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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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As I was watching this episode, "Curriculum Unavailable,” I remember calmly thinking something like, “Huh. That would really explain Leonard.” The possibility that “Community” might be about to “St. Elsewhere” its audience ("St. Elsewhere" ended on the reveal that everything that had happened in the series had all taken place inside the mind of an autistic boy) was not particularly alarming to me. Group psychosis explained a lot about the show's extremely dark psychology, and, anyway, on “Community,” stranger things had happened.

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In “Christmas Waltz,” the latest episode of “Mad Men,” we find out that cars are part of the dream for ad agencies, too – a sign that they’ve arrived, just as owning a car was once a sign of achieving adulthood, something that the staff at SCDP also hasn’t done yet. Instead, like teenagers, they’re stealing money from their corporate parents’ wallets, driving other people’s cars too fast, napping when they should be working, drinking too much, throwing tantrums (and other things) and having sex with near-strangers. And just as it did in America as a whole, this behavior is taking its toll on their personal unions – or will do so before long.

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This year, about 20 new shows will premiere in the fall, with another dozen waiting in the mid-season wings. There are dramas about haunted luxury apartments, islands armed with nuclear arsenals and the making of Vegas. There are procedurals starring Sherlock Holmes, Jersey girls turned lawyers and a Mob Doctor. One show has Mrs. Coach playing a country singer, one has Kelly Kapoor falling into a swimming pool while riding a bicycle, and another has Kevin Bacon chasing serial killers. There are two sitcoms starring gay people, one about a family who lives next door to aliens, and others featuring Matthew Perry, Lily Tomlin, Dane Cook and a screeching monkey. If each network had at least one show last year about a sexually active, provocative, sassy woman — the lady sitcoms — there is no such equivalent trend this year. There is just a lot of TV, some of which will be good, and most of which will be bad. Here are my thoughts on what look to be the best and worst shows of the upcoming season, network by network.

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But just mentioning Netflix and Hulu, two companies that have thus far rolled out exactly one original scripted program each to not much fanfare, is a compliment of the “It's better to be talked about than not talked about at all” variety. Hulu and especially Netflix, which will begin airing new episodes of Fox’s former show “Arrested Development” sometime later this year, are on the playing field. Since one of the major distinctions between Hulu and Netflix and broadcast TV is that there’s no proper time to watch their shows, now seemed as good as any to catch up on the two existing series and see if Fox and its brethren have anything to worry about.

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A strange statement coming from a man with a dual identity and often hidden motives, but then “Dark Shadows,” the latest “Mad Men” episode, is rife with competitive doubles, if not actual evil twins. (Just like in a soap opera, wink wink.) Don and Ginsberg have dueling SnoBall campaigns, Peggy reminds Roger she’s supposed to be his secret sharer rather than that schlemiel Ginsberg, Megan struggles to be friends with both Sally and Don, Henry’s torn between two candidates he’s worked for, and everyone seems to have at least two wives – even if Pete’s second one belongs to another man. Unlike the SnoBall fight with Ginsberg that he rigs, Don wins the wife competition fair and square by having three, even if one was in name only. As Betty tells Sally when she works on her family tree, “They only care about the names anyway.”

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Things are very different today. Kid-targeted movies filled with teenage actors like "The Hunger Games" and the "Harry Potter" franchise have found a huge adult audience, while actors like 15-year-old Chloë Moretz (who stars in the new movie "Hick," opening this week) and the Fanning sisters are given prominent roles in serious dramas. On TV, children have become a regular part of many casts, from sitcoms ("The Middle," "Modern Family") to dramas ("Shameless," 'The Walking Dead"). Child actors, once a sign of cheesiness and unprofessional conduct, have become integral to the success of a large number of critically respected and commercially successful entertainment properties. And not only that, many of these child actors have gotten really, really good.

