Why does SNL suck so much?

The difficulty of writing good sketch comedy is underrated. I happen to do it (not for SNL). If you go back and look at the previous years of SNL, you'll see that they had plenty of sub-par sketches in there...it's just that people only remember the great sketches. The task of producing a 90 minute comedy show, performed live (in under one full week, no less) is an order so tall that even the best comedy writers are challenged by it. Andy Samberg has had plenty of great Digital Shorts and weekend update is consistently solid, but they haven't really settled in since losing Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. They have missed the mark on some recent recurring sketches like the Vincent Price parody -- Bill Hader does a great impersonation, but they're definitely missing their demo on that type of thing.