There's a telling scene in an episode with Susan Dey where Mike Meyers and Phil Hartman play two opposing lawyers trying to convince a jury about the feasibility of a man's penis size. Why they're doing this isn't as important as the fact that the jury isn't played by extras. Well, one is, but 11 of the 12 jurors are cast members. Not just any cast members but some of the biggest names in comedic history -- Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Tim Meadows-- all adding to the sketch in unique ways without saying a word. They're just all looking at a naked man and reacting to his anatomy in uniquely different comic ways.
That's the season in a nutshell.
This was a season loaded with stars and not a lot of screen time to go around. Although Rob Smigel (best known today for making lewd poop jokes at celebrities with a cartoon dog puppet on his hand) appeared in the opening credits for a handful of episodes, this was mostly a 16-member cast. That's slightly above average but the show has weathered casts that size before. Particularly since 2016.
That's the season in a nutshell.
This was a season loaded with stars and not a lot of screen time to go around. Although Rob Smigel (best known today for making lewd poop jokes at celebrities with a cartoon dog puppet on his hand) appeared in the opening credits for a handful of episodes, this was mostly a 16-member cast. That's slightly above average but the show has weathered casts that size before. Particularly since 2016.
However, the thing is that few of the current SNL crop are stars that command center stage. Beck Bennett is the current epitome for a cast member: He had a few character roles, but he also was great at playing a background part when needed. Even Pete Davidson, despite the insufferable publicity that engulfed the rest of the show during his tenure, was fully capable of supporting a sketch when he wasn't the lead. In this SNL sketch, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcziw7helVg, Pete Davidson does excellent work with his "huzzahs" in a supporting role while Alex Moffatt (who suffered slightly from not having enough star power) took the lead.
There have been a few examples of SNL characters who don't work so well in supporting roles like Leslie Jones or possibly Sarah Sherman, but for the most part, it's a far cry from this era where Chris Rock, David Spade, and Adam Sandler have such strong comic personas that it seems tragic to watch them on the sidelines of a sketch.
The only people from this cast that I see on the true character actor end of the spectrum were Kevin Nealon and Julia Sweeney.
SNL works on seniority as most people know so Nealon, the second-longest-tenured cast member at the time, gobbled up more screen time than what was ideal. The other three big stars here were Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, and Phil Hartman. Both Carvey and Hartman are on their last legs and you can tell they were running out of energy by this point. Thus, it's hard to argue that anyone other than Mike Meyers was the season's MVP.
And that's the second thing I learned here. In retrospect, it's incredibly easy to forget how talented some of these people are. Myers is best known for having a couple franchises that he stuck to, and then followed them up with some projects where he recycled his own shtick. But, my God, he was a versatile ball of energy who bought something new every week and performed the hell out of it.
Similarly, I only remember Rob Schneider as the guy with overwrought parts in Adam Sandler's movies and a man with a thin ego who often takes out ads in trade magazines to attack his enemies.
Imagine my surprise to see that Schneider might have arguably been the most capable of the young guns on the show.
Many of his featured sketches showed a lot of originality (there's one where he's a naked guy with a highly positive body image even if it makes others extremely uncomfortable; in another, he plays a dignified street musician who's subconsciously communicating through his music that he's really desperate) and he threw himself into the background parts.
I don't know if I saw this firsthand before, but I vaguely remember him through clip shows as the "Making Copies" guy, but that's the other way SNL history flattens our memory. Schneider was far more than the Making Copies guy.
Similarly, Adam Sandler might best be known as opera man or canteen boy, but I really liked a bit he did called Cajun Man which benefitted from an iambic simplicity.
A lot of the literature I consulted about this period characterized the early 90s as an all-boys club and blamed Farley and Sandler for making this a bro-centric atmosphere. Some people like Year of Flops author Nathan Rabin (who I'm not a fan of for his faux woke grandstanding) even called Sandler and Farley's last season littered with misogyny, but in that article Rabin provided zero supporting evidence for his claim.
We can debate the merits of certain sketches, but I think the idea that the writing room was flowing with misogyny as a direct result of Farley/Sandler/Spade/Wolf (one of their two writers) is pretty baseless. Fellow cast members, male and female, are full of kind words for those people. However, these criticisms surfaced mostly during the 94-95 season which was undoubtedly influenced by two unhappy campers (Janeane Garofalo and Chris Elliott) complaining to the press, and that's a whole other story.
In this particular season, the female cast was trapped in a pretty horrific holding pattern. No strong females emerged in this era to make up for the obvious holes of Nora Dunn and Hooks.
As far as I can gather, It had nothing to do with their talent, but by the logistics of what they chose to do with their female cast members.
There were six women on cast. Ellen Cleghorne occupied her own space as a Black actor, so she was safe. She actually had a nice guerilla recurring sketch (a la Borat though likely more scripted) as a fake studio page (think Kenneth from 30 Rock) who bothered the hosts as they left the studio. When I say star who commands center stage, Cleghorne fit that category as far as I'm concerned.
Julia Sweeney had exactly one star character, but was mostly relegated to the background where she found a semi-comfortable space.
Victoria Jackson had worked fairly well with a ditzy persona. If that's a derogatory term, don't shoot the messenger: Victoria called herself that on air.
Inexplicably, Melanie Hutsell mined the same territory as Victoria with imitations of Tori Spelling and Jan Brady. On top of that, Beth Cahill and Siobhan Fallon had a recurring sketch with Melanie as ditzy sorority girls.
The better way to have distinguished all these actors would have been to give them different character types.
In the same mold, that Rob Schneider will be remembered as the "Making Copies" guy, Siobhan and Beth will be grouped with Melanie as the sorority girls. Fortunately, they made a few other strong impressions in other sketches.
Because I'm (likely) interviewing Siobhan this week, I'm watching these episodes as a soccer mom who lights up when Siobhan does something well on screen, like she's my daughter.
And she's been impressive, even though she's been underserved.
And Beth? I never heard of before my binge, and I kind of thought I knew everyone from 1986 onwards. She might be the only one I've never heard of. And she was actually really solid for a noob. Like Siobhan she didn't get bought back and she was reported semi-retired from the industry in 2013.
Again, what could have been?