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“Dayenu,” the official anthem of Passover, is a song of gratitude, one thanking God for all that he did to free the Jews from slavery. The lyrics make a list: Each line enumerates something awesome and imperative that God did, before ending with “Dayenu,” which means “It would have been enough.” However, “paradoxically” (as my Haggadah puts it), the Jews really needed God to do many more awesome and imperative things, one example of which is then mentioned in the next line of the song. If God had gotten the Jews out of Egypt, “it would have been enough,” except, actually, he then had to part the Red Sea, which “would have been enough,” except, actually, he then had to provide food, “which would have been enough,” except, actually, and so and so forth until the Jews are safely tucked away in Israel with the 10 Commandments and a temple.

The Dayenu I’ve been humming this week has the same tune, but slightly different lyrics. They go like this: If NBC had aired just one season of “Community,” Dayenu. If NBC had aired the missing pen bottle episode, Dayenu. And the Christmas claymation episode, the my dinner with Abed episode, the Dungeons & Dragons episode, and the paintball sequel, Dayenu. If Inspector Spacetime, day-day-enu, day-day-enu, day-day-enu, dayenu dayenu.

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The 10 aforementioned murder series can be divided into two general categories, crime-solving shows and the corpse-studying shows. Both activities take place in both, but with a different emphasis. Programs in the first category, like "The Mentalist," "Castle," "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds," have forensic scientists in the cast who can and do deliver helpful deductions about any cadaver, but the main characters mostly interview living people. On programs in the second category, like "Bones," "Body of Proof" and the "CSIs," the main characters mostly examine dead ones. The bodies in the crime-solving shows tend to be significantly less gruesome and graphic than the ones in the corpse-studying shows: The corpses may be a major plot point in both, but they're only a major prop in the latter, where they have to look the part.

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Of course, rebels and freethinkers had always done this, but they were rare and often paid a price for their actions, even losing their lives. Now ordinary people began adopting the mantra, “If it feels good, do it.” Personal satisfaction, rather than duty, increasingly became the driver behind people’s choices. And they didn’t pay a price, unless you count the anger and jealousy evoked in those who weren’t courageous enough to do the same. Nearly 200 years after America was founded on a right to the “pursuit of happiness,” Americans began to claim that right. And they’ve never looked back.

“There are no second acts in American life,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously declared, without living long enough to see the constant self-reinvention of our age. In “Lady Lazarus,” the latest episode of “Mad Men,” Megan chooses to re-make her life, simply because her career isn’t making her happy. Even with her recent success, and the discovery that she’s able to “do everything,” (as Don declared in a tone of awe), she finds advertising so boring that leaving it is akin to raising herself from the dead.

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Early episodes of the series were almost all about the battle of the genders, but in a more complicated way than the pilot initially suggested. Mike has a wife and three daughters whom, because of his wife’s promotion, he is spending more time with and to whom he is gruffly devoted. Episode in and out, they exert a civilizing influence on Mike. Writing in Slate about “Last Man Standing’s” transformation into a more nuanced show, June Thomas called out an early episode in which Mike secretly voted to turn his work softball team coed; even though he is a lover of masculine bonding, he couldn’t bear to think of his own daughters being forbidden from doing anything.

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Betty is a very interesting character, but having seen Jones on “Saturday Night Live" and in “X-Men: First Class,” in which she could barely play an actual Ice Queen, I have no lingering doubts about her skill set. Meanwhile, the consistently rated “Castle” has gained quite a following, despite the fact that Katic makes the main character on “Bones,” who is supposed to fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, seem emotionally intuitive and empathic. My point here is not to rag on Jones and Katic, so much as marvel at how little their failings have mattered to the shows they work on. Television is very kind to bad actors.

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In this fish tale, the genders are moving up and down like parallel elevators in the Time-Life building, the workplace that consumes so much of their lives they barely can escape it for a meal that doesn’t involve business – and in this episode, not even for that. But this show is about time and life – the time in these characters’ lives, and the times they’re living in. Unfortunately for them, few seem to be having the time of their lives.

After her failure to impersonate Don, Peggy’s off the Heinz account, but seems in good spirits when Stan and Ginsberg treat her like one of the boys. She rolls with the sexual banter about how she’s got a way with the equipment on the Playtex account, as well as Ginsberg’s criticism that she’s a “traditionalist in the bosom arena” (something that will be challenged in this episode), defending her opinion about selling youthful, sexy bras to older women.

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