Comedian Shane Gillis opened his third hosting stint on *Saturday Night Live* on October 10 with a monologue bit about women's gym attire, telling the audience, "I haven't been to the gym in so long. I didn't know women just dress like whores now?" and riffing about neon shorts in "artificial bait" colors.

Former cast member Ego Nwodim posted a gym photo captioned "whore reporting for duty," while Cecily Strong, the show's longest-serving female cast member, mockingly wrote about her "slutty ass orange shoes" and tied the moment to the Cornell University rape allegations lawsuit.

On the "Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade" podcast, Spade argued people have gotten too comfortable being offended, and that at SNL "if something kills, it gets a pass. If something totally bombs, then they get a lot of trouble."

Fox News reports Carvey "just didn't understand the kerfuffle," calling it simply "a joke" you're not meant to take literally, and guessing it "destroyed" in comedy clubs even though SNL was "not the right place" for it.

Spade also pointed to what he sees as Hollywood double standards, asking why OnlyFans and strip-club jokes are off-limits while Sydney Sweeney is widely hated, and concluding: "how about we just relax."

Notably, his own assistant and podcast producer, Heather Santoro, pushed back off mic that "the joke has to be actually funny. And it wasn't."

The viral clip is Gillis's live October 10 monologue on *Saturday Night Live*, the joke that turned a routine gym-attire bit into a national argument.

The Berkeley Beacon's Kayleigh Edson writes in an op-ed that the audience laughter on tape shows what she calls comedy's persistent misogyny problem, while Fox News notes Fox News Digital's Tim Young told the outlet the outrage reflects "a broader effort to police comedy" and that "Shane Gillis 'won' and cancel culture 'lost.'"

Per Fox News, Joe Rogan also defended Gillis from the "word police" on his podcast, and SNL's Michael Che shrugged to the Today Show, "That's comedy."

The sharpest twist this week comes from Belfast comedian Vittorio Angelone, who, according to extra.ie, issued an apology after a resurfaced roast clip showed him joking about an ongoing sexual assault trial involving OnlyFans creator Rebecca Goodwin.

extra.ie reports Angelone admitted, "I let my need for validation supersede my own standards and morals," said he should have run the joke past the person mentioned "and then still not told it because it isn't funny," and confirmed he apologized to Goodwin directly.

Reaction was mixed, with some commenters noting he was only sorry when the backlash came, and one urging that comedy "should never go after the vulnerable." It is a rare live test of whether comedians will ever take the exit ramp Spade says they shouldn't need.

The Berkeley Beacon argues the controversy is a window into how fans already judge such moments: Gillis was hired and fired from SNL in 2019 over resurfaced podcast clips, drew fire this year for lynching jokes at Netflix's "Roast of Kevin Hart," and still returned for a third hosting gig.

The Beacon's op-ed also flags the pile-on dynamics, noting fans blamed Taylor Swift for Travis Kelce merely liking SNL's monologue post, and points to a pattern of hosts from Jo Koy to Matt Rife to Bill Burr drawing similar fire.

Meanwhile Fox News frames the split as cancel culture versus comedy, with Spade predicting Gillis reacts "like that kind of Chappelle where he just does it, and he walks away and then everyone fights over it."