Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL Podcast

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Season 47 of Saturday Night Live was defined by overpopulation, inertia, and hints of a creative reset. While it wasn’t a creative renaissance, there were signs of potential - new cast members, fresh writers, and a few flashes of promise - amidst a bloated and often sluggish season.

This season came on the heels of a historically weak run marked by cast …

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If you like your comedy sleepy, inconsistent, and oddly celebrity-packed, Season 46 of Saturday Night Live was ready to serve. But if you were hoping for a creative rebound after the shaky COVID lockdown season before it, well… sorry.

This was the first season back in Studio 8H after the “At Home” episodes that ended Season 45. And while you’d think the …

Season 45 of Saturday Night Live was one of the most unusual and pivotal in the show’s long history, defined by both the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and lingering creative stagnation. In this episode, we each described the season with medically themed words—“viral” and “infected”—capturing its literal interruption by the coronavirus and the metaphorical symptoms of deeper artistic problems.

The pandemic played a defining role in this season, with production halting in March 2020. The final three episodes, known as the “SNL at Home” shows, were filmed remotely, with cast members recording sketches in their kitchens and bedro...

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Never has any television show wanted anything more than Saturday Night Live wanted to see President Donald Trump imprisoned over his alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. In sketch after sketch this season, SNL writers pleaded with Special Investigator Robert Mueller to recommend criminal charges against Trump - and yet wh…

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Among the many complaints you always hear about Saturday Night Live these days is that the show is saturated with celebrity cameos. The actual cast members don’t get their chance to shine because the show is overstuffed with big names showing up to play the week’s newsmakers.

Season 42 certainly had its share of stuntcasting, with Melissa McCarthy showin…

On this free episode, we talked with Entertainment Weekly writer Andy Hoglund about his recent Vulture article in which he interviewed 65 former Saturday Night Live cast members and writers in advance of the 50th Anniversary show. Hoglund also discusses how he got into SNL and tells some stories about he collected signatures for his SNL autograph book.

You can find Hoglund’s SNL episode recaps at Entertainment Weekly here. And follow him on X at @SNLinReview.

Here’s video of our chat!

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We have said it in prior seasons - sometimes, huge political and cultural shifts push Saturday Night Live to rise to the occasion. It happened with the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the late 1990s. It happened when Sarah Palin joined the Republican presidential ticket in 2008.

And it happened again in 2016, as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battled it out…

On Monday night, Wasn’t That Special co-host Scot Bertram joined WTMJ Radio host Sandy Maxx to recap the big SNL 50th Anniversary Special on NBC. Did it live up to expectations? What moments stood out? Who was missing?

You can find the appearance on the WTMJ page here or listen above. Christian and Scot shared some thoughts in the chat the night of the broadcast on NBC and also plan a full review of the festivities as part of the project.

On Friday night, Wasn’t That Special co-host Scot Bertram joined WTMJ Radio host Sandy Maxx to preview the big SNL 50th Anniversary Special on NBC. Who might attend, what might happen, and what’s the special sauce the powers Lorne Michaels’ success?

You can find the appearance on the WTMJ page here or listen right here.

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Since its inception, Saturday Night Live has been political. But rarely has the show delved into politics more deeply than in Season 41, when President Barack Obama had one foot out of the door, Hillary Clinton was taking a presumptive victory lap, and a group of Republicans was battling to see who would challenge Clinton in 2016.

Clinton herself would s…

In this free episode, we run through the SNL 40th Anniversary Special that aired in February 2015, and list our five favorite sketches between seasons 26 and 40. (We did the same thing when SNL ran anniversary specials after seasons 15 and 25.)

Enjoy this free trip through fifteen years of SNL and please join us as a subscriber!

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Season 39 came as a shock to Saturday Night Live, with classic cast members Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen, and Bill Hader all exiting. Executive Producer Lorne Michaels brought in six new players to replace what the show had lost, but by Season 40, four of them had been scuttled.

Season 40 saw some additions, such as new Weekend Update co-host Michael Che and previously uncredited writer Leslie Jones. But for the most part, it relied on the same core group it had for the previous two years: Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer, Aidy Bryant, Bobby Moynihan, Kenan Thompson, and...

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We spent a good portion of the Season 38 show explaining to you how Saturday Night Live actually improved without the presence of Kristen Wiig. Does the trend hold in Season 39 despite the departures of Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Armisen?

