If, as is commonly believed, five years is the expiration date for a star on Saturday Night Live, nobody told Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. In Season 17, both cast members are running at full capacity, carrying the show along as the young players still find their footing on the show.
Of the kids on the show, Rob Schneider shows the most potential to be a breakout SNL star in Season 17. Schneider has a popular recurring character (The Richmeister), does some great character work (The Sensitive Naked Man) and occasionally pops up with solid bits on Weekend Update. Other youngsters like Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler, Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, and Julia Sweeney, now all in their second year, are still primarily bit players, with only Rock and Sweeney having popular recurring characters (Nat X and Pat.)
With Jan Hooks off the cast, the show brings in four new female cast members - Siobhan Fallon, Melanie Hutsell, Ellen Cleghorne, and Beth Cahill. But by the end of the year, Fallon and Cahill would be gone, while Hutsell would stay on until Season 19 and Cleghorne would be gone after Season 20.
Season 17 was also the season SNL really began plugging into the culture around them at the time. The show ramped up its politics coverage, featuring a number of sketches about the 1992 presidential election and the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings. The show, clearly feeling the heat from competitors like In Living Color, featured more sketches about black culture, using a number of its new black cast members like Meadows and Cleghorne. And Season 17 was the season the show embraced the grunge movement in music, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam both making appearances.
We discuss all these topics and much more on this week’s episode of “Wasn’t That Special.” Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL. And consider joining at the Executive Producer level, where you get a whole load of extra commentary and clips that will help you become an SNL expert.
