Shane Gillis Bombs on Return to Saturday Night Live

It’s fair to say any host might have a rough go on the weekend after the grand 50th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live. But tonight felt specifically grim. Perhaps Lorne Michaels was being calculating when he booked comedian Shane Gillis for the gig. After all the buildup towards last week’s back-slapping, misty-eyed celebration, why not let someone throw a beer can at show biz and the liberal Hollywood elite? The fact that there’s a sect of Gillis’ fans who love him because they thing the people they hate hate him, and that he dunked on the woke set after being fired from SNL in 2019 only to be brought in as host five years later, was an interesting enough source of tension on his first go-around. But he needed to up the ante on this return. His humor can’t just be in opposition to the idea of a reflexive response. Saying “look, I get it, you guys are pretty liberal here,” as he did tonight when a joke didn’t land, is like blaming the ref when you miss your own shot. Sometimes “boundary-pushing” is just code for bad material.

Gillis’ monologue had the potential to surprise. He opened on Donald Trump’s return to office, noting that the President is “already hitting us with 5th grade level ideas.” Comedians taking swings at targets their core base don’t see coming is interesting. But then he got muddled up in an Iceland/Greenland bit and his dig on how Joe Biden used to space out behind a mic felt old. He never did land his bit about white guys’ fixation on whether the women they’re dating have ever had sex with a Black man, despite clumsily circling back to it at the end. When he described a noxious exchange with a woman who responded “Ew, no” when he asked if she’d been with a Black man, even the band looked weary. He went on to describe his love of Ken Burns, painting a depressing picture of him drinking alone on his couch never making it past a first episode, and using the historian to put women he was sick of listening to to sleep. “Who needs Roofies when we have The History of the Buffalo?” Who needs Tylenol PM when you’ve got this monologue? At one point, he got himself so tangled up in nothing that Gillis admitted, “I don’t know how to get out of this joke.”

At the end of his monologue, Gillis winced and gave the front row a so-so gesture. It was hard to tell if he was rating himself or his reception. Either way Gillis made the exact same gesture at the end of last year’s monologue, which means he’s doing the worst possible thing a comedian can do. He’s repeating himself.

Speaking of, Gillis spent much of the night playing the same character in sketches—a disaffected, lonely guy with a drinking problem. From “Dad’s House” to “CouplaBeers,” the dude was bummed out and trying to smirk his way through his troubles. Thank God for Heidi Gardner who made their first sketch about a winery tour meeting her boyfriend’s parents sing. On her quest for the perfect selfie, Gardner bullied Gillis into capturing her in all her best angles. “Close mouth, open mouth, laughing, one for the veterans,” she commanded. When Gillis’ parents, played by Andrew Dismukes and Ashley Padilla, suggested they get a group shot, Gardner pouted, “But your pawents are ugwy.”

There was one real flash of greatness this episode, a holdover from last week’s high. How Michaels got Mike Myers to say yes to portraying Elon Musk in the cold open is anyone’s guess, but the casting was truly inspired. After James Austin Johnson’s Trump called out Mikey Day’s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for daring not to wear a suit to the Oval Office, Myers burst into scene in Musk’s Tech Support t-shirt and jeans. Myers has perhaps greeted the aging process somewhat like Musk. Both of their faces have a stretched and bloodless quality. But Myers seemed like he was having more fun rattling that chainsaw than he did last weekend reviving “Coffee Talk” in Linda’s sweater. “Legalize comedy!” his Musk sputtered, lurching like a giraffe, pumping his soft fists, after trying to make a joke about mass, indiscriminate firings. I do hope this wasn’t a one-off on Myers’ part. He’s got Musk’s unpredictable fits of glee, his stabs at punch lines and the man’s tragic, terrifying glitches down cold. If we’re to endure Musk in office, Myers in the role would at least be some consolation.

It wasn’t Gillis who commanded attention on stage there at the end during goodbyes. Nor was it cute Tate McRae who I worried during her musical performance would take a tumble off that mass structure of metal chairs. It was Myers—suddenly the Kanye West to Gillis’ milquetoast Myers. He held open his puffer vest—”Canada Is Not For Sale!”—to voice truth to power.