Except maybe in sports, it is exceptionally rare for someone to get fired from a job and then be welcomed back as a guest of honor. But that is exactly what happened to comedian Shane Gillis on Saturday.
Five years after he was fired from Saturday Night Live for refusing to apologize about jokes he had made about Chinese people and using anti-gay slurs, Gillis made a triumphant return to the staple NBC weekend comedy show when he guest hosted the show on Saturday. And it was a rousing success.
From the beginning of his monologue, Gillis alluded to the events that led to his unceremonious ouster five years ago, remarking, “I probably shouldn’t be up here, honestly,” after imploring the audience not to Google the circumstances of his firing. From there, he went on to joke about his family’s history with Down syndrome, and how he was his mother’s “gay best friend” when he was a young child.
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For anyone who has followed Gillis’s comedy, this was familiar content. His career is one that hearkens back to an era of comedy when no topic was off-limits and there was no concern that mocking liberal orthodoxy would grant credence to unacceptable views. You could make jokes about race, gender, and sexuality, and jokes about political ideology were not reserved for one side. And words like “retarded” and “gay” were not immediate grounds for cancellation.
For a show that has been on television since 1975, SNL has gone through many ups and downs. But in recent years, the show that used to make jokes at the expense of anyone and everyone has declined in creativity and rarely lampoons Democrats, even as Republicans are mocked on a weekly basis. It has suffered from the very disease that has afflicted the majority of comedy. And in Gillis, the show found an antidote, at least for a week. And after his dubious dismissal five years ago, the comic got the last laugh.