In a word, no. In a sentence, well, this is a season with a number of issues that linger and haunt episodes…

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It doesn’t make any sense that Saturday Night Live would actually improve when an all-time great cast member like Kristen Wiig leaves the show. We have seen what happens when a legend leaves in the past; the show’s quality dipped, for instance, when Will Ferrell left in 2002 after Season 27 wrapped.

But after Wiig’s post-Season 37 exit, the show not only…

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It hasn’t been that often that Lorne Michaels brings back an identical cast from the year before, but that’s exactly what happened after Season 36 and into Season 37. Everyone returns, even the cast members struggling for screen time - it is only in the 18th episode of the latter season that Michaels introduces a new cast member named Kate McKinnon.

Yet…

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One a show called Saturday Night Live, one would expect the live sketches to be the most exciting part of each episode. Half the fun is the possibility that something completely unexpected could happen, from an actor flubbing a line to a light falling from the rafters.

But in Season 36, it’s the pre-recorded Digital Shorts that really shine. With Will Fo…

In this free episode, we discuss Season 35 of SNL, including the f-bomb being dropped in the season’s first episode, the rise of Kenan Thompson as the backbone of the show, the regression of Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen, the all-time classic episode hosted by Betty White, and the emergence of newcomer Nasim Pedrad as a worthy cast member. We also talk about Will Forte’s career on the show and the role he played in creating two of the greatest recurring characters in show history.

We discuss all these things, plus a lot more in this epis...

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Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin.

Season 34 will likely be known forever for one thing, and that’s returning cast member Tina Fey’s impression of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate.

But the 2008-09 season had a lot more going on than simply politics. For one, the show bumped the number of episodes up to 22 per season (up from 20). And be…

The Wasn’t That Special Season 34 episode will be a day late next week, so as a peace offering, we recorded a review of the new movie Saturday Night, which “documents” the 90 minutes leading up to the first SNL episode on October 11, 1975.

Did we like the movie overall? What did it get wrong and what did it get right? What would we have liked to have seen? How accurate were the actors playing the first SNL cast? And was Andy Kaufman really that tall?

All these questions are answered in our new free podcast, so have a...

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Every season of Saturday Night Live has its classic episodes and its real bombs. In virtually every case, these peaks and valleys average out to make each season simply “pretty good.”

But what if there was a season that had no bad episodes but no great ones? That is the case with Season 33, in which no single show reaches the heights of the past, but no …

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Real-world Saturday Night Live events are dotting the calendar at this point. Season 50 officially kicked off on September 28 (did you like Maya Rudolph, Dana Carvey, Andy Samberg, and Jim Gaffigan?) and the new SNL film Saturday Night is in theaters on October 11. Reviews for the movie so far are … well, let’s not talk about that right now. But you can…

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Every now and then in Saturday Night Live history, you have these seasons in which an older, established cast is on their way out, and a newer cast is on their way in. They cross paths for maybe a year or two, and looking back, it is hard to believe all these people were on the same cast at the same time.

This certainly happened in Season 16, when the es…

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The cast in Season 30 returns with very few changes - Lorne Michaels effectively swapped out Jimmy Fallon, who left to do movies, with newcomer Rob Riggle.

And while Fallon was a workable cast member, his absence doesn’t seem to change the show much. That is bec...

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After Will Ferrell left following Season 27, Saturday Night Live began the process of remaking itself without Ferrell’s star power on board. They brought in new cast members like Fred Armisen and Will Forte to join Jimmy Fallon, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and Rachel Dratch, but none of the sketches reached the heights they had during the Fe…

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In Season 27, Saturday Night Live viewers occasionally got a glimpse of what the show would look like when one of its all-time great cast members bolted. For a few episodes, Will Ferrell was off filming movies like Old School, leaving the rest of the cast to pick up the slack. And the results weren’t promising.

In Season 28, the show has to grapple with …

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When Will Ferrell joined Saturday Night Live in 1995, the show was on the ropes. Adam Sandler and Chris Farley had been fired and SNL was on the brink of cancelation.

But then Lorne Michaels brought on Ferrell and fellow Los Angeles-based Groundlings Cheri Oteri and Chris Kattan and suddenly the show once again had life. These new cast members, coupled w…

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Any viewer of Season 26 of Saturday Night Live may alternate between loving it or hating it based on the episode or even the sketch they are watching. This, of course, happens in every season - there are high and low points to every year. But Season 26 can be sliced into many halves, each of which appear to be running away from each other.

