After seven years on "SNL," Wiig said goodbye on Saturday night's season finale that will go down as one of the sweetest, most choked-up moments on the show since Steve Martin said goodbye to Gilda Radner on the day of her death almost exactly 23 years earlier.

Even without an official announcement, Wiig's twirly, teary departure is enough to make even the most casual fans of the show crank up the Adele and mainline a tub of Edy's Grand. It doesn't matter that fellow castmates Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis have reportedly moved on from the show as well. They leave behind established male cast members like Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader. Wiig, on the other hand, blows a gaping hole in the show's female lineup. The 24-year-old Abby Elliott, who moves up the rung to the show's senior lady cast member, is now its biggest female star. But she's yet to display that versatility or command the clout that Wiig has. Kate McKinnon may yet bust out into full-blown "SNL" stardom, but she's only been on the show for five minutes.

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How many times have we asked that question across nearly four decades?

"Impossible!" said some in 2006 when Tina Fey, Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Rachel Dratch headed for the door, only to be followed two years later by her friend and "Weekend Update" co-host Amy Poehler.

But in their wake grew one of the most versatile, multi-threat casts in "SNL" history, one that firmly established its own "SNL" era. Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis all became cast members in the 2005-2006 season, joining a group that already included Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Kenan Thompson.

At the time, "SNL" creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels pronounced them "the wave of the future" and Fey likened herself to a senior seeing "exciting freshmen" arrive. But as this latest season of the sketch institution comes to a close this Saturday night (with host Mick Jagger, and musical guests Arcade Fire and the Foo Fighters), there's a growing sense that another "SNL" class is nearing graduation.

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It took just moments for a scorching hot career to take an unexpected detour into the ditch of public scorn. Del Rey opened up her mouth and a collective "WTF?" went up across the land. Standing onstage with her glossy hair, dragon nails and slinky gown, she droned her way through "Video Games," swaying awkwardly, fiddling with her hair, and rubbing her hands on her thighs in a manner that seemed more "I'm just wiping off the palm sweat" than "Come over and feel me up, Big Boy." How bad was her performance? At one point she did a full 360 twirl. During a ballad.

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Unfortunately, not even Lady Gaga's presence could save the underwhelming reunion of J.T. and A.S. in "3-Way," a song that wasn't only musically boring (if Justin Timberlake and Gaga can't get some interesting harmonies going in your song, there's a problem), but about as tepid as a number about having sex with Lady Gaga  could be. 

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The great thing about Stefon is that the format is always the same, with different adjectives and nouns substituted each week (and often changed last-minte during the live taping, which is why Hader keeps cracking up). This formula hasn't been lost on savvy audience members, and now there are not one, but two Stefon Mad Libs that you can play in the comfort of your very own home. Just put on your tightest, most sparkly shirt, comb your hair to one side, and practice saying "Yesyesyyesyes!" really fast to whatever question you're asked. Okay? Go!

The first Mad Libs is from Liana Maeby over at Crushable, who provides you with the context surrounding your nouns and adjectives for more coherent results:

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This might change with "Turtleneck and Chain," especially after this weekend's mind-blowing performance with Michael Bolton for the "SNL" digital short "Jack Sparrow." I've been singing this song nonstop for the past 48 hours straight. It's some of the group's best work, and I'm pretty sure it's the best thing to happen to Michael Bolton's name since "Office Space." If you haven't seen the video, you need to fix that immediately:

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"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."

That was Tina Fey in 2004, talking to Virginia Heffernan in the New Yorker about how mean the writers of "Saturday Night Live" could be. At the time, how could readers have known what we know now -- thanks to the multiple glowing reviews of her new book "Bossypants" (excerpts of which appeared in the New Yorker) -- that the joke isn't about the mean-spirited humor of pushing the elderly, but the compunction of women to push each other down flights of stairs (or, even worse, to fall down on purpose) to prove that they can make it in the boys' club of comedy.

But let's back up to 2001: Tina was already head writer at "Saturday Night Live," the first woman Lorne Michaels had ever hired for that position. So, you know, score one for the ladies. This was also the year that Tina's crew won a Writer's Guild Award for their 25th Anniversary Special. Behind the scenes, Tina was killing it.

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"How does this trash even make it on Salon's site? This is juvenile and deplorable, and frankly irresponsible when there are real issues going on in the world right now like _____ (insert your cause of choice). What a waste of my ____ (time/energy/life-force). If this is what passes for newsworthy these days, then I might as well _____ (go read The Huffington Post/ read The New York Post/ move to Canada)."

Cool. For everyone else who is not enraged by the presence of The Lonely Island (the comedic hip-hop trio of "Saturday Night Live's" Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma and Taccone), their latest video "We're Back" is worth talking about, if only to debate its relative merits in regards to the group's other classics like "I'm on a Boat," "Jizz in my Pants," and "Dick in a Box."

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No, what was so noticeable about this week's "Saturday Night Live" was that every sketch Elton was in –from cold open to finish – revolved around the singer's homosexuality. (The one exception might have been the "Knights of the Realm," which was more about making fun of British people than the gays.) Take the Lawrence Welk opening number, for example:

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Ryan's name-calling applies to anyone who doesn't want their music to be coopted by Lea Michele or Matthew Morrison, according to Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters frontman issued some harsh words himself against Murphy last week, saying "It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f---ing Glee,then the guy who created Glee is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f---ing show… f--- that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.”

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Sexiest Women Alive Tournament: Esquire is putting its own spin on the betting pool by having readers vote for hot women from a range of categories including sports, fashion and music.

"Saturday Night Live's" Real March Madness: A great concept for this week's cold open. Who cares about Belmont vs. Wisconsin when you have Charlie Sheen vs. Moammar Gadhafi in a bracket for craziest person alive?

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As Gabe Delahaye on Videogum wrote, "Just the Zach Galifianakis promos for his episode of Saturday Night Live are better than most things that have been on the actual show this season."

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Then later on, Seth Meyers devoted a portion of his "Weekend Update" segment to rounding up the winners and losers of the Sheen debacle.

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In one such sketch, an official from the Pentagon approaches John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and Rand Paul with a solution to all those disagreements over the intent of the founding fathers: A time machine to whisk George Washington into the present. Russell Brand plays our bellicose first president. Things do not go as planned.

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Zuckerberg, the man whose brainchild Facebook has single-handedly sucked more productivity out of America than porn and Angry Birds combined, has made no secret of his discomfort with director David Fincher's chilling corporate drama "The Social Network" or the book that inspired it, Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires." But as the tag line for the movie says, you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies -- and we're not just talking Paul Ceglia here. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's ever been on Facebook who doesn't have a gripe about it, and, by extension, a gripe about its wunderkind CEO and president. Irked that they're trying to sell your privacy -- again?  Or that they're being absurdly puritanical about mothers and babies?  Or maybe you're just sick of all those Mob Wars requests. In light of all of Facebook's shady practices and generally high irritation level, who could begrudge the world a little malice toward its young bazillionaire honcho?

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Last night's Saturday Night Live opening was very confusing.

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