The tenth season of '' Saturday Night Live'', an American

sketch comedy Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is ...

series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 6, 1984, and April 13, 1985. Only 17 episodes were produced due to a writers' strike and budget constraints.

Changes to format

This season also featured a new opening sequence produced by

Charlex CHRLX (formerly known as Charlex until 2014) is an American animation studio based in New York City that produces animation primarily for commercials. History Charlie Levi and Alex Weil founded Charlex (with the name being a portmentau of thei ...

(who also created The Cars' " You Might Think" video earlier in 1984), depicting the ''SNL'' cast as giants in and around New York City landmarks. At the end of the season, Ebersol requested to completely revamp the show to include mostly prerecorded segments. Short, Guest, and Hall ultimately got tired of the show's demanding production schedule and showed little interest in returning for another season, leaving Crystal the only "A-cast" member available for season 11. Like Lorne Michaels at the end of season5, Ebersol made taking the show off the air for several months to re-cast and rebuild a condition of his return. Another idea was to institute a permanent rotation of hosts ( Billy Crystal,

David Letterman David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He hosted late night television talk shows for 33 years, beginning with the February 1, 1982 debut of ''Late Night with David Letterman' ...

and

Joe Piscopo Joseph Charles John Piscopo ( ; born June 17, 1951) is an American actor, comedian and conservative radio talk show host. He was a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1980 to 1984, where he played a variety of recurring characters. His f ...

) for "a hip '' The Ed Sullivan Show''". After briefly canceling the show, NBC decided to continue production only if they could get Michaels to produce again. Ebersol, along with his writing staff and most of the cast, left the show after this season. Those who wished to stay, such as Crystal, were not rehired for the following season.

Cast

During the previous season,

Eddie Murphy Edward Regan Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and singer. He rose to fame on the sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'', for which he was a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984. Murphy has als ...

left the show mid season. Because of Murphy's departure

also left the show because he did not want to do it without Murphy.

Dick Ebersol Duncan "Dick" Ebersol (; born July 28, 1947) is an American television executive and a senior adviser for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. He had previously been the chairman of NBC Sports, producing large-scale television events such as the O ...

fired Robin Duke, Brad Hall and Tim Kazurinsky. Ebersol then wanted to blow up the show by adding seasoned comedians instead of newcomers. He hired Billy Crystal (who hosted twice in season9 and was originally set to appear in SNL's first episode), Christopher Guest (a frequent contributor to '' The National Lampoon Radio Hour'' in the early 1970s),

Rich Hall Richard Travis Hall (born June 10, 1954) is an American comedian, writer, documentary maker and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comedian in the 1980s. He wrote and performed for a range of American networks, in series such as ...

(best known for his work on "

Not Necessarily the News ''Not Necessarily the News'' (shortened as ''NNTN'') is an American satirical sketch comedy series that first aired on HBO in September 1982 as a comedy special, and then ran as a series from 1983 to 1990. For most of the run, the series featured ...

" and the early 1980s ABC sketch show "

Fridays Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries that adopt the traditional "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth day of the week. In countries adopting the ISO-defined "Monday-first" convention, it is the fifth ...

"), Harry Shearer (who was a cast member on ''SNL'' in

season 5 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

Martin Short Martin Hayter Short (born March 26, 1950) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and writer. He has received various awards including two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. In 2019 Short became an Officer of the Order of Canada. He ...

(from " SCTV") and New Zealander Pamela Stephenson (from "Not The Nine O'Clock News"). Christopher Guest became the anchor of ''Saturday Night News''. All of the cast members left the show at the end of the season. According to IMDb, future cast member Jan Hooks, ''SCTV'' cast member Andrea Martin, and actress Kathy Najimy auditioned for a spot in the season as Duke's replacement, but all three lost to Stephenson. Hooks then auditioned the Saturday Night Live (season 11), following season (only to lose to Joan Cusack) and later joined the show in Saturday Night Live (season 12), season 12 when Lorne Michaels was forced to revamp his show after NBC threatened to cancel it. In the middle of the season, Harry Shearer left the show due to "creative differences". Shearer told the AP, "I was creative, and they were different." Despite his departure, his image is still shown in the opening credits (spray-painting an elevated train as it goes down the track).

Cast roster

Repertory players *Jim Belushi * Billy Crystal *Mary Gross * Christopher Guest *

*Gary Kroeger *Julia Louis-Dreyfus * Harry Shearer (final episode: January 12, 1985) *

* Pamela Stephenson

Writers

Billy Crystal, Larry David, Christopher Guest,

, Rob Riley, and Martin Short joined the writing staff. Jim Downey (comedian), Jim Downey, Herb Sargent, and Harry Shearer rejoined the staff after a four-year hiatus. Robin Duke, Adam Green (journalist), Adam Green, Tim Kazurinsky, Michael McCartney,

, Pamela Norris, and Joe Piscopo left the staff. This season's writers were Jim Belushi, Andy Breckman, Billy Crystal, Larry David, Jim Downey, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Nate Herman, Kevin Kelton, Andy Kurtzman, Margaret Oberman, Rob Riley, Herb Sargent, Martin Short, Harry Shearer, Andrew Smith, Bob Tischler and Eliot Wald. The head writer was Bob Tischler.

Episodes

Specials

References

{{Larry David Saturday Night Live seasons, 10 1984 American television seasons 1985 American television seasons Saturday Night Live in the 1980s