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The final sketch of a Saturday Night Live episode is usually reserved for the show\u2019s weirdest concepts. Airing in what\u2019s known as the \u201c10-to-1\u201d slot, these bits evoke the feeling of a night gone a little too late. Think of Steve Martin and Bill Murray repeatedly wondering \u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d at something off-screen, or a group of profane sloths reciting ridiculous \u201cfacts\u201d about themselves in a digital short. These setups are bizarre, provocative, and often hit-or-miss.<\/p>\n
But this weekend\u2019s concluding sketch was more sentimental than absurd. In \u201cDelta Lounge,\u201d the cast member Bowen Yang played Ed, an old-school eggnog peddler completing his last shift and receiving a call from his partner, Ronda (the night\u2019s host, Ariana Grande). The two launched into a duet of \u201cPlease Come Home for Christmas\u201d before Ronda arrived at the airport just in time to help Ed bid goodbye.<\/p>\n
The sketch doubled as a send-off for Yang, who\u2019d announced earlier yesterday that he would be departing the show after that night\u2019s episode. He was overcome with emotion as his character began talking about the job he was leaving behind. \u201cI just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here, and I just wanted to enjoy it for a little bit longer, especially the people,\u201d Ed said, holding back sobs. \u201cI\u2019ve loved every single person who works here, because they\u2019ve done so much for me, especially my boss.\u201d Cher, the night\u2019s musical guest, then appeared as his manager\u2014a larger-than-life cameo befitting Yang, a comedian who\u2019d begun his tenure facing what seemed like outsize expectations.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Yang became only the third cast member in Saturday Night Live history to be openly gay, and the first Chinese American performer in the program\u2019s lineup. Yang has said he\u2019s found these facts limiting: \u201cThere\u2019s an idea that all of what I do is queer and Asian, which I don\u2019t think is true,\u201d he told Esquire earlier this month. \u201cI get sick of people reducing the work I do on the show to those identifiers.\u201d He covered a wide spectrum of roles: He could play a pygmy hippo gone viral, or J. D. Vance, or the mythical \u201cevertree\u201d that also worked as a lawyer. He could offer ridiculous takes on inanimate objects, such as a drone hovering mysteriously over New Jersey, or deepen a seemingly thin premise, as he did in a sketch about the couple featured in the choking-hazard poster, begrudgingly meeting their fans.<\/p>\n
Yet his biggest contribution was a subtle sweetness. Yang\u2019s go-for-broke characters tended to convey a vulnerability that\u2019s hard to achieve in sketch comedy. Take, for instance, the iceberg that sank the Titanic and insisted on talking about his new album rather than the 100-year-old tragedy. His plea was tinged with a mix of guilt and frustration, making him unexpectedly sympathetic. Or consider Barry, the self-absorbed midwife so miffed to be forgotten by a colleague that he sows chaos in the delivery room: Yang, beneath a hilariously ever-growing wig, communicated through his body language Barry\u2019s fear of not being taken seriously.<\/p>\n
As a Chinese American viewer of Saturday Night Live, I\u2019ll concede that I initially paid close attention to Yang\u2019s performances because of the traits that made his casting so significant. But as time went on, I watched him because he made his identity appear not like a burden he carried, but like a joy he embraced. Terry Sweeney, the show\u2019s first openly gay cast member, has spoken over the years about feeling pigeonholed during his single season; he was relied upon only to do impressions of female public figures or to deliver caricatures of his sexuality. Yang also played no shortage of such parts. But LGBTQ characters and performers have become more visible\u2014and more dimensional\u2014on the small screen in the decades since Sweeney was in the cast, and Yang was able to inject his roles with both personal specificity and wider resonance. The queer-coded slang\u2014mentions of \u201cpoppers\u201d and \u201ctwinks,\u201d for example\u2014in the Sara Lee sketch, in which he played a manager charged with disciplining a lustful employee who misused the company\u2019s public Instagram, made its humor more nuanced. Yang\u2019s mock competition with the actor Simu Liu, best known for being the first Asian star of a Marvel movie, poked fun at how goofy these milestones could sound, while also ribbing the expectations set by the model-minority stereotype. In other words, Yang drew from who he was, to his creative benefit.<\/p>\n
His castmates channeled Yang\u2019s own warm-but-boisterous brand of silliness last night, even in sketches from which he was absent\u2014as in one where a group of squeaky-voiced Elf on the Shelf dolls discussed their trauma. The meta elements of Yang\u2019s farewell appearance, meanwhile, resembled the many characters he embodied throughout his run, whose layers peeked through from underneath the farce. Comedy can sometimes seem antithetical to tenderness; it\u2019s often easier for meanness to yield laughs, if the long history of roasts is any indication. But Yang unearthed sensitivity, helping the 50-year-old series, for which he earned five Emmy nominations, feel fresh. Like a 10-to-1 entry, he took unconventional swings. \u201cI went into this being like, I\u2019m just going to do whatever, and it kind of afforded me some latitude,\u201d he told Vanity Fair last year. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole point of the show: It\u2019s a variety show.\u201d<\/p>\n