MAGA! FAFO! Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder.

Season 1.
Donna/LadyGigi Savige needs to sit her ass down!

Season 39.

When Phil Hartman died.

The show stopped being funny after Wiig, Hader, Sudeikis, Armisen, and Meyers all left and were replaced by the unfunny Kyle Mooney, Sasheer Zamata and Colin Jost. Also, the writing started getting much worse around that time, so acutally funny castmembers like Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon, Bobby Moynihan and Jay Pharoah couldn't keep the show funny all the time.

Season
39
They never fully recovered after losing Hader, Sudeikis, Seth Meyers and Armisen.
However, SNL will rebound, it always does.

Consistently? After Season 34, where they carried by a strong election season.
That said, last season had several fine episodes, though it crashed and burned after the Larry David episode.

Just before Jost came to Weekend Update then it was sealed when the more suitable Cecily Strong was bumped for Che giving Weekend Update two poor performers.

It has never stopped being funny. I am 44, and having been watching it as long as I can remember. I have watched religiously since the 81-82 season. I watched it before that if I was up late with my parents too. It has had its ups and downs some sketches are a hit, some are a miss. It is one show I have never given up on. If I didn't think it was funny, I would not be watching. And if I was not watching, I sure as hell wouldn't be hanging out on the SNL board.

Yep, if the shows has twelve sketches a night on average maybe four hit, three miss and five are somewhere between. I enjoy it but I can't think of any program that is more improved by on demand viewing. Also, asking about when the show changed implies that there's a through line which in some ways is accurate but not the complete picture. For example there aren't any actors on the show currently as good as Ferrell but Che is the best weekend update host in the last decade by a pretty wide margin and Mooney and his crew are the best filmmakers to be on the show in awhile.

it has always been hit or miss even the first few years

Please include your age with your reply. Otherwise, I will just assume that your answer coincides with the year that you turned 19.

Thank you!!

Right on WEstEndNiceGuy. These discussions make me puke. I have been watching SNL since the beginning (I'm 68) and it has always been funny. If you don't get the humor then it is your fault. It is like the idiots who complain that the new music sucks and the only good music was made when they were 17 years old. Get over yourself.

Season 39 - It didn't take long to notice the quality of the show had departed. It wasn't just me that noticed, by the end of the season the ratings plummeted and haven't really recovered since.
Shall we play a game?

I'm a huge, lifelong SNL fan and have seen many, MANY highs and lows in its run. One thing you have to remember - the show courts youth, and it has since 1975. It was all about being subversive and "hip", and it's completely unsentimental as it ages. It's always about "who's hot now?" or "what's the next big thing?"
So every time I hear someone say "it hasn't been funny since I watched it with the original cast", I want to tell them "you're probably not their target audience anymore." If you were a college freshman who watched religiously when the show premiered, you're what - 60 now? Keep in mind that Leslie Jones is the only cast member who was alive when the show actually premiered, and all of the writers are younger than the show as well. It's not them - it's you.
Okay, sometimes it's them. For me, season 41 was very shaky but I thought 42 was heaps better. Che and Jost really started clicking on WU this season, and some of the pre-taped pieces were fantastic (Farewell Mr. Bunting, Bern Your Enthusiasm). There were some duds as well (I'm SHOCKED that they basically recreated that brilliant Matthew McConaughey alien abduction sketch a few episodes later - it was identical to the first one!) but that's to be expected.
Other bad seasons for me (and lots of folks) were 6, 11, 19, and 20. 30 was bad, especially considering the talent of the cast that year. Season 39 was rough for me too.
But seriously - if you made a two-hour "best of" for each season and conveniently forget the absolute beep they'd all kind of blend together (except 6 & 11).

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This thread has only been up for less than a day and we don't have a smart a$$ here to say it was NEVER funny? I'm a little disappointed.
The last couple of seasons seem to be filler waiting for the next great cast. Nobody really stands out head and shoulders. There also seems to be not many recurring sketches going on which tells me that they are having problems hitting homeruns.

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Season 29. Season 30 was boring, 31 was a slight step above, 32-35 were +/- despite Poehler/Wiig overkill and since then good and bad episodes.