Saturday Night Live season 20

Preceding the season 20 premiere, longtime cast members Phil Hartman, Melanie Hutsell, Rob Schneider, and Julia Sweeney all left the show, alongside featured player Sarah Silverman. In their places, the show hired Late Night with David Letterman writer Chris Elliott, as well as stand-up comedians Janeane Garofalo and Laura Kightlinger, to the cast. As the season progressed, Morwenna Banks, Mark McKinney and Molly Shannon were added to the cast. McKinney was hired from the then-recently ended sketch show The Kids in the Hall, which was produced by Michaels. (exactly six years after his first episode on January 21, 1989) largely due to his increasing fame as a film star. Garofalo quit the show following the February 25 episode, citing her unhappiness with the work environment and writing material. She would later call Saturday Night Live "... an unfair boys' club" and called many of the sketches "juvenile and homophobic." Longtime staff writer and cast member Al Franken's final appearance as a featured player was on May 6 following the box office failure of the SNL spin-off film Stuart Saves His Family. Following the May 13, 1995 season finale, nine other cast members either quit or were fired: Banks, Ellen Cleghorne, Elliott, Chris Farley, Kightlinger, Michael McKean, Mohr, Nealon and Adam Sandler. Nealon, Cleghorne, McKean, Elliott and Kightlinger left the show at season's end on their own terms; Farley, Sandler, Banks and Mohr were dismissed after the finale. In his book Gasping for Airtime, Mohr wrote that following the season, he demanded a promotion to repertory status, among other things; the network procrastinated throughout the summer of 1995 and he chose to quit. Mohr's account of his voluntary departure has been widely discounted, as he was under a cloud of suspicion due to his admitted plagiarism of jokes during the season and his multi-year contract with NBC did not allow him to unilaterally quit. This was also the final season for director Dave Wilson and bandleader G. E. Smith, who had been with the program since its first and eleventh seasons, respectively. Cast roster Repertory players • Morwenna Banks (first episode: April 8, 1995) • Ellen Cleghorne • Chris Elliott • Chris Farley • Janeane Garofalo (final episode: February 25, 1995) • Norm Macdonald • Michael McKean • Mark McKinney (first episode: January 14, 1995) • Tim Meadows • Mike Myers (final episode: January 21, 1995) • Kevin Nealon • Adam Sandler • David Spade Featured players • Al Franken (final episode: May 6, 1995) • Laura Kightlinger • Jay Mohr • Molly Shannon (first episode: February 25, 1995) bold denotes Weekend Update anchor Laura Kightlinger and Jay Mohr were credited in the opening montage for all 20 episodes this season, while Molly Shannon was credited for all of the back seven episodes after she joined the cast. Al Franken was only credited for four episodes sporadically throughout the season. ==Writers==

Notable writers during the 20th season of Saturday Night Live included Jim Downey, Al Franken, and Tim Herlihy. Brian Kelley and Norm Hiscock were hired as writers. This would be Franken's final season as a writer (after having been one of the original writers from its inception in 1975 to 1980; and had been writing for the show again since 1985), as he permanently left the show after 15 accumulative years. It was also the final season for fellow longtime/original writers Herb Sargent (who had written for the show from 1975 to 1980; and had been writing for it again since 1984) and Marilyn Suzanne Miller (who initially wrote for the show from 1975 to 1978 and wrote for the 1981–82 season, and returned in 1993 midway through season 18). Sargent presumably retired after 16 accumulative years with the show, while Miller left after seven accumulative seasons. This was also the final season for David Mandel, Ian Maxtone-Graham (who both joined as writers in 1992, and departed after three years), and Lewis Morton (who joined the writing staff back in 1993), departing after two years. The only writers to return to the show the next season were Downey, Herlihy, Hiscock, Steve Koren, and Fred Wolf (who would be named as the show's head writer next season in place of Downey). ==Episodes==

{{#invoke:Episode table|main ==Critical reception==

Negative critical reception of the show began building in season 18, after the departure of veteran cast member Dana Carvey. The criticism intensified after Phil Hartman left. Without Hartman and Carvey, critics expressed that SNL lacked an anchor to hold its sketches together, leaving Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade to carry much of the show. Sandler later said he was misquoted. In the New York Daily News, Eric Mink opined that SNL appeared to be exclusively catering to younger, male audiences with its humor. Janeane Garofalo quit midseason, citing "juvenile and homophobic" sketches and a sexist environment. Critics also pointed to the large cast size as a problem, as African-American members like Tim Meadows and Ellen Cleghorne went underused. Another criticism was that the show had become much more interested in launching cast members into movie stardom than in the show's quality of writing and comedy. The critical drubbing culminated in a 1995 New York magazine cover story that detailed the dysfunction among cast and crew. ==Stuart Saves His Family film==

Stuart Saves His Family, a film based on the popular Stuart Smalley sketches, was released on April 12, 1995. Cast members Robin Duke, Al Franken and Julia Sweeney appear in the film. The film received modest reviews from critics but was a box office bomb. During the season, Franken performed a Stuart Smalley sketch that parodied the film's poor box office returns. Stuart was depressed and bitter throughout the entire segment, eating cookies and lambasting the audience for choosing other movies (such as Dumb and Dumber and anything Pauly Shore had out at the time) over his. ==References==