Throughout Saturday Night Live's decades on the air, one of the keys to the show's success has always been its ability to reinvent itself. If an SNL star like Colin Jost starts hosting a game show, the sketch comedy show has been able to continue without missing a beat by bringing in a new class of cast members. Without that regular upheaval, SNL wouldn't have been able to create so many superstars throughout its lengthy history.
Unfortunately for the team behind the show and fans alike, however, SNL hiring new stars hasn't always made the show better. Instead, there have been notable instances in which virtually everyone has agreed that cast members being replaced has made the show suffer severely. While it is too early to state that season 51's cast shakeup will lead to that scenario, enough time has passed to know that the show's recent changes have been very underwhelming so far.
Why Saturday Night Live's season 51 cast shakeup has flopped so far
During the first few episodes of Saturday Night Live's 51st season, the series has garnered some severely disappointing fan reviews. While the show's producers can't be happy to see that kind of negativity, the truth about the current problem with the show is far worse than that. Based on the current discourse around SNL, it is obvious that many people feel nothing about apathy about the sketch comedy show that once felt cutting edge.
To be clear, it would be wildly unfair to blame the show's newest cast members, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska, for that level of disinterest. Still, one thing has seemed very clear during the latest season, none of the new cast members have inspired a lot more interest in viewers. That is a real shame since there have been instances when new SNL cast members have immediately caught people's attention in the past. As disappointing as the lack of interest in the new cast members is, there is more to the problem than that.
For there to be room for those new cast members, several of SNL's previous performers had to depart. Before the latest season of the show began, fans learned that Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow, and Emil Wakim were all leaving. Additionally, it was learned that the Please Don't Destroy trio would no longer contribute prerecorded sketches to the show as a group. On top of the trio no longer starring in SNL segments together, one member, John Higgins left the show entirely.
During season 51, the absence of Nwodim, Gardner, and Please Don't Destroy as a trio has had a monumental impact on the quality of the show. While SNL departures are a constant, they need to be counteracted with new stars who can fill the void. Sadly, the newly added cast members don't seem like they can take up the slack. Worse yet, the fact that SNL only added one new female cast member following the departures of Nwodim and Gardner, who had both been huge cornerstones of the show, almost seems designed to fail.
Fortunately, there is a silver lining to the current cast dilemma that SNL is grappling with. There is a long, long history of viewers feeling disappointed by SNL's cast. In all of those cases, the show has been able to recover to various degrees. On top of that, it is worth noting that SNL has also added new cast members midway through a season in the past. For both of those reasons, the show could still mix things up and make the cast feel more exciting as the current season progresses. It is also possible that the new cast members will show viewers more than they have so far.