| Season Number: | 19 |
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| Image Alt: | The title card for the nineteenth season of Saturday Night Live. |
| Num Episodes: | 20 |
| Network: | NBC |
| Prev Season: | season 18 |
| Next Season: | season 20 |
| Episode List: | List of Saturday Night Live episodes |
The nineteenth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 25, 1993, and May 14, 1994.
Many changes happened before the start of the season.
Dana Carvey had left the show in the middle of the previous season. Chris Rock[1] and Robert Smigel[2] also left the show at the end of the previous season. Ellen Cleghorne, Melanie Hutsell, Tim Meadows, Adam Sandler, and David Spade were all promoted to repertory status.[3] Stand-up comics Norm Macdonald,[4] Jay Mohr[5] and Sarah Silverman[6] were hired as writers and would debut as featured players, a few episodes into the season. Veteran comic actor Michael McKean joined the show midseason as a repertory cast member.[7] At age 46, McKean was the oldest person to join the cast of the show, a distinction he held until Leslie Jones became a cast member (at age 47) in 2014.
This would be the final season for longtime cast members Phil Hartman,[8] [9] Rob Schneider, Julia Sweeney and Melanie Hutsell. This was also the only season for Sarah Silverman.
A major blow for the show was the departure of Hartman. Before his final show the entire cast and crew presented him with a bronzed stick of glue, symbolizing how he had become "The Glue" of the show, a term coined by Adam Sandler.[10]
This was the final season to show StereoSurround captioning during the opening montage.[11]
This is also the first season to feature the show returning to the original "repertory" and "featured" cast lists since season 15.
Repertory players
Featured players
bold denotes Weekend Update anchor
Several veteran writers, among them Robert Smigel, Jack Handey, and Bonnie and Terry Turner, left the staff prior to the season.[12] Head writer Jim Downey later attributed part of the season's drop in quality and the negative reception of season 20 to the turnovers among the writing staff and cast.
See main article: List of Saturday Night Live episodes.
| Special | Original airdate |
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Wayne's World 2, the sequel to the 1992 hit Wayne's World, was released on December 10, 1993. Based on the popular "Wayne's World" sketches, the film stars cast members Dana Carvey, Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Mike Myers and Harry Shearer. SNL writers Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel have brief cameos as concert nerds. The film did not do as well at the box office as its predecessor, grossing less than half of what the original did. It received generally positive reviews from critics, with Roger Ebert calling the characters of Wayne and Garth "impossible to dislike".[13]
It's Pat, a film based on the popular Pat sketches, was released on August 26, 1994. Cast members Tim Meadows, Charles Rocket and Julia Sweeney appear in the film. The film was a box office bomb, barely making $50,000. The film was also panned by critics and has a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 11 reviews.