Good Og, OP, I weep for your intro to SNL.
Another original SNLer here, a gobsmacked twenty-somethinger hooked from day one.
My teen years were 90-99, that would give me
Chris Farley
Tim Meadows
Phil Hartman
Julia Sweeney
David Spade
Al Franken
Victoria Jackson
Dana Carvey
Dennis Miller
Mike Meyers
Chris Rock
Adam Sandler
Kevin Nealon
and technically Sarah Silverman though I really can’t remember her being on the show.
I started watching regularly with (I guess) the 1984-5 season, with Jim Belushi, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, Rich Hall, Martin Short etc., though I recall individual episodes from earlier seasons. Then I lost interest for a while and came back during the Hartman/Myers/Carvey/Nealon era in 1989.
SNL: Not Ready for Prime Time Players
The original Not Ready for Prime Time Players: Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Lorraine Newman, Michael O’Donoghue, plus the Muppets.
This was mine as well.
- Both were fine on the show (though, had I been older, I’d have misliked Sandler, I suspect), and have had some good work since leaving it (Wayne’s World for Carvey, The Wedding Singer for Sandler), but for the most part, post SNL, they’ve both kind of…fallen.
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Sandler has not fallen.
He’s acted in 45 different titles including SNL.
He has his own production company.
He’s produced 37 different titels.
He’s written 16 different titles.
Now his stuff may not be to your liking but he has had a busy career since after SNL.
I
Dang, I did get the short end of the stick. But I was right there watching the original airings of White Like Me, Mr Robinson’s Neighborhood and C-I-L-L My Landlord.
Another thing: There were only 7 NRFPTP’s. I watched last week and I swear the credits went on for 5 minutes. Brevity is the soul of wit, people. Pare it down.
Mine was the same as the OP’s.
For me also, although I wasn’t a dedicated viewer. It was hard for me to stay up that late. I’m too much of a morning person.
This. I was already 35.
Something else I forgot to add on to this was that right around 98-00 when the cast started flipping over to Will Farrell et al (and it didn’t take long to get sick of him) is when I found myself watching more MADtv then SNL and it didn’t take long before I found myself watching the entire episode of MADtv and just catching the last half hour of SNL.
It’s kind of funny though, if you talk to someone about 10 years older then you, they’ll tell you their SNL was the best one and yours was awful, while you’ll say the same thing to someone 10 years younger then you.
I loved my SNL and glided very nicely into MADtv, while my sisters (22 and 25) love the current SNL lineup, hated mine and think MADtv was an awful show that didn’t deserve any airtime (let alone 10+ seasons).
You missed Gilda Radner.
Also, I’m not sure that Michael O’Donoghue, while certainly around for those early shows, was considered a member of the NRFPT Players. (I could be wrong though. Please fight my ignorance if I am.)
25, not 35. :smack:
Not that anyone cares. But still.
.
You’re right. IIRC, M.D. was sometimes listed after the NRFPT lineup as a “with.”
I was 12 when SNL debuted, so that’s close enough to my “teen” years to claim the original cast as my own. It’s probably pointless to debate the relative quality of different casts, but those early years were exciting because we were watching them create something new, and they pretty much made up the rules as they went. Monday morning in the schoolyard was all about quoting that weekend’s favorite lines and buzzing about what they got away with. It was a BIG DEAL.
And no matter how many people have exclaimed “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” over the years, I’ll forever hear it in Chevy Chase’s voice, right after his weekly pratfall.
Shortly after George Carlin passed away, NBC re-ran the first episode (which he had hosted). During the opening, instead of naming each individual cast member, Don Pardo simply said “…and the Not Ready For Prime Time Players” while a list of nine names appeared on the screen:
Dan Aykroyd
John Belushi
Chevy Chase
George Coe
Jane Curtin
Garrett Morris
Laraine Newman
Michael O’Donoghue
Gilda Radner
So, one might argue that O’Donoghue certainly was an “original” NRFPTP, even if they tweaked the billing later.
George Coe, incidentally, currently provides the voice of Woodhouse on FX’s Archer.
I was a teen in the 90s, so Myers/Carvey/Hartman/et al.
I kept watching into the Will Ferrell era, but not nearly as much. Really, I think it was when Hartman left the show that it Changed.
My teen years, and peak SNL viewing years, spanned both the Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky, Eddie Murphy era and the slightly later Nora Dunn, John Lovitz, Dennis Miller era.
And I’ll never forget Howard Shore and His All-Nurse Orchestra!
Especially funny while watching him guest-conduct the world famous Cleveland Orchestra.
Same here. My teen years were in the 1950’s.