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Saturday Night Live is one of the longest running, most successful network TV shows in history. Looking at the juggernaut that is SNL today, it's hard to imagine a time that Saturday Night Live was so terrible, it was almost taken off the air completely. It wouldn't be until SNL's creator Lorne Michaels returned to right the sinking ship that it would go on a run not unlike anything people have seen before. Thankfully it wasn't cancelled, and Saturday Night Live is still going strong nearing it's 50th anniversary.
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Well, how's this for good luck
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You're walking down the street, and you run into your dream date, and then someone hands you $40,000, and you have the time of your life
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That is Charles Rocket, and back in 1980, he was supposed to be the face of what NBC advertised as Saturday Night Live
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The Next Generation. At the time, the now-iconic sketch comedy series was headed into its sixth season
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and it would be the first time the show ever had to completely rebuild itself
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both in front of and behind the cameras. How did that go? well, long story short, Saturday Night Live almost ended up dead
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NBC's Saturday Night, the show that would become Saturday Night Live toward the end of its second season
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debuted in 1975. Known as the not-ready-for-primetime players, the original cast included folks like Dan Aykroyd
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John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Lorraine Newman, and Gilda Radner
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Under the guidance of series creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels, SNL became known for its counterculture attitudes
0:55
and pushing the limits of what was acceptable on television. As the series became more popular, however, so did its cast
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Here's your pea soup. Maybe now we can be friends, huh? That's right. What do you say
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Second! As host of the popular Weekend Update, Chevy Chase in particular blew up quickly and left after just one season
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No problem. In season four, Aykroyd and Belushi would become the next major cast members to depart
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They would be replaced with a flurry of new faces that included, among others
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Aykroyd's brother, Peter Aykroyd, Bill Murray's brother, Brian Doyle Murray, and future Simpsons voice actor, Harry Shearer
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But although it's amusing to think about it now that the series is heading into its 50th season
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people generally thought SNL's days were numbered. According to Michaels, at the end of season five, he hoped to take the summer off
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plus just a month or two of recovery time. That would give him a chance to recharge his creative batteries and NBC News
1:49
a chance to cover the 1980 presidential election in SNL's time slot
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But at some point, the notion of pursuing new opportunities in television and film production
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began to take hold, and he began to at least consider departing SNL permanently
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Having made no final decision about his future with the show, Michaels advised NBC president Fred Silverman he might want to consider lining up a replacement for him Michaels even recommended an ideal candidate for the gig who would be sure to keep the quality and tone of the series consistent SNL writer performer Al Franken Michaels arranged for
2:20
Silverman and Franken to meet on a Monday in May of 1980, and had that meeting taken place
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it's likely we would all now have an opinion on the Franken era of SNL. Due to a late night
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however, Silverman delayed the meeting by a week. That weekend, by an unfortunate coincidence
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Franken appeared on the show in a sketch that had him personally mocking Silverman as a
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lame-o, who rode around town in limousines while Franken had to hail caps
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Why? Because Silverman is a lame-o. But he still gets limousine service. I like to call it a limo for the lame-o
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According to Michaels, Silverman concluded the sketch with a deliberate attack on him for
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canceling the meeting, became enraged, and canceled his rescheduled meeting with Franken
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Michaels was so disillusioned by the whole experience, he finally made the decision to
3:03
depart the show for what he then thought would be for good. Without any input from the show's
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departed creator, NBC selected Gene Domanian to be the new executive producer of Saturday Night
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Live. Domanian was one of SNL's associate producers, and she understood how the production
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worked behind the scenes. But she also wasn't a writer, having just a single writing credit to her
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name. Michaels would later kindly describe the pic as an interesting choice. To him, SNL was a
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writer-based show. He had worked as a comedy writer both before and during his time on the series
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and he felt it took a writer to evaluate whether or not jokes and sketches were really funny
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But for better or worse, Domanian was in. With the rest of the not-ready-for-primetime players and the cast members from Season 5
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leaving along with Michaels, Domanian had to quickly assemble an all-new talent roster
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Passing on future stars like Jim Carrey, Paul Rubens, and John Goodman
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the rookie showrunner went with Denny Dillon, Gilbert Godfrey, Gail Mathias, Joe Piscopo, Anne Risley, and the aforementioned Charles Rocket
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In an era where almost all white casts were, embarrassingly, still the norm
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Dumanian was also determined to include just a single black comedian. That spot was almost
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filled by a stand-up comic named Charlie Barnett, or by some accounts, a young Robert Townsend
