SNL Season 50 has a nostalgia problem. Lorne Michaels is to blame for this.

In April, Kristen Wiig hosted Saturday Night Livean occasion that under normal circumstances would merit some excitement. But anyone familiar with the peculiar tradition SNL I would know better: This was Wiig's fifth time hosting, and if anyone is hosting SNL Five times the opening monologue becomes absolutely unbearable.

This is the fault of SNLis a long-standing club known as “The Five Timers Club.” The idea is that if you host the show five times, you'll get a velvet tuxedo jacket and access to a mythical exclusive company full of other honorees like Steve Martin, Tina Fey, and Justin Timberlake.

It's also an excuse for the show to indulge its worst impulses: Packed with high-profile guest appearances, Wiig's monologue saw Paul Rudd pathetically asking why he wasn't asked to be one of the celebrity cameos; Matt Damon, who only hosted twice, wore a Five Timers jacket because executive producer Lorne Michaels said he was so good he deserved it; and Jon Hamm and Martin Short begged Michaels offstage for a chance to host again. In total, eight of the country's most popular actors came together to fawn at the altar of SNL and especially its creator.

There are endless possibilities for this SNL to be unbearable: A sketch remains unwelcome, the young actor repeatedly falsifies his lines, the authors completely forego jokes and instead force us to listen to a bizarre piano ballad in order to say something serious about politics. But by far the worst version of SNL is when the show is more interested in its own mythology than in making people laugh.

This year, the institution's 50th anniversary, promises to be full of such moments. In the season premiere, host Jean Smart remembered her younger self watching the very first episode of SNLShe knew she would one day host the show while “SNL50” branding was everywhere, from interstitials to Weekend Update's top story.

This fall's host list is largely limited to regular hosts, including John Mulaney and Michael Keaton, who will be hosting for the sixth and fourth times, respectively. The nostalgia tour goes beyond the show: on October 11th Saturday evening, a film that dramatizes history SNLThe 1975 debut premieres in theaters. In the meantime, Questlove is producing a documentary about it SNL; Filmmaker Morgan Neville of Won't you be my neighbor? is somehow productive five from them.

And on Valentine's Day 2025, SNL will host a “Homecoming” event at Radio City Music Hall produced by Michaels and Mark Ronson, in addition to a live prime-time reunion special featuring current and former cast members to air the following Sunday.

The film Saturday evening, The Jason Reitman-directed film received nothing short of positive reviews, with many critics annoyed by the exorbitant flattery of both Michaels and himself SNL. Rolling Stone called it a “bubbly love letter”: “Saturday Night Live has long been impotent by its own self-mythology, and Saturday evening is pleased to contribute to this backbone as the show’s golden anniversary approaches,” writes David Fear. To put it more simply, according to the New Republic, the film is little more than “a cinematic circular idiot.”

To be fair, franchise nostalgia is a plague that affects more than just people SNL. Pop culture is in a deeply self-referential, self-obsessed mood: endless reboots that recycle previously successful intellectual property are a symptom of an entertainment industry struggling under the weight of crushing corporate consolidation. The results are films about the origin stories of well-known companies (Nike, Pop Tarts, BlackBerry, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, to name just a few), TV prologues (The Rings of power, House of the Dragon) and constant sampling in pop music.

Or take, for example, the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, which sold movie tickets in the 2010s by promising hardcore fans to see their favorite character in a post-credits scene. Or the decade's other blockbuster cultural product, Taylor Swift, who staged the highest-grossing tour of all time by continually repackaging nostalgia for her fans.

When SNL When someone commits the sin of self-referentiality, they feel worse, not because they are more guilty than others, but because SNL should be funny. There's nothing funny about watching rich and famous people congratulate themselves (that's what award shows are for!). Instead, it seems deeply lazy.

SNLThe best moments have always been the ones where you have no idea what brain they might have come from. With few exceptions, his topical and political material is never as memorable as his quirky characters and absurd sketches – recent highlights include last year's silly Beavis and Butthead sketch and Lisa from Temecula. In other words, SNL works when it allows the young comedy nerds running the show to do their thing without reminding us that we're watching a show that's been on the air for 50 years.

However, that's usually not the case when an aging leader doesn't understand that the best use of their power is to give it to someone else. Lorne Michaels is a show business icon who is also nearly 80 years old, and it's forgivable that she would want to stick around long enough to enjoy a victory lap (50 years at the helm of a network giant is nothing to gloat about, after all can make fun of).

Although Michaels told the press in 2020 that he planned to retire after season 50 – a position he reiterated in 2023 when he suggested that his successor “could easily be Tina Fey” – he recently shared told several media outlets that he now plans to stay indefinitely. “I'll do it as long as I feel like I can do it,” he told the Times, adding to the Hollywood Reporter: “As long as it's important and I can be useful, I'll stay.”

To say you're watching (or even care) SNL in 2024 is pretty embarrassing in itself, even though that's been the case for decades – people who tuned in as kids or teens tend to think that no cast can match the sketch comedy they knew has made. You could say it sucks at every point in its history, and you'd be at least somewhat right, but it's especially depressing to see talented writers and performers waste their energy idolizing and worshiping their own employers.

I like too much pop culture at the moment, SNL relies on the audience to point and say, “I get that reference!” rather than create work that is truly fresh, funny, or compelling. After all the meta-in jokes, all the celebrity appearances, all the snippets of the big boss showing up backstage, there's hardly any room left to laugh. If the boring season premiere is any indication, don't expect many of them this year.