Country of origin United States Original network NBC | No. of episodes 19 | |
Original release October 8, 1983 (1983-10-08) – May 12, 1984 (1984-05-12) | ||
The ninth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 8, 1983, and May 12, 1984.
Contents
Cast changes
Before the start of the season the entire cast returned for another season. The only change was the hiring (and firing, then rehiring) of Jim Belushi (brother of late SNL cast member John Belushi). The notable moment of the season occurred when Eddie Murphy left the program 2 episodes short of the end of the season. After 48 Hours, Murphy's star began to eclipse that of Joe Piscopo's. From the start of season 7, Dick Ebersol made it clear that his strategy was to showcase Murphy and Piscopo as much as possible while all the other cast members would play mainly supporting roles and were treated with very little patience by the producers.
With his movie career going strong, Eddie Murphy almost didn't return to the show for the 9th season. He agreed to return, but only wanted to appear in half the season's episodes. Dick Ebersol was adamant that he needed Murphy to appear in each episode. Murphy came up with an interesting solution: They would videotape a stockpile of sketches featuring Murphy to be inserted into the shows Murphy did not appear live in. The fact that Murphy appeared in some shows via pretaped sketches was never disclosed to the TV watching audience.
When the season ended Piscopo left with no intention of returning. Robin Duke, Brad Hall and Tim Kazurinsky were all fired from the show.
Format changes
Ebersol had taken Hall off Weekend Update (known as Saturday Night News during this time) mid-season. The segment then had a revolving door of other anchors mostly involving the episode's host and, in one case, Joe Piscopo (although Piscopo only introduced a commentary and didn't tell any actual jokes).
Hosts
Future cast member Billy Crystal hosted twice this season: once with musical guest Al Jarreau and again on the season finale with Ed Koch, Edwin Newman, Betty Thomas, and former castmember Don Novello.
Cast
bold denotes Weekend Update anchor
Writers
This season's writers were Jim Belushi, Andy Breckman, Robin Duke, Adam Green, Mary Gross, Nate Herman, Tim Kazurinsky, Kevin Kelton, Andy Kurtzman, Michael McCarthy, Eddie Murphy, Pamela Norris, Margaret Oberman, Joe Piscopo, Andrew Smith, Bob Tischler, Eliot Wald and Herb Sargent. The head writers were Bob Tischler and Andrew Smith.