Saturday Night Live (season 12)


The twelfth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between October 11, 1986 and May 23, 1987.

History

The season opened with Madonna, host of the previous season opener, reading a "statement" from NBC about season 11's mediocre writing and bad cast choices. According to the "statement", the entire 1985–86 season was "...all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream."
The season included "Mastermind," a skit written by Jim Downey and Al Franken, in which Phil Hartman portrayed two sides of Ronald Reagan; 25 years later Todd Purdum called the skit "surely among the show's Top 10 of all time".
A new logo was introduced for this season: it consisted of a yellow square and a small black rectangle; the yellow square had "SATURDAY" and "LIVE" in it; between them was a black rectangle with the word "NIGHT" in it. It was used only until the following season.

Cast

Most of season 11's cast members were fired, except for A. Whitney Brown, Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller. Al Franken was rehired as a writer. The new cast members included Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson and Kevin Nealon. Phil Hartman helped write sketches in season 11's Thanksgiving episode hosted by Pee-wee Herman, and appeared in a sketch as a Pilgrim. Jan Hooks had auditioned for the show twice, firstly for season 10, but lost to Pamela Stephenson and the second time for season 11, but lost to Joan Cusack.

Cast roster

Repertory players
Featured players
bold denotes Weekend Update anchor

Writers

This season's writers were Andy Breckman, A. Whitney Brown, E. Jean Carroll, Tom Davis, Jim Downey, Al Franken, Jack Handey, Phil Hartman, George Meyer, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon, Herb Sargent, Marc Shaiman, Rosie Shuster, Robert Smigel, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, Jon Vitti and Christine Zander. Downey also served as head writer.

Episodes