The 15th of November 1980 marked the beginning of the end for Saturday Night Live as the world knew it, when the show aired under the title Saturday Night Live '80 with an entirely new cast and no connection to its legendary past. Jean Doumanian, who had served as an associate producer for the first five seasons, was thrust into the role of executive producer after Lorne Michaels departed due to burnout, taking the entire cast and almost the entire writing staff with him. Doumanian's vision was to create a fresh start, but the result was a disaster that would become infamous in television history. She hired Denny Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, Gail Matthius, Joe Piscopo, Ann Risley, and Charles Rocket as repertory players, and Yvonne Hudson, Matthew Laurance, and Patrick Weathers as featured players. In doing so, she passed on then-unknown performers like Jim Carrey, Mercedes Ruehl, Sandra Bernhard, John Goodman, and Paul Reubens. Andy Kaufman offered to contribute a weekly segment but was turned down. Doumanian sought a non-white cast member to fill Garrett Morris' previous role, and after a series of auditions, she hired Eddie Murphy, a 19-year-old from Roosevelt, Long Island, who had begged for a chance despite initial rejection. The first episode featured an all-new cast, with Elliott Gould hosting and the cast sharing a bed with him in the opening sketch. Rocket proclaimed himself to be a cross between Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, while Gottfried referred to himself as a cross between John Belushi and Harry Shearer. Doumanian's decision to replace the original cast was met with immediate criticism, and the show's ratings began to sink.
The Shooting of Charles Rocket
On the 21st of February 1981, the show took a dark turn when cast member Charles Rocket was 'shot' in the final sketch of the episode, a parody of the 'Who Shot J.R.?' craze from the soap opera Dallas. The sketch, titled 'Who Shot C.R.?', featured a running gag where other members of the cast shared their grievances about Rocket, culminating in his 'shooting' and subsequent appearance in a wheelchair. During the goodnights, Dallas star and that week's host Charlene Tilton asked Rocket, still in character, his thoughts on being shot. Rocket replied, 'Oh man, it's the first time I've been shot in my life. I'd like to know who the fuck did it.' The cast and audience reacted with laughter and applause, but inside the control room, there was outrage. Director Dave Wilson, fearing that the show was finished for good, simply threw his script papers in the air and said, 'Well, that's the end of live television,' before walking out of the room. The incident led to immediate backlash, and NBC president of entertainment Brandon Tartikoff fired Doumanian and hired Dick Ebersol to improve the show. The show went on a brief hiatus as Ebersol retooled the cast, firing most of Doumanian's hires with the exception of Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Denny Dillon, and Gail Matthius. He also added alumni from The Second City. Ebersol's first produced episode aired on the 11th of April 1981, but the 1981 Writers Guild of America strike began that night, forcing the season to an early end.
Bill Murray hosted the episode on the 7th of March 1981, two weeks after the Charles Rocket incident, in a desperate attempt to save the show. Morale had sunk in the writer's room to the point that some writers implored Bill's brother, writer Brian Doyle-Murray, to not let Bill come on the show because they did not want the ratings to go up and keep the show going longer. Murray, a friend of Doumanian, agreed to host as a favor and doing so convinced NBC's head of programming Brandon Tartikoff to keep the show on for another week. The cold open for the episode revolved around Murray telling the cast that in spite of previous setbacks, 'it just doesn't matter,' a reference to Murray's 1979 film Meatballs. Additionally, Murray jokingly told Rocket to 'watch his mouth and clean it up.' Writer Pamela Norris said of Murray's appearance, 'It was like The Truth Teller had arrived.' Murray had livened the mood of the cast and crew throughout the week. However, by the end of the episode, Murray had apologized to his old cast members by name for appearing on the episode and when Rocket tried to hug Murray, he rebuffed him. Years later, Murray was interviewed for the book Live from New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, where he said that he believed Doumanian had not been given a fair shot, and said the cast was unprepared for the demands of the show, the sudden attention, and the task of replacing the original cast.
