Saturday Night Live has long been an incubator for future superstar performers: they develop their talents, grow their name recognition, and eventually move on. But this year it looks like we might be losing three big names all at once, and it's just so hard to say goodbye. Watch our tribute to SNL's (allegedly) departing cast members.

New York's Hottest Club Is Wahhhhh

Star Trek is not Star Wars. Star Trek is an intellectual exploration of humanity. Star Wars slaps spaceships and toys on pulp stories with themes of good versus evil and destiny. Star Trek and Star Wars are science fiction, granted. Both titles contain the word “star.”

The man at the helm of the Star Trek reboot is making the seventh installment of Star Wars. The same guy controls over four decades' worth of intergalactic pop culture. The Greek chorus of geeks, ignored by Hollywood for seven years between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Trek, should be mad as hell. J.J. Abrams is genre bogarting.

‘Leia and Chewie Need to Do It’

Apparently fans want Star Wars to become more sexually deviant. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, director J.J. Abrams took plot suggestions from the audience (including William Shatner in disguise), and a romance between Princess Leia and the Wookiee Chewbacca now seems likely.

Alice Eve has boldly gone where few women have gone before.

In Star Trek Into Darkness, the 31-year-old British actress stars as Dr. Carol Marcus, a mysterious new member of the Starship Enterprise’s crew who sneaks aboard to help them travel to the Klingon home world of Kronos to capture terrorist John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch). Marcus joins Capt. James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), Lt. Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), and the rest of the gang from the first Trek film, also helmed by J.J. Abrams. And the newcomer’s scantily clad scene with Kirk in the film will surely have many Trekkies' tongues wagging.

The news Friday that the much-diminished Village Voice fired three of the last remaining writers on staff before the New Times’ hostile takeover in 2005, set the media world on fire. It was bad enough that veterans, theatre critic Michael Feingold and food critic Robert Sietsema were both axed. But it was the news that longtime gossip columnist Michael Musto—who has been writing a column since 1984—was laid off that was the biggest shock.

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch wrote on Twitter: “The ‪@villagevoice firing ‪@mikeymusto amounts to ‪@villagevoice firing itself: auto-da-fé.”

Ratings are in a free fall. The judging panel was a $40 million bust. Viewers are exasperated over predictable themes and performances. Culture blogs are flooded with obituaries for American Idol. Confetti rained on Candice Glover Thursday night as she tearfully warbled her coronation song, winning the 12th season of the veteran singing competition. But was she singing at its funeral?

“It’s more like that body at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail who cries, ‘I’m not dead yet,’” Michael Slezak, senior editor at TV Line and longtime Idol expert, tells The Daily Beast. “Idol is like that leper. It might be mistaken for dead, but it’s not dead yet.”

Now that the dust has settled, it's easier to get a larger picture of what's going on for next season. The numbers: 51 scripted series have been ordered by the broadcast networks for the 2013–14 season. There are 29 new dramas for next season and 22 comedies. Thirty-one shows will launch in the fall, and 20 are being held for a later date, should some of the fall offerings fail to enflame the public's imagination. On the network level, ABC picked up 12 new scripted series; CBS ordered eight; NBC issued series pickups to 14, while Fox did the same for 12 scripted series. The CW claimed five new scripted shows.