If you’re “Saturday Night Live” and you just spent multiple weeks celebrating 50 years of comedy and music with star-studded live events, how do you follow all those festivities for your first regular episode back?
“SNL” counter-intuitively brought expectations back down to sea level by inviting Shane Gillis, the once-hired-then-fired comic who hosted last year, to return. Now that the novelty of seeing the comic on the show that once shunned him (and hearing him talk about it) has worn off, it was time to see what Gillis, the star of the ill-received streaming show “Tires,” could do.
Not a whole lot, it turns out. Though he had plenty of opportunities to play a variety of different characters in live sketches, a commercial parody, and a “Please Don’t Destroy” video, Gillis rarely broke out of playing a low-energy version of himself. But unlike another successful comic who’s hosted twice, Nate Bargatze, Gillis doesn’t seem to favor smart and surprising material. The sketches written for him (and which he presumably helped choose) were mostly premised around sexual acts or boorish, clueless men, like the depressing, divorced father in a PBS Kids show called “Dad’s House” or an ex-boyfriend who crashes a woman’s wedding to demand an open-eyed sexual act he was promised in a coupon from her.
Gillis appeared in a sketch about a local TV news show in which the hosts get into a competition figuring out whether the subjects of crime stories are Black or white, a put-upon boyfriend taking photos of his demanding girlfriend (Heidi Gardner), a spokesperson in a commercial for antidepressants that are simply beer and cocaine, and a man who wants to know if his doctor (Emil Wakim) can still fellate himself like he did when they were kids.
Oof. The sketches weren’t all terrible; cast members including Gardner, Wakim, and the duo of Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim saved some of them, but nobody could really save GIllis from an episode that overall felt crude and gross.
Musical guest Tate McRae appeared in the “Please Don’t Destroy” video and performed “Sports Car” and “Dear God.” A tribute card for New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, who died this week, appeared before the close of the show. Another “SNL” tie-in commercial featured Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang in a punk band celebrating CeraVe anti-dandruff shampoo.
This week’s cold open tackled the disastrous Oval Office meeting between President Trump (James Austin Johnson), Vice President J.D. Vance (Bowen Yang), and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky (Mikey Day). With Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) disassociating nearby, Trump and Vance sprung their “big, beautiful trap,” criticizing Zelensky’s attire (“casual ‘Star Trek’”) and berating him for not thanking the United States and not calling the U.S. leaders “handsome.” Yang had the opportunity to really lock into his Vance impression, which has evolved into something like a “Real Housewives of Potomac” hopeful. Johnson’s impression of a scattered, ornery Trump was as accurate as ever, but the big surprise was a new Elon Musk: “SNL” vet Mike Myers took over from Dana Carvey. Myers looks the part and played Musk as a giggly, hopping, hyperactive South African toddler and/or glitchy robot.
For the monologue, Gillis pushed his luck early, starting with some jokes about how hilarious Trump has been in office, and how former President Biden was also funny. “In between teleprompters, his face would go back to being dead,” Gillis joked. It didn’t get the reaction he expected, perhaps, because he followed that with, “I get it… you guys are pretty liberal here…. Now I’m gonna lose you even more.” The rest of the monologue mostly centered on something Gillis acknowledged was racist. He said white men ask women on first dates if they’ve ever had sex with a Black guy. “It’s a shameful thing to ask. It’s weird. I’ve done it. I’m not proud,” he said. The monologue, which also included a Bill Cosby “tip,” did not get any better from there.
Best sketch of the night: It’s not a competition, but suddenly it is
In a sketch about a midday news show on local TV, four roundtable hosts (Gardner, Gillis, Nwodim and Thompson) start speculating on whether the criminals featured in the news stories they’re reading are Black or white. Meth ring? It’s a guy who looks like Walter White from “Breaking Bad.” Looters? Gillis’s character bets it’s Black perpetrators. Mayhem at a barbershop? Shaboozey-related story? TSA agents? The sketch escalates quickly and Nwodim and Thompson keep the sketch from derailing with their spot-on energy.
Also good: You look better in photos with an egg in your mouth
The show’s opening sketch featured Gardner and Gillis as a couple on a winery tour with his parents (Andrew Dismukes and Ashley Padilla). The young woman insists that her boyfriend take pictures of her in front of an orange tree and proceeds to humiliate him in front of his parents with her photography demands and her insistence that he not take pictures that make her look like Michael Cera. For Gardner, it’s the type of character she might otherwise play on “Weekend Update”: weird, specific and very unlikable. Her commitment to the bit makes the sketch.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: The trolley problem, but as a love song
Hernandez played a “Movie Guy” who actually hasn’t seen most of the Oscar-nominated movies he’s talking about, but it was Jane Wickline who charmed with her awkward dating advice in the form of romantic songs about the trolley problem, the ethical puzzle in which someone must choose between saving one person on a train track or saving five people on a separate track from a runaway trolley. Wickline pivots midway through when “Update” host Colin Jost tells her the song isn’t romantic enough, which leads to a creepy domestic detour that ends up coming right back to the trolley tracks. Wickline’s songs are always clever, but she’s also good at selling the emotional beats behind them, even when it’s as ridiculous as a love song themed to the trolley problem.
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