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But talent coordinator Neil Levy had started receiving calls from a then-unknown comic from
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Roosevelt Long Island named Eddie Murphy Murphy talked his way onto the show and would quickly be promoted to the main cast
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But casting was only half of Dumanian's problem because all but one of the writers also left with Michaels
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The new writing staff was headed up by ex-Mother's Brothers Comedy Hour writer Mason Williams
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but due to creative differences with Dumanian, he wound up departing after only six episodes
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He would be replaced by Jeremy Stevens and Tom Moore, a duo who had written for the talk show parody Fernwood Tonight
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But they didn't last either, and the writer's room would become something of a revolving door
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All that might have been forgivable if the new show was good. But right from the start, it was a bomb
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This era of the show would be criticized for its heavy use of sexual and racial humor, and for just generally being unfunny
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Sometimes pointedly so. But it's not all laughs. You'll learn how to react to overt cuteness, too. Oh
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The production was equally chaotic behind the scenes. One poorly planned episode came up short time-wise
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and the show was forced to rely on Murphy doing part of his stand-up routine as filler
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And then there was the curious decision to briefly replace the wildly popular Weekend Update
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with a three-segment news parody called Saturday Night Newsline. With the exception of the work being done by Murphy and Piscopo
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the new SNL was a disaster, and the show hemorrhaged ratings, losing 30% of its audience
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Then, on February 21st, 1981, Rocket would casually drop an F-bomb live on air
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Charlie, how are you feeling after you've been shot? Oh man, it's the first time I've ever been shot in my life
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I'd like to know who f***ing did it. Despite SNL's rowdy reputation, the resulting bad publicity turned out to be something of a last straw for NBC
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and Domanian was fired after one more episode. NBC executive Dick Ebersole would quickly be named as her replacement
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As one of the execs who had first approached Michaels about creating SNL, Ebersole had long been credited with a significant role in the show's development, but Franken
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himself would debunk that idea during his return to the series on a weekend update on
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the April 11, 1981 episode, accusing Ebersole of merely stealing the credit
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Whatever the truth, Ebersole immediately cleaned house, firing most of the cast, and at the
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end of the season he would dismiss everyone who remained except Murphy and Piscopo And that ending came sooner than anyone expected thanks to a writer strike that cut the season short after its 13th episode
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Interestingly, had the 14th episode happened, it would have been hosted by Al Franken
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Ebersole would continue to preside over the show until 1985, and his casts included a few future
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stars like Julia Louise Dreyfuss and Jim Belushi, and his final year he added some already famous
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faces like Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Martin Short, and Harry Shearer
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But for the most part, Ebersole's casts have been largely forgotten, and by the time the series reached the end of its 10th season, NBC had lost faith in the production and cancelled SNL
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The decision, however, was extremely short-lived, and the network decided they would make at least one more go at it if, and only if, Lorne Michaels would return to produce
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Michaels agreed, and season 11 would bring SNL's third big makeover. The new cast included names like Robert Downey Jr., Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, John Lovitz, Dennis Miller, and Nora Dunn
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That sounds like a murderer's row of talent, but replicating the success of the original
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not ready for primetime players, isn't easy, even for Lorne Michaels. Audiences didn't take to the
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new cast and NBC put SNL back on the chopping block. It was only through a personal appeal from
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Michaels to executive Brandon Tartikoff that the show was allowed to continue past its season
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finale in 1986. The next season found much of the new cast dismissed and replaced with now iconic
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SNL stars like Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, and Victoria Jackson. That iteration of the show was
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a hit, and that's basically when the series became the undying, ever-evolving television
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institution we know today. The real irony is that way back at the end of season five
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all Lorne Michaels really wanted was a short break. Due to a Screen Actors Guild strike
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that season would wind up starting late anyway. So if he had just taken a vacation and come back
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none of this would have ever happened. The original cast may have stayed a while longer, and the show might have run for a few more seasons. And maybe Michaels would have rebooted it
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but maybe he would have moved on to those other opportunities anyway. There's an argument to be made that even though Saturday Night Live
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The Next Generation, turned out to be a train wreck, the idea the show was something that could be endlessly reborn
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might never have come along if the Dumanian and Ebersole eras never happened
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And that ability to always be something new and fresh has turned out to be one of the show's saving graces again and again
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