In the fall of 1995, Saturday Night Live was reeling from the universally-panned Season 20 and Lorne Michaels had survived his closest-ever brush with being fired. But with Season 21, SNL began to right the ship.
That season takes the spotlight in the latest installment of Everything You NEED To Know About Saturday Night Live, the meticulously crafted season-by-season video docuseries from LateNighter’s podcast partner the Saturday Night Network.
As the doc’s co-host and co-executive producer Jon Schneider shares, the production of this episode has been months in the making.
Ahead of each Everything You NEED To Know, Schneider and his co-host and co-executive producer James Stephens rewatch every episode of the SNL season they’re covering. Schneider crafts the scripts with producers Matthew Ammon and Ellis Mitchell, fine-tuning how to best tell the story of a year at SNL. Stephens then combs through the script to ideate how he’ll visually convey the story using SNL clips, behind-the-scenes photos, and archival news reports. The latter also helps the team separate fact from fiction when it comes to addressing SNL lore, where stories like the drama between David Spade and Eddie Murphy have often been told multiple ways.
Yes, that infamous “falling star” joke was told in Season 21—and yes, the SNN tackles it in the new video. But the joke that strained relations between Murphy and the show for decades was just one of many dramas to go down that year. The season also saw Rage Against the Machine’s upside-down flag protest, Tupac Shakur’s awkward rendition of “California Love,” and a tense relationship between Lorne Michaels and the network.
“ I think it’s one of the more fascinating seasons in SNL history,” says Schneider. “Everyone talks about how SNL came so close to cancellation the season before, but no one talks about how they figured it out. What you can see when you watch Season 21 is that it takes them a while to figure it out.”
“Lorne basically doesn’t have complete control over the show,” he adds. “There are guests that don’t want to do the show, so they end up booking NBC personalities to host the show for the entire fall. It sort of has that Season 1 vibe of [being] a complete reset. There’s a little bit of an underground vibe to the season.”
The year also brought about a number of new and departing players, both behind and in front of the camera—some even occurring mid-season. The cast was “newer and fewer.” The “Bad Boys of SNL” era came to an end, and a new recurring character era started to take shape. Jim Carrey completed the show’s resurrection with an all-timer of a season finale, and just like that, SNL was out of the ashes.
“ Everyone loves to talk about how things go wrong. Eventually, you get tired of hearing how SNL almost got cancelled [with Season 20],” says Schneider. “For me, it’s more interesting to hear about how SNL saved itself.”
Watch the Saturday Night Network’s Story of Season 21 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.
Big ups to Jon, James, and the SNN crew! The fan community is absolutely digging these deep-dives.