Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang are Important and Shane Gillis Simply Isn’t.
photo courtesy of @live_from_new__york instagram
Saturday Night Live returned to NBC Saturday, September 28th with a killer 45th season kickoff featuring host Woody Harrelson and musical guest Billie Eilish. Not only was the SNL fanbase anxiously awaiting an exciting new season of sketches and digital shorts, but with this new season also came two new cast members: Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman.
The introduction of new cast members is a huge deal when it comes to Saturday Night Live. Some of comedy’s biggest names like Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell didn’t even make it onto the show. While Fineman and Yang were the new names lighting up the title screen this Saturday, unfortunately, neither of them had the name getting all the buzz. That’s all thanks to Shane Gillis, and this is the last time we’re going to talk about him.
Here’s all you need to know about Shane Gillis.
He rose from fame to cultural cancellation in a record four days. Within a day of the announcement of the new cast hires, a clip from Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast became not-so-secret when writer Seth Simons tweeted a clip in which Gillis makes a wide variety of anti- Asian jokes and slurs. Not that any form of racism (or any ism, really) is acceptable, but the anti-Asian element was a little extra salt in the wound in light of fellow new-hire Bowen Yang being SNL’s first Chinese-American cast member. After making some pseudo-apologetic tweet that isn’t worth repeating in which Gillis took little to no legitimate responsibility for his actions, SNL ultimately (thankfully) decided he was not right for their stage. Obviously the nature of the statements and their impact on the people targeted, for lack of a better word, sucked.
But you what else sucked? The fact that similar to most publications leading up to this Saturday’s premiere, we just spent half a page talking about an irrelevant racist instead of the people who did make it onto the stage with their top-notch, ism-free comedy!
Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang are awesome. Let’s get into it.
Who is Chloe Fineman?
This probably goes without saying (see: everything about SNL), but she’s fucking hilarious. Having improvisation experience with the country’s leading theatres, Upright Citizens Brigade and Groundlings to name a couple, she’s a quick-witted comedian with no shame in being as silly or out-there as she needs to be for the sake of her performance.
Mostly, though, she’s killer at impressions, making her a hot commodity on a sketch comedy show that relies heavily on impressionistic ability. You can catch most of her work on her Instagram, @chloeiscrazy, doing anyone from Ivanka Trump to Jojo Siwa. And it’s pretty unfair how in between her impression videos she’s slaying the feed with hot selfies. Catch her spot-on Marianne Williamson impersonation in this weekend’s SNL episode, and stay tuned into Fineman! When she becomes the next Kate McKinnon, you’ll get the “I watched her from the beginning” clout that you always wished for.
How about Bowen Yang?
Yang is to lip-syncing as Fineman is to impressions. Not lip-syncing songs, though. Yang lip-syncs along to iconic pop culture moments like the infamous “we were all rooting for you” scene from America’s Next Top Model, or Cardi B’s government shutdown Instagram tangent. And he does it with borderline terrifying accuracy. Alongside his impressions and increasingly popular twitter, @bowenyang, Yang was no stranger to SNL before being hired on the show. While hosting the popular Las Culturistas podcast, he also worked as a writer on the last season of Saturday Night Live, writing sketches for hosts like Seth Meyers, Emma Stone, and John Mulaney. And he hasn’t even hit age 30 yet! In his on-stage debut with SNL, Yang appeared as Kim Jong Un, Andrew Yang and a member of the Downton Abbey parody cast. We can’t wait to see what the cutie with the glasses from Denver does in next week’s episode!
photo courtesy of imdb.com
Cheers to you, Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang, and cheers to comedy that doesn’t rely on ancient racism to land a joke like, uh…. what was that guy’s name again?