By the fall of 1990, the core cast of Saturday Night Live had spent four full seasons together, and clearly Executive Producer Lorne Michaels thought it was time for new blood.
Gone were Nora Dunn and Jon Lovitz, while Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Dennis Miller, Mike Myers, and Victoria Jackson were all back. But throughout the season, viewers began to see new faces, like David Spade, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Tim Meadows, Julia Sweeney, and a chubby kid from Wisconsin named Chris Farley.
It was a drastic departure from how the show had regenerated itself in the past. Previous seasons had seen full cast overhauls, whereas now, with the show having established itself, Michaels began working new players into the cast, nearly doubling its size.
One would think that adding so much new talent in the middle of the season would be chaotic; but instead, for much of the season, it worked to perfection. Schneider and Sweeney both immediately had hit recurring characters (“Richmeiser the Copy Guy” and “Pat,” respectively), and the others slid in and performed respectably among the heavy hitters like Carvey, Hartman, and Myers.
While Farley wasn’t a major player on the show in his first season, he did provide one of the show’s most enduring sketches. In his fourth show, he starred in a bit with Patrick Swayze in which both men were trying out to be Chippendale’s dancers. Farley is incredible in it, dancing in a way large men typically can’t; but the sketch ends up being controversial, with many cast members believing it exploited Farley and preyed upon his low self-esteem.
Season Sixteen is also largely known for the guest-hosting stint by action star Steven Seagal, roundly accepted as one of the worst hosts in SNL history. Incredibly, the staff allowed Seagal to help write some of the sketches, with the show culminating in a preposterous eight-minute sketch in which Seagal beats up a boardroom of businessmen in the name of environmental justice. It is, in retrospect, hilarious because it’s hard to believe how it made it to the show.
But this season had a number of legendary hosts, from Tom Hanks to John Goodman to Alec Baldwin to Catherine O’Hara (who turns in one of the greatest acting performances in show history.)
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.
