Saturday Night Live aired its tenth season during the 1984-1985 television season on NBC. Due to the departure of Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo (among other castmembers), Dick Ebersol tried to keep the show alive by hiring seasoned comedians in the cast, such as Billy Crystal (who hosted twice in season nine and was originally set to appear in SNL's first episode), Harry Shearer (who was a castmember on SNL in its fifth season), New Zealander Pamela Stephenson (from "Not The Nine O'Clock News"), Rich Hall (writer and sometimes performer on the short-lived ABC sketch show Fridays), Martin Short (from the final season of SCTV), and Christopher Guest (a frequent contributor to The National Lampoon Radio Hour in the early 1970s). In the middle of the season, Harry Shearer left the show, due to "creative differences" (which Shearer describes as "I was creative; they were different"). Despite his departure, his image is still shown in the opening credits (spray-painting an elevated train as it goes down the track).

Ultimately, Dick Ebersol and every one of his castmembers would leave after the season finale. Because of a writers' strike in the middle of the season and budget cuts, a lot of proposed episodes (including one hosted by SCTV castmembers John Candy and Eugene Levy) were never produced, resulting in 17 episodes instead of 20.

Cast

Repertory cast members

• Jim Belushi
• Billy Crystal
• Mary Gross
• Christopher Guest
• Rich Hall
• Gary Kroeger
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus
• Harry Shearer (final appearance: January 12, 1985)
• Martin Short
• Pamela Stephenson

Featured cast members

There were no featured cast members during the tenth season.

Episodes