Shane Gillis An Embarrassing 'SNL' Host

by Julian Spivey

Photo: NBC

Comedian Shane Gillis hosted the 13th episode of the milestone 50th season of “Saturday Night Live,” and I can easily say it was one of the worst episodes of the long-running sketch comedy series I’ve ever seen, an embarrassment for the show.

Gillis has a controversial history with the show. He was hired as a cast member in 2019 and fired before he even appeared in an episode after clips surfaced from his podcast in which he used Asian ethnic slurs. Gillis’ firing from the show likely led to his becoming a star in the world of comedy, as perceived “cancellations” from “woke” media have a way of turning average celebrities into stars.

In a shocking decision for ‘SNL,’ Gillis was brought in to host an episode last season. It was the first episode of the show I’ve ever boycotted as a fan. I would’ve done the same with last night’s episode, but I decided to review every episode for the 50th season.

Watching Gillis on ‘SNL’ last night was eye-opening. Not in a good way. He was worse than I ever imagined. Sure, there was the dancing around racial issues that I figured would happen, especially in his monologue when he joked that most white men have at least wondered if their girlfriends/wives have ever had sex with a black man (I don’t think many of us care because this isn’t fucking racist segregationist America, as much as it hopes to be).

One horrifically noticeable aspect of Gillis’s eight-minute monologue is how little the live studio audience laughed. Even if I’m not digging something from the show on my couch at home, there are usually still folks in the live studio enjoying it—not Saturday night. The response from social media was just as critical. Gillis bombed.

The sketches featuring Gillis throughout the episode were among the most immature, sophomoric humor I’ve ever seen from ‘SNL,’ whether he helped pen them himself or the writers of the show realized they could hit home to the atypical audience he might be bringing to the show for the evening with the lowest forms of comedy. These sketches included a doctor whom his patient remembered from high school because he could perform oral sex on himself, a wedding interrupted by an ex-boyfriend wanting to use his “one free hand job” coupon and the faux medication commercial “CouplaBeers.”

Saturday night’s episode gave me some insight into what an episode may have looked like had Larry the Cable Guy hosted during the Blue Collar Comedy craze of the ‘00s, except the show then wouldn’t have stooped that low.

I don’t know if ‘SNL’ executive producer Lorne Michaels feels guilty that the show had to let Gillis go because of his past, though it’s certainly been better off for it, or if he’s just in search of outside ratings from different fan bases but this was an embarrassment to his show celebrating a grand history this season.