Saturday Night Live Doubles Down on Shane Gillis—Again

And Your Host…

With rightly fired-for-cause almost cast member Shane Gillis invited back for a third go-’round, I was prepared to let my previous objections speak for themselves and simply evaluate the stand-up’s on-air work for itself.

I really was. You know, until his monologue, where smirking lunkhead Gillis deployed punchlines(?) about women “dressing like whores,” him getting so fat he “looked like a lesbian,” it not being fair that he’s been caught staring at women’s asses (since they dress like whores and all), the “gay” way to straighten your hair, and on and on. If Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth blurts “no homo” as a joke on thuggish bro-idiocy in the cold open, Gillis’ monologue was basically that phrase unironically on repeat.

Gillis dropped in the word “queer,” shouted out both Joe Rogan and Theo Von (and a happily braying pal in the audience), and, as he has both other times he hosted, delivered his monologue with such a graceless anti-charisma that his massive success as a touring comedian makes the perfect sort of sense in this American cultural landscape.

Gillis’ only stab at overt political schtick was decrying how “You’re either gay or you’re Hitler, isn’t that where you’re at in this country?” Super-crappy false equivalency aside, that professional comedian Gillis clunked immediately to an awkward, “That was the monologue” while the studio audience tittered noncommittally summed up the sort of vibe Lorne Michaels continues to insist we endure. (Despite his continued outreach to that hard-to-get right-wing bro demographic proving futile.)

Please, Lorne, you’ve made your point—nobody is ever to question your decision making ever again. Just don’t let Gillis plant the idea that what SNL really needs next is hosting gigs from Joe Rogan and Theo Von.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: Apart from how sketches seemed designed to cater to Gillis’ lumpen sensibilities, this wasn’t a poorly written show overall. The best use of the host’s blunt a-holery came in the post-monologue sketch, a police-based talk show where Gillis’ late-night host treats his baffled guests like one imagines a Shane Gillis would if he went into law enforcement rather than “just sayin’ what we’re all thinkin'” stand-up comedy.

For a routinely deferential show like SNL to issue such a blanket indictment on the average police officer is bold in the scheme of things, with Gillis and sidekick Mikey Day’s mustachioed officers openly sneering at the artsy types they’re forced to interact with, and ultimately treating them to the sort of faux-friendly interrogative menace the public knows all too well. (Kam Patterson’s comedian bails immediately, a glancing shot at institutional racism that, again, is pretty succinct and effective.)

Sketches about police brutality (or extra-judicial brutality by masked militia goons with presidential approval, as the current reality is) can fizzle out in individual characterizations. (The “one bad apple” get out of comedy jail free card.) But with Gillis’ blank hostility serving as law enforcement exemplar, the sketch carries through as a more general attack on the very real divide between “protect and serve” and “looking for an excuse to tase anybody who looks at us funny.”

Kenan does some funny work as “tonight’s sponsor” (Gillis’ AA sponsor, brushed off for suggesting he still has work to do), and Jeremy Culhane squirms feelingly as an author whose interview turns into a suspiciously ugly traffic stop. That Veronika Slowikowska’s “Some Broad From Some TV Show” receives Gillis’ drooling leniency despite being drunk, high, and obligingly ready to handle Gillis’ service weapon is another surprisingly potent example of a sketch accepting very real, very bad stuff about American policing as a simple fact.

The Worst: I’m really not prepared to give Gillis a pass at being so lousy in live sketches by this point. Yeah, he was, again, rightly canned for being a bigoted hack before he ever appeared in a single sketch, but he’s back for a third, Lorne-mandated time here and he still reads cue cards like he’s pissed he has to be there. A lot of tee-hee ink will be spilled over Gillis letting a “f*ck” slip by in the Green Eggs and Ham sketch, but I was far more aghast at how the comic’s presence dragged down another decent-enough premise.

The makeup of Andrew Dismukes and Mikey Day is assiduous, the idea that the whole “try it, you’ll like it” theme of the book transforms into a comically wrenching playlet about an aging father falling for insistent scammers has promise, and in hands other than Gillis’, the conception of adult son as problematically worried layabout could have gone somewhere. But f-bomb aside, this floundered. (And you can practically hear Gillis on Rogan’s podcast, guffawing about making those [slurs for women and effeminate people] at SNL sweat because he kept it too real, man.)

