From joking about date rape drugs to exploring an extended bit about Ken Burns‘ The Civil War docuseries, Shane Gillis‘ second turn as host — from his previous and shortlived home of Saturday Night Live — featured some ham-fisted, self-deprecating humor poking fun at the audience’s politics and its lack of uproarious laughter.
The comedian began his 7-minute monologue by addressing politics, saying that president Donald Trump’s being in office is “funny” due to his “fifth-grade ideas.”
“Greenland? Ooh. Now I want Greenland. I never even thought about Greenland; now it’s all I think about,” he quipped.
From across the aisle, he joked, “I miss Biden, Biden was fun — also hilarious. My favorite thing about Biden was, anytime he was given a speech, in between teleprompters his face would go back to being dead,” completing the remark with a not-too-uncanny impression that got a couple chuckles.
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“Look, I get it, you’re pretty liberal here,” he said, making a quip about how being liberal makes a person feel “powerful like a Sith.” When that garnered wan laughs, he added, “All right now I’m going to lose you even more, for my next trick…”
Gillis then segued into a joke about a “thing white guys do and it is racist,” eventually revealing that the thing in question was asking romantic partners if they have ever had sex with Black men before.
The latter three minutes of Gillis’ monologue was dedicated largely to Burns’ documentary, which he called “kryptonite to women. If you put that on, they will fall asleep immediately. They’re yapping a little bit, how about a little Ken Burns? That’s a [Bill] Cosby tip for you: Who needs roofies when we have Ken Burns presents the history of the buffalo on PBS?”
He then discussed Shelby Foote, who authored The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the American Civil War, and who Gillis said was “clearly cheering for the South the entire documentary.” Making light of the historian’s made-up anecdotes and asides in the documentary, Gillis eventually closed with “All right, I don’t know how to get out of this joke.”
Eventually though, he found a way out, circling back to his question to romantic partners by narrating Foote’s reading of a Civil War-era letter from a soldier who asked his beloved Clara “would you ever…” before trailing off and finishing up the monologue.
Gillis, who is on the show alongside musical guest Tate McRae, was fired in 2019 prior to even making an appearance as a cast member on the late-night show, an executive decision made by network NBC after his previous anti-Asian and anti-gay comments were resurfaced. Since then, however, Gillis has maintained a steady career as a standup with a couple of specials on Netflix and the streamer’s comedy series Tires, which he stars in and co-created.
Watch the full monologue above.
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