Saturday Night Live/Season Thirty-Two

Season Thirty-Two
Saturday Night Live
Season Premiere	September 30, 2006
Season Finale	May 19, 2007
Episode Count	20 + 2 Specials
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Season Thirty-Two of Saturday Night Live premiered on September 30, 2006. It gained attention in the mainstream press due to an announcement that the cast and crew would be vastly different from that of the previous season in the greatest mass exodus since Season Twenty-Six.

After nearly a decade as head writer and later cast member, Tina Fey left to start her own sitcom, 30 Rock, and she took with her best friend Rachel Dratch. Fey's departure meant Seth Meyers was promoted to head writer and took her chair as co-anchor for Weekend Update. In addition, Lorne Michaels fired three members of the cast—Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Finesse Mitchell—due to budgetary reasons. However, all four former featured cast members—Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and Kristen Wiig—who had proven popular (Samberg in particular with his "digital shorts"), were promoted to official cast members, making this the first season since Season Twenty-Three to have no featured players.

In addition to Fey's departure as head writer, Beth McCarthy Miller also left her eleven-season position as director, to be replaced by Don Roy King—only the third person in history to serve in that role. This season also saw the return of former head writer Paula Pell, who left the show in season 30 in order to create a sitcom which was not picked up. She returned as the third head writer for the season alongside Meyers and Andrew Steele.

Stylistically, the series is more similar to the first six seasons of the series than it is what it had grown into throughout the mid-1990s and early 2000s. While there is no one reason for why the change has been so sweeping, the small cast size and the change in directors may have had a big part in it. Although there have been trademark recurring characters littered throughout the season, there has also been a greater focus on absurd or short recurring sketches like "MacGruder," which appeared several times throughout a single episode.

Cast

• Fred Armisen
• Will Forte
• Bill Hader
• Darrell Hammond
• Seth Meyers (Weekend Update anchor)
• Amy Poehler (Weekend Update anchor)
• Maya Rudolph
• Andy Samberg
• Jason Sudeikis
• Kenan Thompson
• Kristen Wiig

Episodes

#	#	Title			Airdate
606	1	Dane Cook/The Killers			September 30, 2006
607	2	Jaime Pressly/Corinne Bailey Rae			October 7, 2006
608	3	John C. Reilly/My Chemical Romance			October 21, 2006
609	4	Hugh Laurie/Beck			October 28, 2006
SP23	—	The Best of Darrell Hammond			November 4, 2006
610	5	Alec Baldwin/Christina Aguilera			November 11, 2006
611	6	Ludacris			November 18, 2006
612	7	Matthew Fox/Tenacious D			December 2, 2006
613	8	Annette Bening/Gwen Stefani & Akon			December 9, 2006
614	9	Justin Timberlake			December 16, 2006
615	10	Jake Gyllenhaal/The Shins			January 13, 2007
616	11	Jeremy Piven/AFI			January 20, 2007
617	12	Drew Barrymore/Lily Allen			February 3, 2007
618	13	Forest Whitaker/Keith Urban			February 10, 2007
619	14	Rainn Wilson/Arcade Fire			February 24, 2007
620	15	Julia Louis-Dreyfus/Snow Patrol			March 17, 2007
621	16	Peyton Manning/Carrie Underwood			March 24, 2007
622	17	Shia LaBeouf/Avril Lavigne			April 14, 2007
623	18	Scarlett Johansson/Björk			April 21, 2007
SP24	—	Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation			May 6, 2007
624	19	Molly Shannon/Linkin Park			May 12, 2007
625	20	Zach Braff/Maroon 5			May 19, 2007