As Andrews properly explains:
When a show has been dominated by men with a strong focus on political satire, what is it to do when its strongest contributors, behind and in front of the camera, are women? In other words, if "Saturday Night Live" is to leverage the best collection of female talent it has ever had, what will the source material be? Beyond Maya Rudolph's brilliant send-up of Condoleezza Rice, who else might they satirize? Barbara Boxer? Dianne Feinstein? (Of course there's Hillary Clinton, but best to wait until 2008 for that.) Should they ignore the female cast altogether and do traditional male-centric political satire in spite of the missing gender-appropriate talent?
While Mr. Itzkoff's article is ostensibly about a shift from political satire to cultural satire, it is really about a shift in focus from men in politics to women in popular culture - a place where power comes in different shades.
He's absolutely right about the amassing of female talent, only slightly off its peak when they had the current crew and Ana Gasteyer, and he's right that the show lacks the male talent to do politics well. (Mostly, they miss Will Ferrell.)
What he misses, however, is that the show is cyclical, and over the past few years we've already seen the best of what Fey/Rudolph/Dratch/Poehler can do with celebrity culture and modern life. All that's left is rehashing old characters (Donatella Versace, Debbie Downer) and Fey's wonderfully acerbic attitude, only without the great content Weekend Update once had.
Every couple years, SNL needs to evict everyone and start fresh. With Darrell Hammond now in his eighth season, I'd say that time is now.
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