A interview with the creator of the finale season documentary didn’t help things. PLUS: Kathleen Kennedy steps down from Lucasfilm, ‘Monarch’ introduces a new titan, and the Russo brothers want us to decode the ‘Doomsday’ teasers.
Hello! Welcome to the Jan. 17, 2026, edition of the Saturday Wrap. Here’s everything you might of missed from The Omnicosm.
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The 10 best ‘SNL’ sketches of Season 51. (So far.)
While we can debate just how much SNL really changed after Lorne Michaels’ promised a seismic shift after Season 50 (a conversation I actually did have while recently on the Not Ready for Primetime SNL Podcast), it would be hard to mistake the vibe of Season 51 for how last season felt.
Besides losing Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim, this season of SNL hasn’t been burdened with the weight of SNL50. Free of the task of somehow existing in the present while also honoring the previous 49 seasons of television (and giving Dana Carvey something to do week after week), Season 51 has been forced to and blessed with the chance to carve out its own identity. We saw a similar thing happen back in 2020 when SNL abruptly jettisoned Alec Baldwin and Jim Carrey after the presidential election.
The big difference between the post-2020 election period and Season 51 is the emergence of Ashley Padilla as SNL’s star. When diving through the season’s sketches to pick the top ten best ones (so far), it was wild to see how dominant Padilla has been. Even wilder is that she’s achieved this level of dominance without creating a recurring character or landing a breakout political portrayal. (Her take on White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is fantastic, but SNL often sidelines it for more of James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump.)
But let’s get to those sketches. Here are the — definitive, indisputable, set in stone — top ten sketches of Season 51. So far.
The ‘Stranger Things’ and ChatGPT mess gets messier
There were some elements of the Stranger Things series finale — bits of dialogue, settings, even an anachronistic Dungeons and Dragons element — that had people asking, Hey, did ChatGPT write this episodes?
That question seemingly began as shorthand for “this sucks, so it must’ve been written by generative AI” ... but then it took a turn when people were pretty sure they spotted ChatGPT tabs open in a shot of a Stranger Things script featured in One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5.
This sparked enough controversy — with some people saying that, no, those weren’t ChatGPT tabs — that the creator of the Stranger Things documentary was asked whether the Duffer brothers used ChatGPT to write this season. The chat between The Hollywood Reporter’s Tony Maglio and Martina Radwan didn’t help the situation ...
Ritz Drizzled Minis unite salty and sweet in a tiny snack
When I’m feeling snacky, I often wind up making two visits to our kitchen food closet. One of those visits is to come away with a salty snack. Goldfish. Ritz Bits. Maybe a sleeve of crackers. And then the second visit is for something sweet. Sour Patch Kids. M&Ms. Maybe an entire package of Twizzlers.
The folks over at Nabisco understand this phenomenon. America demands a selection of snacks that are both salty and sweet. (That’s why salted caramel is such a big deal, right?) The company has kicked off 2026 with the rollout of Ritz Drizzled Minis.
Available in both Fudge and Caramel, Ritz Drizzled Minis are a “sweet-and-salty snack that brings together the iconic salty crunch of a Ritz cracker with sweet drizzle on top and a decadent coating on the bottom.”
The Omnicosm founder. Popculturology, Deep SNL Thoughts and Snackology writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
A interview with the creator of the finale season documentary didn’t help things. PLUS: Kathleen Kennedy steps down from Lucasfilm, ‘Monarch’ introduces a new titan, and the Russo brothers want us to decode the ‘Doomsday’ teasers.
Bill Kuchman
Bill Kuchman
Bill Kuchman
