Television and pop culture critics periodically take their shots at Saturday Night Live. While Jester greatly appreciates the show through, well, most of its casts over the years, the start of its latest season finds it unsuccessfully confronting a change of generations again.

Current key players may be about due to give away to new cast members, judging by the presence of three new featured players, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg. In the first two episodes of the season, Hader seems to be there solely as an impressionist -- perhaps to fill in gaps in the repertoire of 10-season veteran Darrell Hammond. Sudeikis, who joined late last season, hasn’t really done much beyond playing a lot of straight-man roles in sketches. Lastly, Samberg floats by on personality, like an even-more-lightweight version of Jimmy Fallon, which heretofore didn’t seem possible.

It’s a shame to see such a mixed bag when apparently the show has canned last year’s new featured player, Rob Riggle, who even in brief shots, exhibited the edge and creativity the show needs. By dropping him, SNL has veered away from a certain level of comedic originality that Riggle delivered with characters like his lunatic preacher, and toward what seems like an underwhelming core for the possible nucleus of its future cast.

Another disappointing sign in the first two episodes, hosted by Steve Carell and Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder respectively, is the writers’ seeming inability to give two gifted comic actors serving as hosts, very much that would prove entertaining or funny. Carell and Heder have shown their talent in other venues -- Carell in several roles -- so it doesn’t seem like a dud SNL episode would be their complete fault.

One symptomatic moment -- Carell stranded in a sketch about the recent Jet Blue flight landing with broken wheels that had nowhere to go once establishing its premise about passengers hearing the news through their in-flight televisions. A high point of Heder’s episode came when he was absent -- a sketch about the troubles of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist enlivened by Darrell Hammond’s Clinton impression thrown into the mix.

Perhaps two episodes is too soon to judge the whole season, but what Jester has seen doesn’t bode well, and after all, at this level, it should all be great work.