I know the season of trash-talking “Saturday Night Live” has begun, but I don’t care. I’m glad the NBC show is back, and I will watch it regularly, even though I know it will disappoint me more than it will please me.

That’s just how “SNL” rolls. The complaints are familiar: The show’s not as consistent as it used to be, the sketches are too long, the characters are stupid, etc. Meanwhile, the early seasons were also pretty inconsistent (just watch the first season DVDs; I have), the digital shorts tend to be shorter than sketches, and the characters — these days, they’re largely political sendups — have been indelible, from all of Kate McKinnon’s takes to Beck Bennett’s Putin.