SNL hires Shane Gillis to be Shane Gillis — then the outrage begins right on schedule

THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?

SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).

Shane Gillis returned to host SNL for the third time, delivering jokes about women’s gym clothes that sparked a celebrity backlash.
Actor Dan Levy condemned the monologue as misogynistic, while Gillis also accidentally dropped an uncensored F-bomb during a sketch.
SNL dismissed Gillis in 2019 over offensive podcast remarks. Seven years later, the show keeps inviting him back — and the controversy keeps returning with him.

LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).

Saturday Night Live has apparently discovered something deeply disturbing about comedian Shane Gillis: He tells Shane Gillis jokes.

The NBC comedy institution invited Gillis back for his third hosting appearance Saturday, October 10, and the comedian promptly delivered the kind of politically incorrect humor that got him fired from the show before he ever joined the cast in 2019.

And once again, the outrage arrived right on schedule.

During his opening monologue, Gillis discussed returning to the gym after gaining weight.

“I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” he joked.

The remark drew a mixed reaction from the studio audience, but Gillis continued with observations about brightly colored workout shorts and the awkwardness of being told not to stare.

Actor Dan Levy, best known for Schitt’s Creek, was not amused.

“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores,” Levy said in an Instagram video. “It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.”

Levy described the remarks as “vile, repugnant, disgusting trash” and argued that men should speak out against language that objectifies women.

The controversy expanded when country singer Maren Morris posted her own response to Gillis’s monologue.

Meanwhile, Gillis managed to create another television moment entirely by accidentally dropping an uncensored F-bomb during a Dr. Seuss-inspired sketch.

Playing a character in a parody of Green Eggs and Ham, Gillis began delivering a line containing the expletive before realizing what he’d said and breaking character.

The audience laughed, the cast worked through the interruption, and Gillis apologized during the show’s closing moments.

But the more interesting question isn’t whether Gillis crossed somebody’s comedy line. It’s why anyone expected him to behave differently.

In 2019, SNL announced Gillis as a new cast member, then rescinded the offer after offensive remarks from his podcast resurfaced.

He never appeared as a regular cast member.

Then something inconvenient happened for the people who thought his career was finished: Gillis became a successful stand-up comedian with a substantial audience.

In 2024, SNL invited him back to host. He returned in 2025. And now he’s hosted for a third time.

That history is the focus of a new Mediaite opinion column by Ana Marie Cox, who argues that SNL’s producers know exactly what kind of comedian they’re booking and that the controversy itself has become part of the arrangement.

Her argument is that the cycle benefits the program: Gillis appears, somebody objects, supporters defend him, and the resulting attention keeps the comedian in the conversation.

That’s an interpretation, not a documented admission from NBC executives. But the show’s repeated bookings make one thing difficult to dispute: SNL is thoroughly familiar with Gillis’s material.

And Gillis has never pretended to be a conventional, controversy-free television personality.

During his first return as host in 2024, he joked about his original dismissal from the show.

“I was fired from this show a while ago, but don’t look that up, please.”

Apparently, somebody at NBC looked it up anyway.

Then they booked him twice more.

At this point, SNL getting Shane Gillis jokes from Shane Gillis is about as surprising as inviting Gordon Ramsay to dinner and hearing somebody yell about the food.