The Rest: “My Room Now” is an exquisitely mounted music video about what’s going through an outwardly proud dad’s head at his daughter’s wedding—the promise of turning her bedroom into a man cave filled with a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, pinball machine, and drum set under a forest of Nerf guns. Dismukes, Tommy Brennan, and the always on-point James Austin Johnson croon a country-rock ballad where the father (Gillis, naturally) gradually reveals the freeing, adolescent joys of having a responsibility (and female)-free refuge where he can finally admit that he’s not bothered that his bored wife is sleeping with her Zumba instructor while he makes popcorn and cotton candy from the expensive gizmos he bought instead of paying for the wedding.

The expanding fantasy eventually encompasses his wife leaving him so he can happily smash down a wall to make a “super-room” while wearing his departed wife’s robe, putting a gun in his mouth and imagining a torrid tryst with a life-sized Ms. Pac-Man. As with his previous divorced dad kids show sketch, Gillis makes for a perfect avatar of incomplete male inadequacy, make of that what you will.

JAJ is a wonder on SNL. Having such a great comic character actor on hand makes a sketch like the invention of sneakers more than just its component parts, Johnson’s committed underplaying elevating our admiration of the whole. Here, his old-timey executive introduces the innovation of rubber-soled canvas shoes to replace the traditional squeaky leather clip-cloppers with the panache of period PBS drama, allowing the comic element to start from a higher elevation.

That a creepy employee (Gillis, duh) immediately spots the potential for silent, rubber-soled creeping and peeping, convincingly derailing JAJ’s plan for his “runwells'” revolution in comfort, is a funny twist, even if the host is a little too at home coming up with scenarios about sneaking past his “murderous cow” wife. (She killed his mistress, as it turns out.) That Gillis’ board member comes up with the sales pitch, “Sneakers: She’ll never hear you” skewers the long male legacy of turning every innovation into an opportunity for victimization by putting the words in Gillis’ mouth. Make of that what you will.

Hey, the funny HVAC company sketch has Gillis’ pitchman owner musing mid-commercial about how he has to sit in his work truck for half an hour each night to steel himself against his bitch wife’s incessant nagging. Weird. Anyway, it’s a funny bit of contractor-shaming, as Gillis’ aptly named Upfront Heating & Air Conditioning tells prospective clients about all the anti-workmen clichés coming their way.

From the initial come-on from an attentive, attractive salesman (who they’ll never see again) to the “four-to-five of the weirdest guys you’ve ever seen in your life” peeping, snooping, smoking, and creepily showing off hairy bellies under inadequate work shirts, the ad is amusingly upfront about it all. Seemingly born from some writer’s bad home-owning experiences, it’s a series of cheap shots at working people all around, although it’d be nastier (and funnier) if SNL once again used a real company’s brand without their knowledge.

Look, some sketches are going to hang on thin premises. That’s a 90-minute weekly live show for you. It’s what you do with that premise that counts, a task aided by strong performances. Then you invite Shane Gillis back to host and a sketch about a dude trying to ditch his hospice-dying mom so he can see Jelly Roll at The Sphere lumbers around for a few minutes before lurching to its demise.

Cue card reading isn’t new, or even disqualifying—this isn’t a host’s real job and the maniacally hectic single week of prep time means the cards are simply a necessity. But, again, this is somebody Lorne Michaels assured audiences was ready to leap into SNL stardom years ago, who has hosted three times, and still locks eyes on those things like he’s desperately deciphering fire extinguisher instructions.

There are a few noble stabs at veering the one-joke premise into uncharted weirdness. Imaginary Jelly Roll keeps referencing how Gillis will see his late mom in just a couple of weeks (we later find out in an aside he’s booked himself an OceanGate-esque submersible ride), and Gillis keeps abruptly accusing Sarah Sherman’s nurse of wanting to kill his mom to deflect his guilt. But with his hesitant line readings and stubborn refusal to connect with the audience, Gillis, well, sinks the whole thing.