There are, for…

When Saturday Night Live celebrated its 15th anniversary in 1989, it was the first time the show could stop, take a breath, and brag about its accomplishments. After the fifth season, it looked as if the show was headed for certain cancelation. After the tenth season, SNL was still on uneven footing, recycling its entire cast for Season Eleven.

But after Season Fifteen, it appeared the show had finally hit its stride. And even after some rough years in seasons 19 and 20, by Season 25 it was clear this was a show that wasn’t going anywhere.

So be...

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Who we choose as the greatest Saturday Night Live cast member is still up in the air, but as we enter the 25th year of the show, it is clear that no cast member has been as dominant for as long as Will Ferrell. In 1999-2000, Ferrell began his fifth year on the show, rescuing from near-cancelation after Season 20, and he only appears to be getting strong…

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There are celebrity cameos on Saturday Night Live, and then there is the cameo that occurred on the show on May 8 of 1999, which may have been the most surprising of all. When a dark-haired woman appeared in the middle of a sketch about Bill Clinton’s activities after he left the White House, the audience engaged in subdued applause, as it seems they co…

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Saturday Night Live has always been dependent in some ways on the cultural and political events surrounding the show, but never was that more true than in Season 23. Midway through the season, the show roared to life with news that President Bill Clinton had engaged in an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The show’s writers took every oppor…

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Do you like recurring characters on Saturday Night Live? Do you like seeing those characters over and over again, episode after episode?

Then SNL Season 22 is for you, my friend. If Season 21 was a return to many of the traditional devices that made SNL work in past years (recurring characters, celebrity impressions, commercials), then Season 22 is a dou…

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After the disastrous Season 20, there is no way Saturday Night Live could return to its former glory, is there?

Is there?

As it turns out, there was a way. The show’s regeneration was found in a group of former Groundlings, most notably an unknown Irvine, California-based comedian named John William Ferrell.

In Season 21, Ferrell joined the SNL cast with C…

Remember Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s? Chris Farley! Adam Sandler! David Spade! How could it miss?

Well, Season 20 is how it could miss.

Beset by competing personal agendas, terrible press, and a plagiarism scandal, the show was ripped apart in 1994 and 1995, with all the behind-the-scenes drama affecting what was on the screen.

New cast member Janeane Garofalo, effectively hired as a replacement for the departing Julia Sweeney, immediately (and not without cause) began complaining to the media about treatment of women and gays, objecting to the crude humor she was seeing...

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For the intro to the Season Nineteen episode of Wasn’t That Special, we turn to a famous video of former Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi:

Indeed, Coach Lombardi. What the hell is going on at SNL?

For one, we know what isn’t going on. Dana Carvey left the show midway through last season, leaving a gaping hole in the cast. And with NBC needing t…

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During Season 18 of Saturday Night Live, it is clear the classic run that began in Season 12 with the likes of Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, and others is gone. Halfway through the season, Carvey departs, leaving only Myers, Hartman, and Kevin Nealon from the late-1980’s glory years. And Myers missed a chunk of shows at the beg…

On this surprise free edition of Wasn’t That Special, we interview six-year cast member Victoria Jackson, who has plenty to say about the behind-the-scenes drama during her time on the show.

Jackson talks about why, even 35 years later, Alec Baldwin can’t stop talking about her breasts. She offers an opinion on the famous Chris Farley Chippendale’s sketch, and she discusses her rivalries with fellow cast mates Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn. She explains her unique voice and tells the story of how she ended up on her back with her legs in the ai...

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If, as is commonly believed, five years is the expiration date for a star on Saturday Night Live, nobody told Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman. In Season 17, both cast members are running at full capacity, carrying the show along as the young players still find their footing on the show.

Of the kids on the show, Rob Schneider shows the most potential to be a…

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By the fall of 1990, the core cast of Saturday Night Live had spent four full seasons together, and clearly Executive Producer Lorne Michaels thought it was time for new blood.

Gone were Nora Dunn and Jon Lovitz, while Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Dennis Miller, Mike Myers, and Victoria Jackson were all back. But throughout the sea…

Just before the 15th season of Saturday Night Live began, the show decided to pay tribute to itself with a special looking back at the 14 years it had been on the air. This was the first time SNL could pause and reflect, given that after both Season Five and Season Ten, the fate of the show was still up in the air. But after the legendary Season Fourteen, SNL was on firm footing and finally looked like it was going to be around for a while.

In this free episode, we look back not only at the...