‘Saturday Night Live’: Seth Meyers on ‘rebuilding’ effort for new season

What is almost as hilarious as “Saturday Night Live” every year is watching the annual media meltdown whenever there are behind-the-scenes changes, and almost everyone is chomping at the bit to come out of the woodwork and proclaiming that the series is “dead,” all of course while twiddling their fingers and laughing almost like they want to see it fail. Then, there are new cast members introduced, and everything turns out fine in the end.

Take, for example, this past season. Did we lose Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg? Yes, and it hurt. As a whole, though, “SNL” did not suffer too greatly from their exits, and while the season as a whole may not have been as spectacular, it was still strong. Every show always has a few bad sketches, and every season has a few awful shows that everyone should take into the back alley and burn, but when the show hits, it’s more exciting than anything else on TV. That’s the challenge of going live, where you only have one shot to make the viewers at home happy.

Seth Meyers has seen such change unfold before at “SNL,” and while on a panel for his Hulu project “The Awesomes” at TCA today, he said that it was an “exciting time” to be on board the show and he was happy that he was staying for at least the fall half of it following the exits of Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and Jason Sudeikis. He also explained that such transition is hardly revolutionary for the show, and he hardly appears to be worried about the path ahead.

Ultimately, we really shouldn’t be too worried, either. The changes will be there, but the tone of the show will be the same. Plus, Lorne Michaels is great at seeking out comedy talent. Had anyone heard of Cecily Strong last year, or Hader before he made it onto the show? That’s the whole point.

If you want to read some of what we’d like to see happen on “Saturday Night Live” this year, we’ve written a number of features about it over at the link here.

Photo: NBC