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Saturday Night Live season 22

season of television series

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ7426685 ↗
Source-derived summary

The twenty-second season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 28, 1996, and May 17, 1997.

This season is notable for the host selection. Seven of the 20 hosts were former cast members. They included Dana Carvey, Robert Downey Jr. (the second of three season 11 cast members to come back and host the show joining Damon Wayans [who hosted during the show's 20th season] and, later in season 23, Jon Lovitz), Phil Hartman, Chris Rock, Martin Short (who hosted before with Steve Martin and Chevy Chase on the show's 12th season, and the only cast member out of the seven to not have worked under Lorne Michaels, as Short was a Dick Ebersol cast member), Chase and Mike Myers. This would mark Chase's final time hosting before getting banned (returning much later for numerous guest appearances).

Cast

Many changes happened before the start of the season. Nancy Walls was let go after one season, and longtime cast member David Spade, who had been with the cast for six seasons since 1990, left the show on his own terms. David Koechner was initially going to return but at the request of NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer was let go after one season, despite pleas from creator Lorne Michaels to keep him.

Comedian and singer Ana Gasteyer of The Groundlings and stand-up comedian Tracy Morgan were hired to replace Koechner and Walls, being promoted to repertory status when hired.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Saturday Night Live season 22” is season of television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Saturday, Night and Live, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1997, 1990—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Saturday, Night and Live is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “season of television series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7426685. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1997 and 1990.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Saturday Night Live season 22”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Saturday Night Live season 22 primary sources, Saturday Night Live season 22 archive and Saturday research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Saturday Night Live season 22”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Saturday Night Live season 22” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.