Shane Gillis returned to host Saturday Night Live for a third time, an episode that opened with a political cold open and later featured a live F-bomb during a sketch about Green Eggs and Ham.
The show began onboard the newly returned USS Lincoln. Even after a record 322 days at sea, the crew became a captive audience for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, played by Colin Jost. Wearing an ammunition belt made of Fireball cinnamon whiskey, Hegseth welcomed the sailors back to San Diego, which the president just asked Iran to blow up. He briefed them on events on dry land, including a promised live-streamed execution in December and a new Department of War logo featuring an American eagle with a Nazi vibe.
Hegseth then turned the podium over to RFK Jr., played by James Austin Johnson. In the sketch, RFK Jr. renamed cold and flu season as ‘cold and flu and listeria and measles and trench brain season.’ He thanked the crew for being unwitting test subjects for thousands of pounds of recalled meat. He left them with an unintelligible send-off until Hegseth patted him on the back and magically cleared his voice.
For his monologue, Gillis avoided revisiting his 2019 firing from Saturday Night Live, which happened after clips surfaced of him making racist and homophobic jokes on podcasts. He had addressed the controversy in previous hosting appearances. This time he talked about hiking and going to the gym to lose weight, only to creep out women. He discussed being bullied by his ‘two big fat bitch sisters’ and a receding hairline he cannot fix without looking gay or like Hitler. The material was a watered-down version of his stand-up, with self-aware edginess aimed at his fans. He also told a story about hanging out with podcast hosts Theo Von and Joe Rogan.
The first sketch, Cop Talk, was billed as the only talk show made by cops, for everyone. Gillis and Mikey Day played aggressive, trigger-happy police hosts who intimidate and assault their guests. A wimpy author was run off, a nervous hipster artist was tased for no reason, and a drunk and stoned female actor was flirted with. The sketch included a word from our sponsor that turned out to be an intervention from one of the cops’ actual AA sponsors.
A sappy country ballad followed. Gillis played a proud father of the bride who watched her dance at her wedding while dreaming about the cool things he could put in her old room: a drum kit, a pinball machine, a Pac-Man arcade game, and a life-size cutout of Shaq. His obsession with his new man cave led his wife to leave him for her Zumba instructor. He then went through attempted suicide, black mold poisoning, and sexual hallucinations involving Ms. Pac-Man.
Then came an enactment of the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham. Gillis played the son of the stubborn protagonist, played by Mikey Day, aggressively defending his sunsetting father from Sam-I-Am’s pushy attempts to get him to eat the titular meal. Within the first few seconds, Gillis stumbled over his lines and dropped a live F-bomb. The rest of the sketch struggled to find its feet until Day ad-libbed a line about him saying a bad word. Some viewers may suspect the moment was pre-planned, but it appeared to be an honest mistake.
Another sketch imagined the founder of a shoe company in the 1920s calling a board meeting to unveil the first canvas shoe. Although designed for running, sporting and strolling, Gillis’s board member immediately recognized they were also perfect for sneaking. His pitch, ‘sneakers: she’ll never hear you,’ met pushback at first but eventually won the day.
Upfront Heating and Air Conditioning presented an HVAC service that tells customers from the beginning, ‘this is gonna be a nightmare.’ The nightmare involved a crew of unlicensed losers, pedophiles and slobs running roughshod through a suburban home. The sketch leaned into dark blue-collar comedy and existential anxiety, reminiscent of Gillis’s Netflix series Tires.
Weekend Update opened with a developing tragic story about the president, though Colin Jost quickly clarified, ‘No, not that,’ to a disappointed audience. Trump had again failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize, leaving him furious despite the various acts of war he had started that year. Jost compared it to thinking he might win an Oscar for Tom & Jerry.
The first Update guest was Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, played by James Austin Johnson. After being forced to downsize his plan to build the world’s largest data center in Utah, O’Leary pitched his vision: ‘These things are terrible and don’t belong anywhere, which is why I’m proposing to build it in Utah … you have to understand: I don’t live there.’
Next was a mother whose babysitter canceled, played by Ashley Padilla. Joined by her troublesome young daughter Coco, played by Grace Reiter, she tried to run through fall hobbies like leaf collecting and straw doll making. She flipped out when Coco started talking about all the times she had gotten lost, her mother’s brief fling with a local farmer, and the mystery of who her father was.
Reiter returned as an ailing old woman in a hospital. She had only days left to live, which upset her son because he had weekend tickets for Jelly Roll at The Sphere. He was visited by a vision of Jelly Roll, played by Ben Marshall, along with Cool Jesus, played by Andrew Dismukes, and a sexy single he was destined to meet, played by Rosalía. His mother passed away during his mental fugue, and they all advised him to go see the show. Less welcome were premonitions of his own death in two weeks.
A middle school chess final went off the rails when the divorced, white trash parents of one player, played by Gillis and Reiter, made a loud public scene in the stands. Their bickering led to a rekindling of their passion, and they began making out on the chess board in front of everyone. The sketch had a strong setup but, according to the review, became a lazy excuse to laugh at dumb rednecks rather than a vehicle for Gillis’s working-class point of view. Reiter’s performance felt like a rehashed version of a forgotten Kate McKinnon character.
