After righting the ship a year earlier, Saturday Night Live‘s 22nd Season saw Lorne Michaels usher his creation into a new era, one marked with perhaps the heaviest concentration of recurring sketches and characters in the show’s now-legendary 50-year history.
That’s the focus of the latest episode of the Saturday Night Network’s season-by-season docuseries Everything You NEED to Know About Saturday Night Live, hosted and produced by Jon Schneider and James Stephens.
“Coming off Season 21’s Jim Carrey finale, which was one of the show’s best episodes ever, SNL had momentum coming into the season,” explains Schneider. With Ana Gasteyer and Tracy Morgan joining a cast that was starting to gel, “fans were slowly coming back to the show.”
With the debuts of “The Culps,” “Mr. Peepers,” “Celebrity Jeopardy!”, and Robert Smigel’s Saturday TV Funhouse franchise, Season 22 set the tone for an era of the show that would come to be defined by a series of signature recurring characters and sketches.
That pattern was top of mind for Schneider and Stephens when they set out to document Season 22.
“Something that James and I talked about a lot was how many episodes were only recurring characters. When you watch the show now, you can go weeks without seeing a recurring character; months,” Schneider. “To me, there’s no other way to define this period than being the show’s Recurring Character Era.
So what led to Saturday Night Live’s new reliance on these fan favorites?
“When you have that happening, you get such a longer leash with your characters as a cast member, because you know that you can build story and character development. That basically allows this cast to grow, and I think that’s why a lot of people love this era.”
With SNL on the upswing, Lorne Michaels called on a number of former SNL stars to host a run of early shows that would come to be known among fans as the Distinguished Alumni Series: Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Robert Downey Jr., Phil Hartman, and Martin Short. Later in the season, Chevy Chase and Mike Myers would host. Carvey, Myers, and David Spade would make additional guest appearances over the course of the year.
“How do we bring in viewers from the past and show them that the show is good again?” Schneider posits of SNL’s strategy for the season. “By having their favorites come back after so many years.”
You will eventually see a ton of former cast members come back to host the show, but this was more of a novel thing back then,” Schneider notes. “ So we wanted to show that, and put graphics together for every single time a former cast member comes back.”
But what happened on air is only part of the story. SNL‘s 22nd season was also marked by behind-the-scenes drama, including a sometimes fraught relationship between Norm Macdonald and Chris Kattan. Even more volatile was the dynamic between the cast and Chevy Chase, whose difficult behavior on set during his eighth turn as host would help fracture forever his relationship with the show that made him.
All this and more in the Saturday Night Network’s Story of Season 22, available at the top of this post. Past episodes of Everything You NEED To Know About Saturday Night Live are available on the SNN’s YouTube channel.
Dig Deeper: 15 Must-See Sketches from SNL Season 22
These 15 sketches—from stone-cold classics to underrated gems—capture the year’s range better than any single rerun ever could. Below, The Saturday Night Network’s Jon Schneider breaks them down into three definitive top fives.
Five Essential Sketches
These are the sketches that defined Season 22—whether by generating buzz, capturing the spirit of the newly-jelled cast, or becoming the building blocks of the show’s next chapter.
New Rating System Cold Open (Jan. 11, 1997 – S22E10)
Mike Myers Monologue (Mar. 22, 1997 – S22E16)
Wedding Toast / The Culps (Nov. 2, 1996 – S22E5)
Street Gang (Nov. 16, 1996 – S22E6)
Celebrity Jeopardy (Dec. 7, 1996 – S22E8)
Five Best Sketches of S22
These sketches showcase the season’s comedic range at its sharpest—from inspired writing to career-making performances.
Martin Short Monologue (Dec. 7, 1996 – S22E8)
Martha Stewart’s Home For The Holidays (Dec. 7, 1996 – S22E8)
Brokaw Pre-Tapes (Oct. 26, 1996 – S22E4)
Shopping at Home Network (Mar. 15, 1997 – S22E15)
Space, The Infinite Frontier (May 17, 1997 – S22E20)
Five Sleeper Sketches of S22:
They may not show up in best-of clip packages, but these underrated sketches prove how deep the season’s bench really was.
Dream Debate Cold Open (Oct. 19, 1996 – S22E3)
Russell Simmons’ Def Emergency Room Jam (Nov. 2, 1996 – S22E5)
Tic Tac Toe (Oct. 19, 1996 – S22E3)
Janet Reno’s Dance Party (Jan. 11, 1997 – S22E10)
The Joe Pesci Show (Apr. 12, 1997 – S22E17)
