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.
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