The best cast Saturday Night Live ever had was not in the 1970s, but in the early 1990s. That's one of the theories espoused by SNL in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation, a new, two-hour, clip-heavy documentary that airs on Global tomorrow night and on NBC Sunday night. With SNL currently enduring perhaps its worst season ever (personal opinion, and admittedly not the first time we've said it), it's fascinating to consider who was part of the SNL cast a decade and a half ago: Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, Dennis Miller, David Spade and Norm Macdonald, to name a few.
"Maybe the best cast ever, top to bottom," Tina Fey says. It sure didn't hurt the show's popularity that Myers and Carvey had a monster-hit movie with Wayne's World, which had grown out of an SNL sketch. "It was the Yankees," Rock says.
"I mean, we were good." The question, of course, is how it all went wrong. SNL symbolically hit the wall in late 1997 and early 1998, when Farley and Hartman died.
But both of them already had left SNL, where ratings had been in a free-fall since the mid-1990s. Pop Culture Nation does not sugar-coat SNL's demise in that era, and offers some explanations: Too many cast members had come from standup rather than sketch comedy; a damaging article in New York magazine titled Saturday Night Dead; vigorous late-night competition from Mad TV, Howard Stern and Roseanne Barr; and unprecedented interference from NBC executives, especially then-West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer. "Norm was probably the last dangerous cast member, in a good way," Fey said.
"He might say whatever he wanted." Ohlmeyer fought with SNL creator/producer Lorne Michaels over whether or not Macdonald was funny, but ultimately Ohlmeyer won. Macdonald was removed as Weekend Update anchor in the middle of the 1997-98 season.
Rumours suggested Ohlmeyer's friendship with O.J. Simpson -- a regular target for Macdonald -- had influenced the move.
Ohlmeyer denied it at the time, but a glaring weakness in Pop Culture Nation is that even though Ohlmeyer is interviewed, the O.J. angle isn't even mentioned.
As blunt as Pop Culture Nation is in its middle bits, the tone toward the end of the show is a little too kiss-assy toward Michaels. The special also speaks glowingly about a subsequent rebound for SNL that has not been visible to these eyes, Will Ferrell notwithstanding. Anyway, pondering SNL's history and legacy always is fun.
It sure beats watching new episodes.
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