Saturday Night Live season 21

Did You Know?

• SNL faced new competition from Fox's sketch comedy show MADtv, which aired a half hour earlier and featured a more diverse cast.
• MADtv occasionally beat SNL in the key demographic of twenty- and thirtysomething male audiences.
• Online comments have been made about MADtv being a better sketch series than Saturday Night Live.

Cast

Before the season began, most of the cast had left or been fired. NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer stated that the show had lacked breakout performers like Dana Carvey or Billy Crystal, that the cast had grown too large, and that some cast members seemed to regard the show as what they did between theatrical films. Four cast members originally returned from the previous season: Norm Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Molly Shannon, and David Spade. The number rose to five when Tim Meadows was asked back after being let go, because producers could not hire a new cast member of color.

Spade returned in a diminished role, rarely appearing in sketches except for his segment Spade in America, which debuted at the start of the season and was featured in all but five episodes. Shannon was upgraded to repertory status. Lenny Pickett replaced G. E. Smith as leader of the Saturday Night Live Band. The rest of the cast hired before the season were entirely new: stand-up comedians Jim Breuer and Darrell Hammond; Groundlings alumni Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri; and Chicago-based comedians David Koechner and Nancy Walls.

All six were promoted to repertory status upon being hired. Chris Kattan, a fellow Groundling, and staff writer Colin Quinn joined as featured players for the final six episodes. Staff writer Fred Wolf was hired as a featured player for the last four episodes. Kattan was credited for all six final episodes, Quinn for four, and Wolf for three.

Newer cast members were restricted from filming movies during the season. This was the final season for Spade, who had been on the show for six seasons and agreed to stay only one year as a bridge between the old and new casts. Walls and Koechner were let go after this season; McKinney was on the chopping block but retained for the next season.

Writers

NBC executives shook up the writing staff for season 21. Jim Downey lost the head writer role but stayed on to produce Weekend Update with Norm Macdonald. Steve Higgins and Fred Wolf took over as head writers. New additions to the staff included Adam McKay, Paula Pell, Frank Sebastiano, Hugh Fink, Dennis McNicholas, Harper Steele, and Colin Quinn. Only five writers returned from the prior season: Downey, Wolf, Tim Herlihy, Norm Hiscock, and Steve Koren. Koren became writing supervisor mid-season and left after four and a half years.