'SNL' Season 48 review: Lackluster hosts are the problem - USA TODAY

This year, the hosts may be just as unrecognizable to some viewers as the new Gen Z bit cast members trying to make it. .

But in a "rebuilding year," as the sketch comedy series called itself in the season premiere, with so many veterans gone and so much of the cast unfamiliar and from a new generation with its own sense of humor, the host becomes that much more important.

Other "special guests" this season make up a strange and motley crew that includes Jon Hamm, Shaun White, Jeff Probst and Bobby Moynihan (back for a Halloween David S. Pumpkins sketch with Hanks and a "Weekend Update" appearance that made it seem like the new cast wasn't good enough). 

Every new season of "SNL" is inevitably compared with the dozens that came before it, every new cast is forced to try to measure up to the likes of Kristen Wiig or Bill Murray, and every year fans hem and haw about how the venerated sketch comedy institution "isn't as good as it used to be." 

After some growing pains and a few bad sketches, most seasons do measure up, and some even go on to be all-time greats, whether because of political sketches during an election year or great chemistry among the cast. But no matter how great the cast is, the ecosystem of "SNL" just doesn't click if there isn't a good host at the helm