“Weekend Update” Update

With the Jost-Che “Weekend Update” coasting along on its hosts’ admittedly entertaining glibness, I give points for just how sharp the topical jabs are. Both (Che especially) relish a good old audience gasp-and-laugh, so here’s to Che for getting perhaps the biggest one in years with his joke addressing that the United States is about to become one of the tiny number of authoritarian hellholes to hold televised public executions. (C’mon, North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan, we’re all in the same bloodthirsty death cult now!) Che, nodding toward the Pete Hegseth-touted firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter (and convenient non-white person with a “foreign” name, Nidal Hasan), made reference to us seeing ICE-related live executions every week. He got the gasps, and I give it up. Harsh joke, delivered well. (Plus, Che joked about an ICE agent accidentally shocking his own penis with those torturous electric protestor-zapping gloves, for added credit.)

Jost didn’t get off one as good, although mocking Trump for whining about some nobody female human rights leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize over the guy who kidnapped the president of Venezuela and did “so much war we’re running out of missiles” was solid enough. As ever, this “Update” is more about the anchors than the news, although the way they cheekily incorporate current events (like, say, Hegseth’s new Nazi DOD flag) serves as a public service, at least.

After last week’s marathon Update, we only got two correspondent pieces tonight. One is down below, with the other giving JAJ another stellar showcase for his locked-down mimicry. As Shark Tank huckster and Trump-pumping reality show figure Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary, Johnson adopts an eminently rational tone to let slip undisguised awfulness, and it’s chillingly funny.

As emissary of the AI data center takeover of America, JAJ’s O’Leary segues so seamlessly from extolling “God’s untouched splendor” to calmly explaining how to “replace it with a very loud computer that steals your job.” Johnson’s so adept at this sort of characterization that its subtlety sometimes flies under the radar, the conceit that his history of missing out on investing in products like that pot scrubber device has taught him the important lesson, “I’m going to destroy the world” emerging in the same placidly evil banality.

Recurring Sketch Report

Let’s keep that original sketch streak going past the first hiatus, what do you say? Who’s with me?!

Political Comedy Report

Nobody is happier than Colin Jost playing Pete Hegseth. For a guy (rightfully) frozen in place at the “Update” desk for so long, having a go-to crowd-pleaser like the current, bro-maniac be in charge of the largest military on Earth might be terrifying, but it’s freed Jost up to have some fun.

It’s not a Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin no-brainer, but it’s close, as Jost’s much-reinforced line in comedic white privilege channels a former Fox News blowhard, blackout drunk, open bigot, and accused rapist with (apologies to Jost) a certain gung-ho authenticity.

The fact that an incompetently cartoonish culture terrorist like Hegseth kept an aircraft carrier filled with underfed, under-toileted, alarmingly suicidal U.S. military personnel stranded for nearly a year has elicited essentially abusive denials crossed with “suck it up, [gay slurs]” responses from the actual Hegseth makes Jost’s able clowning almost superfluous.

But he’s good at it, here storming out in a bandolier filled with minis of that spiced whiskey you get at the gas station and addressing the assembled sailors and press as “dong-munchers,” as is his way. It’s, again, hardly an exaggeration of a performance, with Jost’s Hegseth reluctantly adding a rushed “…and women” to his introduction and referencing the long-deployed USS Lincoln’s berth in San Diego “which the president just asked Iran to blow up.” New Nazi-adjacent DOD logo, plans for a live execution on Trump TV—reality pales in comparison.

James Austin Johnson got to ditch the top half of his Trump garb this week, instead donning those alarmingly veiny forearms he wore for the “buff Trump” sketch a while back as he essayed the easy-but-tricky Robert F. Kennedy Jr. impression. Kennedy’s speech results from a physical ailment, which makes mocking it borderline unfair, but then again, screw that guy.

