If you look back at the history of the show, ever since around episode 200 they’ve always taken ideas and used them several times before moving on to new ideas. Some of those ideas weren’t big ratings drivers or very popular, and there have been shifts and trends in the types of things that they do over time. They’ve used outside combis at times, they’ve used extra celebrities at times, they’ve used the staff at times, they stuck to Downtown and Team-0 at times, and they’ve used the main five at times. It always changes up.
I’m not sure if you’re saying they aren’t doing enough new things or they aren’t doing enough older things. In terms of new ideas, they haven’t been starting many new series of episodes… going back a decade, the bigger ones off the top of my head are the drone music video shoots and Jiji-nuki in 2019, World Tabletop Games in 2018, Rendezvous Games and Ask The Best 5/3 in 2016, Stroll To Meet Celebrities, I Think This Suits You, Long Interviews, Hamada’s Hot-Blooded Cram-School, and Lip-Sync Studio in 2014, Nostalgic Video Games in 2013, and Karuta Battle in 2012. Some of those have like three or four episodes, some have like eight or nine.
Looking back in 2021, they did a Matsumoto Challenge (1991 or 2000, depending on how you break the series up), a Trial (1994), a Shichihenge (1995), a Yamasaki Produce (1997 or 2004, depending on how you break the series up), the VTR Best 10 (1998, but it goes back to the Friendship Record episodes covering since 1990 starting in 1994), an Itao (1999), a Silent Library (2001), a Club Activity (2002), a Classroom (2006), and several 500/100 Things Quiz (2006). They also did some of the things I mentioned in the paragraph above.
You’ve got to figure that for almost the past two years now, they’re older and have ever more physical limitations, there’s COVID concerns for where they can and can’t film and what kind of setups they can use, and there’s active broadcast censorship concerns further impacting what can be done.
I don’t have a problem with the newer stuff, but yeah, it’s not really anything outrageous and new at this point. If you don’t like it for what it is, don’t waste your time watching it. They’re never going to be young and in the 1990s again. Or the 2000s or 2010s. It is what it is.