The Writers' Strike and Hiatus
After Bill Murray's episode, the next episode was scheduled for the 14th of March 1981 and would have been hosted by Robert Guillaume and Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Subsequent reruns of the episode partially edit the good nights segment to remove the announcement for next week's episode. The cast and writers were also unaware that Brandon Tartikoff, the head of programming for NBC, invited Dick Ebersol, the original developer of SNL, to watch the show in secrecy in the control booth and was totally in despair over how the quality of the show sank. Doumanian was officially replaced by Ebersol after the Murray episode. In his first two weeks, Ebersol fired Gottfried, Risley, and Rocket, replacing them with Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, and Tony Rosato. At the end of the season, he would eliminate the rest of the 1980 cast except for Murphy and Piscopo. Ebersol originally wanted to bring in John Candy and Catherine O'Hara from SCTV; Candy turned down the offer. O'Hara initially accepted the job, but immediately quit after a production meeting where Michael O'Donoghue, an original writer for SNL, berated the cast and writers for the show's poor performances and sketches. Ebersol's first show aired on the 11th of April 1981, with appearances by Chevy Chase on Weekend Update, and Al Franken asking viewers to 'put SNL to sleep.' Ebersol had promised Franken and Tom Davis that in addition to appearing on the April 11 show, they could host the next week. During the following week, with a writer's strike looming, Franken and Davis wrote material and mailed it to themselves so that their postmark could be used to prove they did not violate the strike. After seeing copies of the material, Ebersol (never a fan of Franken and Davis) caved to the writer's strike and called off the rest of the season, promising the duo they could host the season premiere that fall. As the summer ended, Ebersol, confident in his new cast, decided he no longer needed a link to the original cast. Franken claims Ebersol never returned his calls, and Franken and Davis never hosted SNL. Franken would not return to SNL until four years later, as a featured cast member.
The Critical Backlash
Responses to Doumanian's SNL were negative, with the Associated Press mocking the Carters-in-the-Oval-Office sketch, writing, 'The new Saturday Night Live is essentially crude, sophomoric and most of all self-consciously 'cool.' It is occasionally funny... Under producer Jean Doumanian, Saturday Night Live will define 'risk-taking' as a little naughtier, perhaps a little raunchier; it won't wander too far off the beaten path... They're all clones. This is television. If they can be funny once in a while, that's all we can ask.' Much of the criticism was directed at the style of humor, which journalists said appeared to go for shock value and came across as tasteless. The New York Times said the season 'looked almost exactly as it did in previous years, but actually only the shell remained.' The review went on to state that the 'missing ingredient was the very quality that made the old show so special: an innovative vision,' and that the new show was 'nothing so much as an unfunny parody of its predecessor.' The Washington Star said the show 'strained and groaned' while the humor was 'almost completely lost, despite desperate attempts to wring it out of raunch.' Newsdays Marvin Kitman, as expected, ravaged the show gleefully, calling it 'offensive and raunchy,' and worse, not funny. 'This new edition is terrible,' he wrote. 'Call it 'Saturday Night Dead on Arrival.' Tom Shales' headline on his review read 'FROM YUK TO YECCCH.' The first sentence was: 'Vile from New York, It's Saturday Night.' The show, Shales said, was a 'snide and sordid embarrassment.' It imitated the 'ribaldry and willingness to prod sacred cows' of the Lorne Michaels years without having the least 'compensating satirical edge.' It was, he wrote, 'just haplessly pointless tastelessness.' Shales concluded that despite one or two imaginative moments from the show's filmmakers, 'from the six new performers and 13 new writers hired for the show, viewers got virtually no good news.' Jean made it clear that she thought the writing was primarily at fault. 'It's just got to be funnier,' she said. Then she put a tape of the show on her videocassette machine to begin a sketch-by-sketch critique. According to writer Billy Brown, as she did she said, 'Watch this. And I hope you hate it, because you wrote it.' In his book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede included this season as one of 25 runners-up to the list.