Tina Fey, one of two head writers for “S.N.L.”…said that the show’s sensibility was simply too immediate and its production schedule too chaotic for a formula to dictate its contents. Writers may draw their material from celebrity tabloids scattered around their offices. (“They’re like pornography,” she joked. “That’s how disgusting you feel.”) But more than anything, they are inspired by a fundamental, Darwinian desire to get their material onto the air. “Everyone’s trying to figure out their road to job security,” Ms. Fey said. “It’s almost like one of those experiments with pigeons pecking at things to get food, and if you peck at something and get food, you’re going to keep pecking at it.”

That’s definitely the sense I got from watching A&E’s biography of the show a year or two back, and it’s a large part of why I cut the show some slack when it fails to be funny or relies too heavily on recurring characters. There’s very little turn-around time for the writers, and they are, as Fey says, desperate to get material on the air. When you have less than a week in which to work, you don’t often have the luxury of creating smart comedy or sharp satire. I only worked on a rinky-dink college sketch comedy show, with two weeks turn-around time, and even I can tell you that. Recurring characters, sophomoric humor, and pulled punches are just par for the course.