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.
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.
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