Saturday Night Live: controversial comedian Shane Gillis struggles to make an impression

Saturday Night Live opens in Washington DC, at a post-South Carolina primary victory celebration for Donald Trump. Over drinks and appetizers, Republican senators James Risch (Mikey Day), Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernandez), Tim Scott (Devon Walker), and Lindsey Graham (James Austin Johnson) lament the personal and professional humiliations that Trump has heaped upon them – killing Risch’s Ukraine funding bill, dubbing Rubio ‘Little Marco’ and making fun of his egregious sweating, endangering Graham’s life by doxing him – even as they continue to endorse and grovel before him.

Their quiet moments of self-hating reflection are good for a few chuckles, but as with so many promising political cold opens, this one ends before it even begins, amounting to nothing but a cup of weak tea.

This episode of SNL comes with lots of baggage: in 2019, comedian Shane Gillis was tapped to join the cast (alongside new members Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman), until an episode of his and co-host Matt McCusker’s podcast (Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast) resurfaced, featuring a number of jokes deemed racist (specifically towards Asian people) and homophobic. At the time, it was reported that had Gillis publicly apologized, he would have been allowed to stay on the show, but because he refused, he was dropped before the start of the season.