original cast members John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and at the end of the season, the remaining founding players left (including Bill Murray, who joined in Season Two.)

On this episode, we discuss what the loss of Aykroyd and Belushi meant for Bill Murray, who was forced to play the male lead in far more sketches than he wanted. Behind the scenes, this led Murray to become more demanding and more difficult to work with, as he began blackmailing producer Lorne Michaels to get what he wanted.

This season also saw the worst episode of the first five seasons - an episode so vile and tasteless, it is a wonder it hasn’t been wiped from the streaming services forever. (To find out which episode it is, listen in!)

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a listener-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is also a season that featured some hosts that surprised us with their willingness to buy in to the show, even as the writing struggled. Old guys like Ted Knight, Kirk Douglas, and Rodney Dangerfield showed up, put in the work, and it shows.

As Season Five wore on, Gilda Radner, pulled in many directions by other projects and despondent over her breakup with Murray, grew exhausted and virtually disappeared from the show. Paul Shaffer, forced into service due to the lack of male cast members, dropped the “F” bomb on the show. Garrett Morris, in the grips of a cocaine habit, lost control during rehearsals, stripping down bare-chested and screaming at the crew.

We discuss all these issues, including our breakdown of a sketch so offensive, we have difficulty even describing it. And we offer our reflections on the first five seasons of SNL and what they meant for comedy moving forward.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

In this free episode with Season 17 SNL cast member Siobhan Fallon Hogan, we discuss her time as a cast member, including the prank she played on Michael Jordan, her ability to spot Succession star Kieran Culkin’s talent at age nine, the in-jokes she used to share with Chris Farley, her recurring role on Seinfeld, and the sketch on SNL she refused to do.

Fallon Hogan also discusses her new film Shelter in Solitude, (out October 6), including the challenges of creating a motion picture from beginning to end and what she learned from appearing in blockbusters like Forrest Gump.

Fallon Hogan can be found on Instagram at siobhanfallonhogan.

To the regular SNL viewer, it appears everything is humming along just fine in Season Four: The entire cast is back, ratings are up, and they are attracting A-list stars like the Rolling Stones to host.

But the behind-the-scenes story is very different. The previous summer, Animal House became a runaway hit, making John Belushi a household name. This not only gave Belushi the impression he may have outgrown the show, it granted him access to the type of people and drugs that nearly killed him halfway through the season.

But as Belushi faded and Dan Aykroyd set his sights on leaving the show to film the Blues Brothers movie, third-year cast member Bill Murray took the reins. Murray took the show seriously, putting in the work needed to save “Weekend Update” and carry the show to the finish line.

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a listener-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In the meantime, Gilda Radner put in one of the most spectacular SNL performances to date as drugged-out rock star Candy Slice. Aykroyd introduced the world to Blue-Collar Male Prostitute Fred Garvin. And hosts like Margot Kidder and Richard Benjamin shined, while host Milton Berle helmed a show so bad it has subsequently been banned from reruns. (And his behind-the-scenes behavior was substantially worse.)

We discuss all these issues, including looking back at the legacy of the departing Belushi and Aykroyd, this week on Wasn’t That Special.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

Have you ever wondered if you could host Saturday Night Live? Well, Season Three of the show tried to answer that question, as the show held an “Anyone Can Host” contest, selecting from over a hundred thousand postcards members of the public had sent in.

On the Season Three episode of Wasn’t That Special, Christian and Scot discuss whether the contest was actually successful. They also get into the avalanche of catchphrases the show offered this season. (Look at the name of this podcast and one can divine their enthusiasm for catchphrases.)

Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL is a reader-supported publication. To receive new pocasts and support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

They also discuss the Gilda-Laraine rivalry, whether the show suffered from a lack of stand-up comics in the cast, why the show was preoccupied with predicting John Belushi’s death, and whether Steve Martin is the greatest comedian in American history.

Plus, there’s plenty of talk about the classic sketches of the season - The Wild and Crazy Guys, the “Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger” sketch, the return of Irwin Mainway’s dangerous toys, the Coneheads, and Roseanne Roseannadanna.

And, as always, if you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.

On the Season Two episode of Wasn’t That Special, the first one available only to paid subscribers, we discuss Chevy Chase’s exit from Saturday Night Live, how effortlessly Bill Murray slipped into his slot, and dispel the myth that the show suddenly belonged to John Belushi once Chevy bolted.

The show also includes an in-depth discussion of Belushi’s career, from his early days in Wheaton, Ill. to the Studio 8H stage. We discuss Belushi’s drug troubles that caused him to miss episodes near the middle of the season, which likely sped up the addition of Bill Murray to the cast after the Christmas break. (An addition, incidentally, that went a lot better than Murray believed at the time.)

We also break down the ill-fated “SNL Goes to Mardi Gras” episode, which will forever remain buried in the show’s archives.

We further discuss how Dan Aykroyd carried the show for the first half of the season, including introduction of The Coneheads, a masterclass in sketch writing.

Our discussion of sketches include Aykroyd selling dangerous toys to kids, Radner defending extremely stupid people, Jimmy Carter talking drug users down, and a completely out-of-the-blue snakehandling sketch.

If you’re looking for supplemental information, feel free to follow us on Twitter, Threads, or Facebook.