A Spot-On SNL Parody About Men Who Can’t Deal With Time’s Passage

Even if you don’t know much country music, you likely know how much the genre loves the trope of the weepy father at his daughter’s wedding.

In the best sketch of last night’s Saturday Night Live , the father of the bride was played by the host, Shane Gillis, but he wasn’t reflecting on life’s heavy milestones.

Instead, he was thinking about “all the cool shit I can put in her room.” As narrated by a Rascal Flatts–esque band (composed of Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson, and Tommy Brennan), the dad imagined everything he was going to put in his new man cave: a Ms.

Pac-Man machine and a pinball machine; a drum set that he swore he would finally learn to play; a life-size cutout of Shaquille O’Neal; a bottle of lotion and box of tissues (a bit stolen from the Paul Rudd film I Love You, Man); a House box set; a cotton-candy machine.

A child’s wedding is a joyous occasion, a new chapter for the family.

But any beginning also reminds us that time’s arrow stubbornly points in only one direction.

The sketch smartly underscored how many American men use consumer goods to distract themselves from anxieties about aging and the creeping sense that life may pass them by.

Why deal with your uneasy feelings when you can finally afford the replica of a Star Wars stormtrooper you’ve wanted—nay, deserved—since you were a teenager? The hit of dopamine from a shopping spree is certainly more fun than wrestling with where your life currently stands.

The best SNL song sketches expand on a central idea as the parody progresses, commenting on the characters’ comedic dilemmas.

They also need to nail the musical references (Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Zac Brown, and, yes, Rascal Flatts have all released songs on this theme, something that the southerners Dismukes and Johnson are likely aware of).

In last night’s sketch, we learned that Gillis’s presumably long-suffering wife (Ashley Padilla) “hates my room / we’re drifting apart,” and that she’s becoming a bit too close with her Zumba instructor, Tad (Marcello Hernández), “who’s actually pretty cool”—an off-hand remark from a man too clueless to see what’s coming next.

Whatever you think about him, last night’s host was well equipped for this exploration of male obliviousness. [ Read: What Shane Gillis proved on SNL ] In 2019, Gillis was set to join SNL before some of his old offensive jokes resurfaced and NBC rescinded the offer .

Gillis apologized for the material, and SNL ’s creator, Lorne Michaels, indicated that the casting decision was out of his hands .

Michaels seems to have some lingering regrets about how it all went down; last night was Gillis’s third time hosting.