Saturday Night Live season 21

SNL faced new competition in the form of Fox's sketch comedy show MADtv, which aired a half hour earlier than SNL^[3] and featured a more diverse cast.^[4] Though MADtv never posed a serious ratings threat to SNL, it did at times beat the NBC show in the key demographic of twenty-and thirtysomething male audiences, and, to this day, online comments have been made about MADtv being a better sketch series than Saturday Night Live.^[5][6]

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Before the start of the season, most of the cast had left or been fired from the show. NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer said, "If you look at the past several seasons, we haven't had breakout performers like Dana Carvey or Billy Crystal. In the writing, we haven't had many of the great characters that people have enjoyed seeing in sketches in the past. The cast had gotten too large and, frankly, some of them seemed to regard Saturday Night Live as what they did between theatrical films. The energy was off. Sometimes people seemed to be reading cue cards rather than doing a live show."^[2]

Four cast members originally returned from the previous season (Norm Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Molly Shannon and David Spade), though the number rose to five as Tim Meadows was asked to return despite being let go, as producers were unable to hire a new cast member of color.^[1] Spade’s return to the show had him in a diminished role, very rarely appearing in sketches except for Spade in America, a segment hosted by Spade that debuted at the start of the season and was featured in all but five episodes. Shannon was upgraded to repertory status for this season.

Lenny Pickett also took over for G. E. Smith as leader of the Saturday Night Live Band.^[7]

Aside from Macdonald, McKinney, Meadows, Shannon, and Spade, the rest of the cast hired prior to the start of the season was entirely new. These included stand-up comedians Jim Breuer and Darrell Hammond;^[8] Groundlings alumni Will Ferrell^[9] and Cheri Oteri;^[1] and Chicago-based comedians David Koechner and Nancy Walls.^[10] Breuer, Hammond, Ferrell, Oteri, Koechner, and Walls were all promoted to repertory status upon being hired.

Ferrell and Oteri's fellow Groundling Chris Kattan,^[11] along with newly hired staff writer Colin Quinn,^[12] also joined as featured players for the final six episodes of the season. In April, Quinn's fellow SNL writer Fred Wolf was hired to join the cast as a featured player for the last four episodes.^[13] Kattan was credited for all six of the final episodes, while Quinn was credited for four, and Wolf was credited for three episodes. Newer cast members were restricted from filming movies during the season.^[2]

This would be the final season for longtime cast member Spade, who had been on the show since 1990, a total of six seasons.^[14] Spade had agreed to stay only a year so he could be a bridge between the old and new casts. Newcomers Walls and Keochner (the latter at the insistence of Ohlmeyer) were also let go after this season. McKinney was also on the chopping block, but was ultimately retained for the next season.^[15][16]

Cast roster

Repertory players Jim Breuer Will Ferrell Darrell Hammond David Koechner Norm Macdonald Mark McKinney Tim Meadows Cheri Oteri Molly Shannon David Spade Nancy Walls

Featured players Chris Kattan (first episode: March 16, 1996) Colin Quinn (first episode credited: March 16, 1996) Fred Wolf (first episode: April 13, 1996)

bold denotes "Weekend Update" anchor

Chris Kattan was credited for all six episodes after he joined the cast, Colin Quinn was credited for five of the last six shows of the season (including the season finale, despite not appearing in the episode), and Fred Wolf was credited for three of the last four episodes of the season.

Jim Downey was removed as head writer as part of NBC executives' changes,^[17] but remained on the writing staff, now producing Weekend Update with Norm Macdonald.

Steve Higgins (who was made head writer with Fred Wolf),^[2] Adam McKay,^[18] Paula Pell,^[19] Frank Sebastiano, Hugh Fink, Dennis McNicholas, Harper Steele and Colin Quinn joined the staff.

The only returning writers from the previous season were Downey, Wolf, Tim Herlihy, Norm Hiscock, and Steve Koren.^[20] Koren (who would be promoted to writing supervisor midway through the season) would leave the show at the end of the season, after 4½ years.^[21]

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