Liars and Saints

  Bowen Yang had an opportunity to write a sequel to his great skit, "The Actress," but he said no. He bluntly said that SNL "sequel" skits offer diminishing returns; he wouldn't chip away at his own achievement. Here's "The Actress." A woman is frustrated with her career, playing "stick figures with shallow lives." Then: "Life comes knocking--with a challenge." This woman is hired to play "Wife Who Gets Cheated On During Gay Porn Film." She struggles with her elusive director, her eccentric props manager ("the bits and pieces of a life, the single Ugg boot, the pack of batteries")....She slips on spilled lube. Through it all, her tenaciousness is a guiding light. She keeps asking questions, proposing rewrites, and finally, against all odds, she triumphs. Yang writes so well, it's not fair. I especially like the K-Y on the steering wheel, the attempt to "brighten up our kitchen," and the referen...

 I think Bowen Yang is brilliant, and I think one of his great tricks is to have fallen in love with George Santos. Sure, there is contempt in his depiction of Santos, but you can also sense tremendous fondness for this lunatic. The subtext of Yang's performance seems to be: "Doesn't one small part of you wish, at times, that you could be as outrageous as Mr. Santos?" And so we have wonderful moments. Santos (Yang) writes a tribute to himself, to the tune of "Candle in the Wind," and he recalls a heated exchange: "They crawled out of the woodwork....Said I used their donations for Botox....And I said, it was FILLERS, slut...." Also, Santos (Yang) mourns having been cut down in the prime of life; he is a victim, a proud seventeen-year-old Latina queen. Finally, Santos (Yang) pulls a swaddled root vegetable from the innards of a piano, and says that he will now be focusing on the tasks of fatherhood. An actor is a fabulist; there isn't much dista...

 Again, I'm not sure if Bowen Yang is consistently writing his own material, but regardless, he has eclipsed his co-stars this year by creating three intriguing gay men: *"M3gan" fan. Yang imagines "M3gan 2.0," where M3gan abandons her domestic life and simply embraces her gay male fan base. M3gan appears at "a club," and her abdomen is magically re-purposed as a machine for dispensing poppers. Yang squeals, "M3gan, you messy ho, I'm *obsessed* with you!" Yang then bows before his "queen." *"Straight Male Friend." Here, Yang grows tired of self-reflection and adopts a straight dude. This is so easy! You just field questions about dick size. "Big, small....It actually depends on the moment, the bond you have...." If you *do* want real engagement from your straight friend, you simply accuse him of being unable to run fast in a foot race. *"Jafar." We all know that "Aladdin"'s villain is ...

  I don't know the extent to which Bowen Yang writes material, but I'm happy about his success, and I feel that he speaks for me, week after week. The George Santos skit seemed to write itself. I do like the sense that the lunacy increased, from lie to lie. "I received an Oscar from President Zelensky." "I was the first African-American to dunk a football." Finally, Bowen Yang appears in drag, as Kitara Ravache, and he says: "I am the virgin that Madonna mentions, in  Like a Virgin ." To me, however, the true genius of Yang is evident in the "Titanic" skit from several months ago. Here, Yang mocks the American tendency to lob softball questions at celebrities, when there is clearly a scandal going unmentioned. (For example, right now you can see Rihanna telling various reporters that she wants to perform at the Super Bowl to "set an example for children," but reporters seem to tiptoe around the problematic racial and legal histo...