Bill Murray's First Sitcom Role Was On A Short-Lived, Groundbreaking '80s Show

In the early '80s, Bill Murray leapt from "Saturday Night Live" to the big screen, starring in comedy classics like "Caddyshack" and "Stripes." But in 1983, he made a quick pitstop on a hip, coming-of-age sitcom in the same vein as "Freaks and Geeks" and "My So-Called Life."

Created by former "SNL" writer Anne Beatts, "Square Pegs" was one of the first teen-centric sitcoms to truly capture the painfully awkward reality of adolescence. This one-season wonder starred a young Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker as two geeky high school freshmen desperate to click with the cool kids at Weemawee High. While teenage girls tuned in faithfully, however, CBS executives focused on the show's lack of appeal to older male viewers. To help lure in a male demographic, they set their sights on Murray — someone Beatts had a history with.

In 1983, the "SNL" legend was brought in to play an eccentric substitute teacher named Mr. McNulty, marking his very first guest-starring role in a traditional sitcom. "Back then, they wanted to have everybody watching TV all at the same time, together, like around the fireplace," Beatts recalled while speaking to Yahoo! Entertainment for the show's 35th anniversary. "The networks were still clinging to this concept, which was totally changing ... But back then, it was like, 'We don't have adults 18 to 36. Male adults.' That was why we had Bill Murray guest on the show ... So I go, 'OK, who's the top male star in the country right now? Bill Murray? OK, let's get him.'"

Murray's episode, "No Substitutions," is now considered a highlight of the show's run. "I think most everybody's favorite scene from the show was when Bill Murray is dancing with Sarah Jessica Parker to Billy Idol's 'Dancing With Myself,'" music supervisor Stephen Elvis Smith told Yahoo! Entertainment. But getting him on camera was a wild ride in itself. "The night before he was supposed to be on the set, Anne got a call from the funnyman, and he said, 'Look, I'm in Mexico. I've been arrested. I'm in jail. I'm not going to be on set tomorrow.' It caused this great panic ... But he was just pulling her leg. It wasn't true at all."

Ultimately, bringing in Murray did little to alter the trajectory of the show. Beatts noted: "It didn't matter, because guess where [CBS] promoted that episode? On Saturday morning, with the cartoons." Even though it garnered mostly positive reviews — "Square Pegs" has an 81% fresh critics score on Rotten Tomatoes — the show struggled to find a broader audience and ended its single-season, 20-episode run in March 1983. As for Murray, his role on "Square Pegs" remains one of the rare guest appearances on a scripted primetime TV sitcom on his resume. While he'd go on to take other guest-starring TV roles — such as his three-episode stint on Amazon's political satire "Alpha House" — it was his 2015 spot on NBC's "Parks and Recreation" that finally marked his return to the world of primetime sitcoms.