For the last several decades, Saturday Night Live has been faced with questions of its future. While so many people claim not to watch or call it unfunny, everyone still talks about it and sketches still go viral. Some feel the show has run its course, the sketches need work, or members of the cast need to go. Nothing ever comes of it because Saturday Night Live is engrained as part of the fabric of late-night television that no one really ever expects to end. But there’s one point in time when Saturday Night Live almost did get canceled, and arguably should have been. The show was hanging by a thread, and instead of a complete cast shake-up saving the show, it led to a year that has become known as the “weird season.”
This was in 1985 during season 11, a bizarre season that the new Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night highlights in its fourth episode aptly called “Season 11: The Weird Year.” The episode examines the mistakes, challenges, and learnings from this often-forgotten season that has solidified its spot in history for all the wrong reasons.
Saturday Night Live
- Release Date
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October 11, 1975
- Network
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NBC
- Showrunner
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- Directors
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Dave Wilson, Don Roy King, Liz Patrick, Andy Warhol, Linda Lee Cadwell, Matthew Meshekoff, Paul Miller, Robert Altman, Robert Smigel
- Writers
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Will Forte, Bill Hader, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Chris Parnell, Asa Taccone, John Lutz, Tom Schiller, Simon Rich, Michael Patrick O’Brien, Nicki Minaj, Herbert Sargent, Matt Piedmont, John Solomon, Chris Kelly, Alan Zweibel, Kent Sublette, Ari Katcher, Marika Sawyer, Sarah Schnedier, Scott Jung, Justin Franks, Jerrod Bettis, Rhiannon Bryan
Cast
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A. Whitney BrownSelf -
Self / Various -
Self (archive footage) -
Al RokerSelf / Margaret Jo McCullin / Various
What Went Wrong With Season 11 of ‘Saturday Night Live’?
Saturday Night Live was created in 1975 by Lorne Michaels, who sat at the helm of the sketch comedy series for its first seasons. Michaels left the show in 1980 to explore other opportunities. Jean Doumanian took over, then Dick Ebersol, but the series was starting to get stale. Ebersol announced his departure and NBC president at the time, Brandon Tartikoff, wanted to find a way to stop the show from being canceled. Thus, Michaels returned to reinvent it.
Back in the hot seat with Al Franken and Tom Davis on board as writers and producers, Michaels made sweeping changes for the 1985-1986 season. Notably, this included getting rid of the entire cast of well-known comedic forces like Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest. Believing the show needed a fresh, young selection of cast members, he opted for known actors instead of going the route of recruiting comedians from comedy clubs and improv groups who had prior experience in, or a specific talent for, sketch comedy.
Among the people hired were Randy Quaid, an Academy Award-winning actor, along with Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., and Joan Cusack, all up-and-coming young actors at the time. While all of them had impressive movie resumes and were beloved by fans, they didn’t have experience with the style of comedy necessary for Saturday Night Live. Still, Michaels felt adding Jon Lovitz and Nora Dunn would help. He also attempted to diversify the show with Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay cast member, and Danitra Vance, the first Black woman on the show.
The inexperience in sketch comedy combined with a lack of cohesiveness among the cast was compounded by the fact that the writers couldn’t find fitting sketches for the mixed bag cast. The show was met with terrible criticism and low ratings. “The division between what worked and what didn’t work…oh, that was painfully obvious,” said actor Tom Hanks during his interview for the docuseries. Hanks hosted for the first time that season, would go on to host nine more times throughout the show’s run, and remains one of SNL’s most popular hosts.
Some Weird Sketches from the Weird Season
The sketches, for the most part, didn’t hit well and some were downright head-scratchers. There was a parody of The Twilight Zone, for example, and an episode hosted by Ron Reagan whereby Sweeney dressed in drag to play Nancy Reagan. Oprah Winfrey was a host, but she hadn’t even yet started her famous talk show at that point.
Things got even stranger when Penn & Teller started appearing on the show in guest roles to do magic tricks as weird interludes between sketches. Then, there was Francis Ford Coppola, who came in to direct an episode of the show, which was scored by Phillip Glass. It made little sense, but at that point in the season, it was a Hail Mary attempt to bring some semblance of watchability to the show.
Lovitz and Dunn arguably kept the season afloat as the only shining stars. Lovitz’s character, Tommy Flanagan, The Pathological Liar, who came up with elaborate lies and had the catchphrase “Yeah! That’s the ticket!” was one of the only successful ones that season. Dunn, meanwhile, was a standout as the inappropriate talk show host Pat Stevens. Miller, the only other cast member with experience that made sense for SNL, also did a great job as anchor for Weekend Update. But the rest was downright painful to watch.
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The Controversies and Weird Decisions of the Season
The season was doomed from the beginning, but the actors powered on, made awkward with the self-realization that the show just wasn’t good. Many of the cast expressed being unhappy with the sketches. In one famous instance, Damon Wayans Jr. was frustrated at not being heard and only getting to play stereotypical parts. In retaliation, he appeared in one live sketch intentionally as a flamboyantly gay police officer when he wasn’t supposed to be. As he knew would happen, he was immediately fired by Michaels the moment he stepped off stage and the cameras cut.
He did later return as a guest on the finale, confirming that he and Michaels had put that moment behind them. Seeing what a big star Wayans Jr. became on In Living Color and plenty of comedy films, it was clear his talent was being wasted.
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Even Coppola’s weird episode leaned right into the madness and poked fun at how badly the show was doing. He mocked the series in meta fashion with various sketches that saw him meet with Michaels and Sweeney to figure out how to help the show’s terrible ratings problem. Producer Laila Nabulsi recalls in the docuseries that while Coppola’s short-lived directing stint didn’t reinvigorate the show the way they had hoped, he “brought the whole cast together, and that was the first time that happened (that season).”
Of his time on the show, Downey Jr., who of course went on to become a massive TV show and movie star, told photographer Sam Jones in a 2019 interview that there isn’t a “more exciting 90 minutes you can have, whether you’re good at it or not.” He added that he “learned so much that year about what I wasn’t.”
The Bizarre and Epic Way It Ended
Michaels has never shied away from being direct, and he made no bones about his feelings for Season 11 by its end. Believing that Saturday Night Live was going to be cut from the line-up and wouldn’t see another season, Michaels wanted to instill confidence in NBC executives. He was ready to revamp it once again and had a better idea this time around. He wanted one more chance.
The episode ended with all the cast members being trapped in a room as a fire was set ablaze by host Billy Martin, angered for being kicked off the show in an earlier sketch. Right before shutting the door, Michaels shows up and pulls Lovitz from the fire, telling him to relocate somewhere else. This was a clear indication that he was being spared. Just then, the words “who will survive?” flashed on screen as the credits rolled. It was meant to be a joke, but also not really.
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As the make-believe fire blazes, Michaels uses this moment as a literal interpretation of the entire cast being fired from this show. This is precisely what happened. He fought for one more season to show he could turn things around. Only Lovitz, Miller, and Brown were kept on. It marked one of the biggest cast changes since the sixth season and this would not happen again until Season 20.
Michaels went back to seeking out actors and comedians with backgrounds in sketch comedy and improv and Season 12 had one of the most iconic casts in the show’s history. This includes legends like Dana Carvey, the late Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon. Fittingly and in a full circle redemption moment, Michaels brought Madonna back to host the first episode, as she did in Season 11. She hilariously made a joke that the entire previous season was a “horrible, horrible dream.”
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