In 2019, comedian Shane Gillis was announced as a new cast member on the sketch-comedy show Saturday Night Live! But Gillis’ stint on the show ended before it even began, after clips of him using racial slurs on Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast surfaced on the internet. For a while at least, that made Gillis radioactive for most large networks and streaming platforms. But the comedian soldiered on.

His 2021 special Shane Gillis: Live In Austin—independently released on YouTube—racked up three quarters of a million views in just six days, earning rave reviews from comedy connoisseurs. Overnight, Gillis went from ‘cancelled’ to the poster boy for inventive, edgy comedy. He became a regular on the incredibly successful Joe Rogan Experience and Kill Tony podcasts. His own podcast—the one that got him fired—started racking up listeners and is still going strong, boasting roughly 80,000 Patreon subscribers. And since last year he’s back in the mainstream, making his Netflix debut with comedy special Beautiful Dogs and returning triumphantly to SNL as a guest host. His latest offering is Tires, a new Netflix series about a small auto body shop.

Co-created by Gillis and his long-time collaborators Steve Gerben and John McKeever (who also serves as the director), the six-episode series is a mix of the juvenile workplace comedy of Comedy Central’s Workaholics and the edgy humour that It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia manages to pull off masterfully. The show chronicles the workings of a failing auto repair shop that perpetually nervous manager Will (Gerben) inherited from his father. Gillis plays Will’s cousin and relentless heckler, constantly putting down his ideas and demeaning him for his own amusement. On paper, it might look like The Bear—two cousins trying to make a failing blue-collar business work—but it lacks the nuance and emotion of the latter. What it does have though is punchlines, and lots of them.

The first season’s overarching narrative follows Will’s hare-brained idea to order 500 tires to cut costs. He soon realises that’s too many tires for a small business to sell, and each episode focuses on a new scheme that they concoct to boost sales. From bikini car-washes to a “women’s initiative” to encourage more women to come to auto repair shops (spoiler alert: it’s extremely condescending), and tons of low-brow jokes that would make the suits over at SNL palpitate, Tires trudges along delivering bro-joke after bro-joke.

And that’s about it. There are no deep, overlapping layers of narrative and subtext to unwrap. It’s just Gillis’ attempt at making people laugh and he succeeds at doing that more often than not. There is no broad insight to be gained from a white man putting on a Japanese accent, or calling his co-workers the female reproductive organ. It’s decidedly juvenile stuff, but pulled off with great ingenuity. Just like in his standup material, Gillis manages to say uncomfortable things without really coming across as a bigot himself. He’s playing a character and he knows how to push the right buttons while staying on the right side of the line.

If you’re looking for something thought-provoking, with unique insights, world-building or emotional resonance, then this isn’t the show for you. But if you’re just looking for something to pass a couple of hours with—and don’t mind a little crude bro humour about sex and bodily fluids—then you could do much worse than Tires. It’s good, unwholesome fun. And sometimes, that’s what you need.