In the early years, I think Saturday Night Live was brilliant, and many of its segments I think transcended the "flavor of the month" you describe that dates the material in a later era. In the era of Steve Martin, Dan Ackroid, Bill Murray, Lorraine Newman, Jane Curtian, Garrett Morris, John Belushi and that team (circa 1975-1981) they were doing wildly innovative stuff. Then it flondered a few years, then it became great again in the era of Eddie Murphy. Then it floundered again a few more years, then regained greatness with regulars like John Lovitz and Phil Hartman. Then it floundered a few more years, then it regained greatness with Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon and others in that era.
And since then, I think it's been on a 20-year losing streak. Aside from largely being unfunny in recent years, it has also lent itself to one-sided leftist agenda-pushing, with most of its emphasis on partisan Democrat/Left messaging rather than even attempting to be funny. I think the loss of the conservative half their audience pushes SNL at times to attempt equal-opportunity parody of the Left, but those moments are still few and far between. One of the funniest was a "Schoolhouse Rock" parody that instructed Barack Obama how a law is supposed to be passed (making fun of the fact that Obama largely bypassed the legal process, passing virtually everything unilaterally by executive order).
