There are harbingers of summer. The days get longer, people open up their lake cabins, kids begin squirming in anticipation of their long break.

But among the most dependable come from those poor, benighted souls who make a living writing about popular culture: the inevitable essay about how “Saturday Night Live” isn’t as good as it used to be and never was.

Because of the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet, there’s a great need in the media to fill space. Sturgeon’s Law holds that 90 percent of everything is crap and while that’s always been true, the sheer availability of dead air and bandwidth has vastly expanded the amount of crap available. The yearly “Saturday Night Live” screed is just one of many examples.

But oh Lord, it gets tiresome. It’s literally been a long time since anybody said anything interesting, much less original, about the show, but the same tired statements get recycled year after year; There are one or two good cast members, the last half-hour still sucks, the original show really wasn’t that funny, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Considering the show is in its 36th year, it’s enough to make some of us feel very, very old.

Yes, children, I remember when it first came on. I think I missed the first show and caught the second. And I recall watching it with some amazement. Every weekend, my sisters would make popcorn and we’d watch Ed Sullivan. When you were used to munching and watching people like Buddy Hackett and Joan Rivers recycle half-century-old, borscht-belt routines, it was a sudden revelation to watch Chevy Chase do a sketch centering on the president’s clumsiness – and do it without any makeup to look like the guy.

For the record, the show in its early days was funny because it was brazen. It was funny less because it gave you belly laughs than because it made you say, “I can’t believe they did that.” My Dad, whose comedic tastes ran to Benny Hill and “Get Smart” (he and I always watched that together), never forgot seeing Dan Aykroyd put a fish in a blender in the Bass-o-matic ad. He found it slightly amusing, but was more grossed out than anything else. It could be hilarious, but like any 90-minute comedy show, there was plenty of crap (which usually did wind up in that last half-hour).

But it was new, it was different. And it was occasionally way ahead of the curve. To watch reruns of those early shows is to marvel at how closely art can imitate even absurd life.

An example: The comedian Albert Brooks made short films for the show during the first couple of seasons. One consisted of promos for fake network television shows. One of them was about a guy who lived with two women, the joke being that he was constantly trying to talk them into a threesome. The next year, “Three’s Company” debuted in prime time.

Another example: A joke commercial for a razor that featured several blades, which shaved the face by actually shearing off skin. The tag line was, “Because you’ll buy anything.” Now you can buy razors with up to five blades.

For those who didn’t live through the 1970s, the last time marketing existed with any subtlety, it’s hard to imagine how revolutionary an act it could be to just be different. The original “Saturday Night Live” was the last gasp of the 1960s sensibility, which took a few years to die, and it was nice at the time to hear a death rattle that was at least entertaining instead of depressing.

It’s funny to even write a sentence like that. Yeah, we baby boomers have all become our parents. But instead of talking about what we were doing during the Battle of the Bulge, we talk about television shows we watched. No wonder later generations, the Xs and Ys and other letters, hate us.

But it has been ever thus. The thing about nostalgia is that it seeks to capture the uncapturable, the feel of what a time or thing was like. I have made my living with words for 30 years, but damned if I can find ones that capture the feeling of seeing something really new and different. Just as Neil Armstrong cannot tell you how it really felt to put a foot down where nobody ever had, nobody can tell you what it was really like to see something and feel no “click” of recognition.

So yeah, it’s sad to see what the show has become. It’s pretty much a show-biz factory now. People come there to kickstart a career making (largely mediocre) movies; one of the original writers is now a member of the world’s most exclusive club, the U.S. Senate; and cutting-edge marketing devices like Lady Gaga are featured on the season-ending finales. (I watched her last weekend and heard my father’s voice saying, “She’s got a face like a mud fence.”)

Still, it can occasionally be original, especially when it goes back to its roots. It now features short films that are often as good as anything Albert Brooks ever made for the show. “Weekend Update” can still draw blood, although it does so less often. Every once in a while, they find a guest host with an unexpected flair for comedy.

When the show finally leaves the air, which shows always do, there will be a lot more ponderous articles written about its place in cultural history, how it changed the world, What It All Meant. Those will, of course, be banana oil. It was, for God’s sake, a television show, nothing more or nothing less.

The big question is this: When “Saturday Night” leaves the air, how will we know when it’s summer?