One of the memorable skits from tonight's NBC Saturday Night Live special includes Eddie Murphy as Gumby, chumming around with his sidekick Pokey (Joe Piscopo).

Saturday Night Live went from "wild and crazy" to "exscuuuse me" during the up and down '80s. There were high highs and low lows, with the pressure of measuring up to the original "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" crushing many who followed.

Still, some critics now consider the middle and late '80s to be the show's true Golden Age, with Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Nora Dunn, Jan Hooks, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Christopher Guest and Mike Myers all emerging during that decade.

Judge for yourself tonight as NBC presents Saturday Night Live In The '80s: Lost And Found. The two-hour special begins at 9 p.m.

As the late-night comedy franchise struggles into its third decade, the series could do worse than to look to the early '80s for inspiration. Among the players in those dark post-Belushi years was Toronto's Robin Duke, one of only three performers to be a cast member on both Saturday Night Live and SCTV (Martin Short and fellow Second City Toronto grad Tony Rosato are the others).

Duke was there from 1981 to 1984. Those were the Dick Ebersol years (creator Lorne Michaels took a five-year hiatus) and, if it weren't for breakout star Eddie Murphy -- who began as a 19-year-old unknown -- the show would have flamed out and been canceled.

Others who went through SNL's revolving door at the time include future stars such as Robert Downey, Jr., Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and not-so-famous names such as Danitra Vance, Charles Rocket, Ann Risley, Yvonne Hudson and Gary Kroeger. Conan O'Brien, Robert Smiegel and Al Franken all occupied SNL's '80s writers' room.

"It was an amazing experience -- you don't realize it at the time," says Duke from her home in Toronto, where she teaches a college course when not touring with four other veteran Canuckleheads in Women Fully Clothed (coming to the Wintergarden Nov. 24-26 and Dec. 1-3).

Duke began her career on SNL as a performer, but slowly worked her way into the writers' room. "I never thought of myself as a great performer, really as a writer," she says, despite her years as a Second City mainstay.

After a season on SNL, she used the sketches she wrote the previous year -- including several for Murphy -- to audition as a writer/performer. She became the first female cast member to win that distinction, spending the next two seasons on SNL.

Still, she says she never really felt a part of the late-night franchise. "It was always a struggle," she says.

Many SNL grads speak of the torturous process of pitching stories on a Tuesday and working them through to previews and performance by the weekend. Despite all the fame and attention, some see it as the worst years of their lives.

"It's a real pressure cooker," agrees Duke. "It brought out the worst in people."

Still, she has fond memories of Murphy, SNL's blazing star at the time. Duke describes him as "sweet, kind and generous. There's nobody funnier in a room than Eddie Murphy. He makes you laugh right from your gut." Murphy, she says, "knew how to play the camera and the camera loved him."

Duke remembers Joe Piscopo, also a dominant SNLer during her tenure, as "very skilled and very studied. A hard worker."

Her favourite guest hosts were Jeff and Beau Bridges. Other hosts she worked with include "a bunch of Bob's -- Blake, Conrad and Culp." She recently stumbled on a rerun of the Robert Blake episode. "Oh my God!" she thought. "Do I want to watch this?"

She sees parallels in today's cast and those tough early '80s years. "It's going through one of its periods of finding itself right now," she says of the show. "That's what we were going through then."

The show will always be looking for the next Eddie Murphy or Will Ferrell to build itself around, she believes.

As for all those reruns, bring them on, she says. "I got a residual cheque the other day," she says. The amount? "Six bucks. That was one of the good ones!"