In the first episode of Netflix’s new series, Tires, created by Shane Gillis — the comedian hired and quickly fired by SNL in 2019 after racist clips surfaced — a mechanic’s shop tries to implement a new initiative designed to make women feel more comfortable. The initiative, however, mostly consists of objectifying and harassing women. The episode also introduces two Italian characters referred to as “the wops” and the sole female employee in the shop, who was transferred there for calling someone a “f*g.”
That’s just the premiere. I was not personally offended by any of it. I’m a white Gen X’er who grew up knowing Andrew Dice Clay’s nursery rhymes before the real ones. I’m not going to call the “woke mob” on anyone. I also recognize that the characters in Tires likely speak like many people in America, reducing everything to crude sexual metaphors, gay jokes, and racial stereotypes. Everything in Tires is a metaphor for f*cking a woman, unless it’s a gay joke about f*cking a man; everyone who is Asian is referred to as “Chinese,” undocumented workers are called “illegals,” Jewish people have big noses, Italians are “greasy wops,” and women are “dumpster mermaids.”
The issue with Tires is not that it’s an “anti-woke” comedy; the problem is that being “anti-woke” is its only selling point because it certainly isn’t the comedy. Most of the jokes in Tires feel like retreads from the 1990s — lazy, reductive humor as dated as a Married… with Children rerun.
But that’s the thing about this new breed of anti-woke comedians. They’re not “comedians.” They are “victims.” They inoculate themselves from criticism by cloaking their material in politically incorrect humor, framing any objections as “cancel culture.” Defenders, meanwhile, will ignore the lack of genuinely funny material and say that it’s just so refreshing when different races can be reduced to stereotypes and women can be reduced to a pair of tit* and an ass. Just like the old days!
To be clear, I have no interest in “canceling” Shane Gillis. As is often the case, being “canceled” has boosted Gillis’ career, leading to this Netflix sitcom being renewed before it even premiered. Shane Gillis is not worth it. Part of me wishes that SNL had kept him so he could’ve been bounced after one season on his merits as a performer. He would have been terrible on SNL, and he would have been quickly forgotten.
Tires is a blue-collar office comedy set in a mechanic’s shop where the inept boss, Will (played by Steve Gerben, who also co-writes the series with Gillis and John McKeever, the director of all six episodes), has ordered far too many tires. The first season revolves around various schemes to unload the excess inventory and upsell customers, with “upselling” often involving hitting on women.
Gillis plays Shane, a mechanic whose primary role seems to be roasting Will. Chris O’Connor portrays the only competent mechanic, Kilah Fox plays the token woman in the shop, and Stavros Halkias acts as the intermediary between Will and his father, the owner of a chain of auto shops.
Look: A lot of comedians can deliver offensive jokes without provoking ire. Watch Nikki Glaser’s most recent stand-up special, or half of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes, or all of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The difference is that their acts and shows offer more than just shock value. They are funny, foremost. As Marc Maron astutely observed last year:
[Anti-woke comics] are hacks, and it’s an angle. That’s really the big unsaid thing is that anti-woke the new hack. You’ve got like-minded people who fill these rooms because they don’t know how to assess funny unless it’s bullying, or unless it’s in totally bad taste. There’s no nuance to it. A lot of people who are not innately that funny become comics, and they can become good comics if they can figure it out. But this is just an excuse to ride the momentum of an audience that’s been built on these premises. For a bunch of freethinkers, they all think the same thing, and it’s like three things that they poke at, and it’s hackneyed. They are the hacks, and they are the groupthink victims. It’s really kind of profound.
This is the perfect encapsulation of Tires: a show riding the coattails of an anti-woke audience more interested in antagonizing their cultural opponents than engaging with genuinely funny content. It’s not just hack work; it’s cowardly. It is gutless. These comics don’t want to be judged on their own merits, so they hide their subpar comedy behind the shield of cancel culture. It’s lazy and tedious, and yet, I suspect Tires will be the first of many new comedies that will take advantage of this “freethinking” audience.