JAJ’s RFK has presided over the reintroduction of many a preventable (if not previously eradicated) disease, so his raspily renaming it “cold and flu and listeria and measles and trench-brain season” (with a little “testicular dementia” thrown in) is on target. Tying the country’s many FDA-greenlit meat recalls and outbreaks to the infamously horrid food fed to the Lincoln’s troops is connective tissue enough as well.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Grace Reiter is on her way. With a devilish series of evil child faces, she held her own ably against Ashley Padilla on “Update.” As the child of a guest whose babysitter cancelled (“I broke another one!,” Reiter’s Coco booms proudly), the featured player turns in the sort of happy mugging that hit “Update” features are made of.

Padilla’s outstanding, of course, her Martha Stewart-wannabe home crafting segment devolving into guilty-angry shouting matches at her offspring’s every expertly deployed provocation. “I love you!!,” Padilla winds up one near-hysterical outburst, her desperate attempt to reclaim her veneer of normal mom perfection being some prime Padilla acting prowess.

That there’s a strange digression (that Jost can’t help but get swept up in) about Coco’s parentage lifts the bit onto a higher plane. (The clues that her unknown dad is over 50, on TV, and proudly gay lead both Jost and Coco to speculate it’s Sean Hayes.) Reiter also closed out the show with another broad bit of character work in the chess championship sketch, blowing Gillis out of the water (which, admittedly, isn’t that hard).

On the other hand, fellow new hire Saidah Belo-Osagie gets what I believe is a single speaking role in the HVAC pre-tape, playing a stereotypical angry girlfriend with exaggerated extensions. As talented as veteran sketch performer Reiter is, I’m going to go ahead and speculate that—dare anyone suggest?—SNL has brought in another funny Black woman without any sense of how to use her. Hang in there.

JAJ and Padilla are the stars, even if their lower-key acting styles make plenty of room for more traditional sketch performers like Reiter to stake out territory. Jeremy Culhane, too, impresses with a nice, understated presence (with the right glimmers of weirdness). I want more Dismukes, whose weirdness is all out in the open.

Marcello Hernandez keeps fading into the background, oddly, since he seemed in the midst of a serious push.

Having Kenan Thompson on your show at this point is SNL‘s safety blanket. I don’t know if he’s not interested in driving many sketches this far into his record-holding tenure or if he’s taken for granted, but I say he can be on this show as long as he likes.

10-To-Oneland Report

The chess sketch was a one-note duet, with only one performer playing. Grace Reiter’s trashy chess mom gyrated, drawled, boomed, and winningly stole the scene, while face-painted ex-husband Gillis was… there. (Even an sfx air horn couldn’t jolt his characterization to life.)

Jeremy Culhane squirms entertainingly once more as the “nerd with embarrassing parents” premise benefitted from Reiter’s go-for-broke, look-at-me energy. Jane Wickline does some nice underplaying as Gillis’ improbably demure new girlfriend (“Your breath smells like a book!,” Reiter’s horny former spouse screams), and while there’s nothing too special (or 10-to-one unique) about the piece, it is the sort of calling card a talented newcomer can look on with encouragement.

Stray Observations

• Rosalía has the theatricality, whisper-angel voice, and innate weirdness of a Spanish Kate Bush, and I’m here for it. The simple effect of real raindrops soaking her while she sings her second number is a stunner of co-mingled performance and presentation.
• LateNighter‘s Jon Schneider called it, as third-time SNL guest Rosalía did in fact appear in the hospice sketch. He may actually be psychic.
• The cop talk show having a driver’s-side window divider between host and guest is a loony little touch that works.
• Mikey Day’s Dr. Seuss dad ad-libs an outraged callback to Gillis’ f-bomb.
• Gillis himself says a not-sheepish, “Sorry about earlier” during the goodnights.
• “Stay away from these or you’ll get too many girls,” Kenan’s smoking HVAC worker tells the clients’ young son.
• “Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day, which is like if Easter was also National Nails Day.”
• “This is Stratos, my data center with the most evil name of all time. And sure, it looks big, with the noise and the water pollution—that’s going to only affect this area. Colin, you have to understand—I don’t live there.”
• We’re off until Halloween, when our very spooky host will be Obsession‘s Inde Navarrette, backed by presumably creepy Gracie Abrams. [Chain rattle, ghost sounds, etc.]
• Grade: C-Plus.