
SNL's Nostalgia Habit Is Working, Which Is the Problem
Saturday Night Live is pulling its best numbers in years, but the Season 51 lineup reads like a greatest-hits tour. That's not necessarily a compliment.
Culture Writer
Sara Lin writes about culture — which means music criticism, film essays, and whatever's burning down on social this week. She came up writing for a now-defunct Brooklyn music blog and has reviewed somewhere north of 800 albums. She has strong feelings about Phoebe Bridgers, mid-period Kendrick, and the use of needle drops in prestige TV. She's never reviewed a Marvel film and has no plans to start.

Saturday Night Live is pulling its best numbers in years, but the Season 51 lineup reads like a greatest-hits tour. That's not necessarily a compliment.
It remembers what you watched. It remembers what you skipped. It remembers what time of day you cried, which is not a sentence I expected to write.
The discourse is doing what discourse does. The show is doing something stranger and quieter and worth talking about — once everybody calms down.
Seven days of silence. I came back. So did the noise. The lessons weren't the ones I expected.