Saturday Night Live (season 6) - Background

Background

According to Tom Shales' book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Executive Producer Lorne Michaels cited burnout as the reason behind his desire to take a year off, and had been led to believe by NBC executives that the show would go on hiatus with him, and be ready to start fresh upon his return.

However, Michaels had learned from associate producer Jean Doumanian that the show would go on with or without him, and that she had been chosen as his replacement, much to Michaels' surprise and dismay.

Angered by this news, the entire cast and all but one writer (Brian Doyle-Murray) followed Michaels out the door. The sixth season began with a completely new cast and new writers, with Doumanian at the helm.

Doumanian 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 cast members, passing on such then-unknown comics as Jim Carrey, John Goodman, and Dom Irrera. Doumanian sought a non-white cast member to fill Garrett Morris's previous role. As SNL scholars Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad phrase it,

Jill still needed an ethnic, and a special series of auditions was set up to find one. For two days in mid-September some thirty black actors and comedians filed through the writers' wing on the 17th floor to read for Jean and her people. At the end, Jean told her group she was leaning toward hiring a stand-up by the name of Charlie Barnett. But talent coordinator Neil Levy had another black performer he wanted her to see, a kid from Roosevelt, Long Island, named Eddie Murphy.

Some accounts state that Doumanian preferred instead Robert Townsend, but Eddie Murphy was added (as a featured player) starting with the fourth episode, after much convincing from her colleagues and staff.

With its team of entirely new writers and cast members, the show was plagued by problems from the start and deemed a commercial disappointment by both critics and by viewers as reflected in the Nielsen ratings. For much of the season, the show was in turmoil and many critics wrote the show off as a pale imitation of its former glory due to budget cuts, lack of support that was promised to Doumanian by either the network or her staff, and stiff competition from ABC, which, at the time, was gaining popularity with a similarly-"edgy", late-night sketch show that aired on a weekend: Fridays.

On February 21, 1981, the show featured a parody of the "Who Shot J.R. Ewing?" episode from the hit TV show Dallas. In a cliffhanger titled "Who Shot C.R.?", cast member Rocket was "shot" in the last sketch of the episode, after a running gag in which other members of the cast shared their grievances about Rocket with one another. Onstage for the goodnights, Dallas star and that week's host, Charlene Tilton, asked Rocket (who was still in character and sitting in a wheelchair) his thoughts on being shot. "Oh man, it's the first time I've been shot in my life", he replied. "I'd like to know who the fuck did it." The cast, along with some of the audience, reacted with laughter and applause. According to Neil Levy, Jean Doumanian was notified by a staff member that Rocket said the expletive and was so angry, she was ready to pull the cables out with her teeth.